Peace and an Olympic bid set the stage for an unprecedented labor contract in Chicago. Jesse Russell reports:

By Jesse Russell

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has had a stormy relationship with the city's 33 trade unions, representing more than 8000 workers. On Tuesday, Daley offered an olive branch in the form of a 10-year contract. The contract comes as the city seeks ways to position itself as a contender for the 2016 Olympic Games. Under the new contract, trade workers including plumbers and electricians will continue to receive current benefits, will lock in the prevailing wage, and will cap health care costs at 8 percent per year. The city will seek to encourage workers who engage in high risk lifestyles to make changes to bring down costs – those changes include losing weight, and lowering blood pressure and cholesterol. In return the unions have agreed to enroll 100 graduates from Chicago public schools into their apprenticeship programs.

By Jesse Russell

A small Illinois town is waiting nervously for news concerning the future of its largest employer. Jesse Russell has more…

A town in central Illinois is preparing for the worst after being informed that the bankrupt Collins and Aikman Corporation could be closing three plants there. The auto parts plants are the largest employer in the town of Rantoul and employs 950 workers. The company recently sent out letters to employees saying that the plant could be closed in less than 60 days. Cadence Innovation has expressed interest in buying the three Rantoul plants currently on the chopping block and could prevent closure.

With Republicans vowing to filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act – labor has received the support of at least one very important Senator. Jesse Russell reports:

Presidential candidate and Illinois Senator Barack Obama was in Illinois on Saturday morning vowing to make sure legislation that would make it easier for workers to join union will pass the Senate. Obama told a gathering of 1500 labor supporters, “we will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when. We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done.”

By Doug Cunningham

What would Jesus do? Workers struggling to form a union to improve their wages and working conditions at Catholic-owned Resurrection Health in Chicago believe he would be with them in their fight for a union and justice on the job. Shirley Brown has been a housekeeper at Resurrection Health for eleven years and makes $10.70 an hour.

[Shirley Brown 1]: “You're workin' short-staffed, you get yelled and screamed at, you get disrespected. You don't have a voice in the workplace at all, period. The disrespect and intimidation and harassment - it is real and that is what is happening in these hospitals. And it shouldn't be that way."

By Doug Cunningham

SEIU Local 73's 100 member executive board in Chicago has voted to endorse the universal national health care bill sponsored by Congressman John Conyers and 77 other members of the House. The United States National Health Insurance Act would cover everyone in the country for all medically necessary care by expanding Medicare. It's a concrete health care reform plan that would create a single payer national health care system.

By Doug Cunningham

The Chicago Federation of Labor, AFSCME and the California Nurses Association rallied on Monday to protest Cook County health care budget cuts that the nurses say will close 16 clinics in Chicago. Two thousand union nurses working for the Cook County Bureau of Health Services say the budget cuts endanger public health, especially the most vulnerable who depend on the county health system. The nurses say senior citizens will suffer from the cuts because 200 long-term care beds will be eliminated. Before the county cuts vital services, the nurses say, county government arou

By Doug Cunningham

The Chicago Federation of Labor is refusing to endorse Richard Daley for mayor. Federation president Dennis Gannon says it was Daley’s veto of a living wage ordinance for big-box stores like Wal-Mart combined with a host of other labor issues like privatization of city services that lost labor’s endorsement for Daley.

By Doug Cunningham

Registered nurses from Chicago and across Cook County will hold a candlelight vigil Thursday to protest what union nurses say are devastating cuts in the county health care budget. County commissioners plan to cut health care 17 percent across the board. The National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association represents nurses working for the Cook County Bureau of Health. The union says the big budget cut will cause more deaths and more stress on the county's already strained health care system.

By Doug Cunningham

United Mineworkers of America members shed their blood in 1898 defending their union rights in a Virden, Illinois gun battle with armed strikebreaking company guards. John Alexander of the Virden Sesquicentennial Group says the miner’s battle is being honored now with a bronze memorial.

[John Alexander 1]: "Today coal miners have it much better. And one of the reasons they do is that their great-great Grandfathers stood up and fought at places like Virden, Illinois."

The memorial commemorating the UMWA's Battle of Virden will be dedicated this Saturday.

By Doug Cunningham

Chicago hotel workers represented by UNITE-HERE have won a settlement with Hilton and are continuing to talk with Hyatt and Starwood hotels. UNITE-HERE’s Lars Negstad says the Hilton contract is a victory for the workers.

[Lars Negstad 1]: “It's an excellent agreement with major improvements in not only in the wages and benefits but also workload issues, which is a major factor this year."

Negstad says the Chicago hotel workers are part of a national movement this year called Hotel Workers Rising.

[Negstad 2]: “Overall what we're lookin' to do is raise up hotel workers into the middle class. These are jobs that are gonna remain here in the United States and we need to make sure these jobs are going to be living wage jobs."

By Doug Cunningham

Nurses are marching in Chicago today to protest possible loss of union rights for nurses who may be newly classified as supervisors. The California Nurses Association says the upcoming NLRB decisions could unfairly keep RNs from advocating for patients without the threat of retaliation.

