Posts tagged pandemic relief money
Chicago Teachers Union’s actions affect all Illinoisans
October 31, 2024 // What exactly does Davis Gates think is “emergency” status for all of Illinois? CTU’s more than $10 billion in demands include 9% wage increases for Chicago teachers, a housing program for Chicago teachers, a 100% electric bus fleet and solar panels for Chicago school buildings – to name a few. CPS has projected just 52 of CTU’s demands would create a $2.9 billion deficit for the district next fiscal year and a $4 billion hole by 2029. Illinoisans outside Chicago may not think that’s their problem to solve.
Strike at trucking firm Yellow averted after deal
July 24, 2023 // In 2020, then-U.S. President Donald Trump bailed out the company with a $700 million pandemic relief loan. In exchange, the federal government took a 30% stake in Yellow. The Nashville, Tennessee-based company formerly called YRC Worldwide has not significantly repaid that loan, which is part of $1.2 billion in debt it is scrambling to refinance before it comes due next year. Yellow's other lenders include a group led by Apollo Global Management (APO.N). Company executives appealed to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters for help slashing expenses as cash dwindles. It has successfully won such concessions in the past, but this time was rebuffed by new Teamsters General President Sean O'Brien. "Following years of worker give backs, federal loans, and other bail outs, this deadbeat company has only itself to blame for being in this embarrassing position," O'Brien said in a statement last week. O’Brien is also leading negotiations covering roughly 340,000 U.S. employees at United Parcel Service (UPS.N). A federal judge in Kansas on Friday rejected Yellow's request to block the Teamsters from striking over the delinquent benefit payments.
Despite fierce pushback, an Oregon union is proceeding in its efforts to recall an influential Democrat
June 9, 2023 // In a blistering letter sent June 2, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 said it had no plans to stop. The union has already put down $100,000 to fund a recall on state Rep. Paul Holvey, a Eugene Democrat considered one of the strongest labor champions in the statehouse. And the union’s president, Dan Clay, went further. He laid out years’ worth of grievances his tens of thousands of members have with state policymakers — from a decision not to prioritize grocery workers for COVID-19 vaccines, to how the state chose to distribute pandemic relief money, to the death of the union’s priority bill this year. The union is so disillusioned, Clay wrote, that it is likely to abandon the statehouse altogether in coming years, pushing ballot measures instead of bills.