By Jesse Russell

Working for a big box retailer in Chicago could mean higher wages. The Chicago city council approved a new ordinance that would make it mandatory for so-called "big box stores" like Wal-Mart to pay employees a minimum of $10 an hour with $3 an hour in benefits. Proponents of the bill believe it will help lift up working families. Opponents believe the bill will be economically devastating by diverting development to the suburbs. The bill applies to companies with at least $1 billion in annual sales, stores of at least 90,000 square feet, and employees who work at least 10 h

By Doug Cunningham

In Meredosia, Illinois members of the Boilermakers union Local 484 have ratified a new contract with Celanese Corporation after a bitter year-long struggle triggered by the company’s lockout of the workers. The company also used Special Response Corporation as intimidators on the picket line and in working family neighborhoods. But the union says it won by standing and fighting a giant corporation and even pushing it back a few steps. The union says workers will choose their health insurance company, wages are higher than Celanese was offering at first, there are caps on health care costs and a decent severance package for union members who won’t be going back to work. The union says it will be an enormous challenge to go back to work in the plant alongside scabs and those who betrayed the union. But Boilermakers Local 484 says its members grew during the lockout and are stronger than ever.

By Doug Cunningham

Eighteen hundred nurses working in Chicago's public health system are on the verge of a strike over staffing levels, a say in patient care and a range of compensation and benefits issues. Fernando Losada is a spokesperson for the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association representing the nurses.

[Fernando Losada]: "These nurses have put up with appalling conditions in these hospitals for a long time. But it is getting to a breaking point. You know, in all our hospitals pretty much in the country, except for those that serve the ultra rich, the staffing is deplorable. The number of patients that a nurse has to take care of is just too high. And it's a well documented fact that deaths and very bad outcomes occur when they aren't enough nurses to attend to the patients. People don't want to cut services to the public, especially the poor who depend on this county system. But the nurses and our union are prepared to cause a little short term pain for the long-term health of the public health care system."

By Doug Cunningham

Chicago transit workers have overwhelmingly authorized a strike. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241 plans to meet with management Friday to talk about bus scheduling. At issue is "rostering", a change in how transit workers get overtime. Rostering limits overtime to workers who put in more than 40 hours in a week. Without rostering, overtime kicks in if a worker puts in more than 8 hours in a day. A strike of Chicago transit workers would not be illegal as it was in New York City last December when transit workers there went on strike. The Chicago CTA claims the transit union's contracts prohibits a strike.

By Doug Cunningham

Chicago area nurses represented by the National Nurses Organizing Committee/ California Nurses Association have voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike at the Cook County Bureau of Health Services. Talks are scheduled for today to continue to try to reach agreement on a fair contract for the nurses. No actual strike date has been set. Ninety seven percent of the roughly 1800 RN's at three hospitals, more than 20 community clinics, the Cook County jail in Chicago, four public health offices and the juvenile detention center voted to authorize the strike. Safe staffing levels and patient care protections are the central issues.

By Jesse Russell

In honor of Black History Month, the Ethnic Heritage Museum in Rockford, Ill. is hosting an exhibit dedicated to the nation's first black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Larry Tye is author of the book "Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class." We asked Tye to explain the importance of the Porters union:

[Tye]: A man named A. Philip Randolph who had a perfect track record of failure in anything he ever tried in terms of unions before--he had one distinct advantage over the previous union efforts, which was he was not a Pullman Porter and he couldn't be fired. It took him 12 years, almost to the day, of hard work, of watching lots of Porters be fired, of watching some of his lieutenants be beat up, but he did 12 years to the day after he started this drive succeed in getting the Pullman company to sign a contract with his Porters. This was the first successful black trade union in America. So it was really quite extraordinary. It got them higher wages, got them lower working hours, but most importantly it got them the kind of respect they felt they had never had before.

More than 49,000 home child care providers in Illinois will be represented by the Service Employees International Union. The announcement was made Thursday after two weeks of voting in the largest union election in the state's history. Argentina Tanner is a home child care worker in Chicago. She says organizing was important to ensure child care providers receive the support they need from the state.

[Tanner]: Anyone who wants to do this type of work should be able to do so without the fear of being forced out of the daycare business because the rates are so low they can't support their own families.

Helen Miller is the President of SEIU Local 880, she says child care providers make sure kids get a good start in life.

[Miller]: They give our children hope and they help shape our future.

Two labor unions in Illinois are battling it out for the right to represent nearly 49,000 home child-care workers. Ballots sent out last week ask the workers to choose if they want to be represented by the Service Employees International Union or the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. SEIU has been trying to organize child-care providers who work out of their homes for nine years. The organization has accused AFSCME of stepping in at the last minute in violation of the AFL-CIO constitution. AFSCME says it is better suited for the kind of state-level bargaining the workers will have to do and charges that the SEIU is trying to deny the workers the freedom of choice by attempting to undermine the vote. The AFL-CIO has scheduled a hearing on the matter for today and a ruling is expected within the next seven days. Voting ends on April 6th.

Family child care providers in Illinois could be on the verge of the biggest union election in that state's history. Ballots have been sent to nearly 49,000 providers in the state who give home-based care to more than 140,000 children. If approved, the providers would then be represented by Service Employees International Union local 880. The local issued a report in early March that outlined the problems facing the family child care industry - such as high turnover and poverty wages - and calling for more training for providers and securing affordable health insurance.