About 2,000 Cook County employees will end an 18-day strike and are returning to work Tuesday after a tentative agreement was reached on a contract, union officials said.
The work stoppage that began last month was the longest-ever for the Service Employees International Union Local 73 and also the longest public sector strike in Chicago’s recent history. It also frayed ties between labor-friendly Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and SEIU 73 as she and union leadership continued to ding each other Tuesday following an acrimonious negotiating period.
“Cook County workers showed real bravery by going out on strike to demand respect from the county,” Dian Palmer, SEIU Local 73 president, said in a statement. “This contract has real wins for workers that they should be proud of as it turns the page on decades of Local 73 members being considered second-class citizens at the county.”
Preckwinkle, who has responded to inquiries about the strike with assurances that the county has a good working relationship with its unions, said in a Tuesday interview on WBEZ that she was “really disappointed” in SEIU 73′s leadership because the tentative deal was essentially the same one offered by the county two weeks ago. She said the total upgrades and salary increases amount to $5.8 million.
The pending agreement does not include two economic issues: raising wage floors for the lowest-paid workers or changing annual pay raise steps based on seniority. Those issues will be hashed out in arbitration by a neutral party panel, SEIU 73′s statement and Preckwinkle said.
But Preckwinkle added that her bargaining team has been pushing for arbitration since the start of the month, and she lamented that workers could have returned much earlier if they had taken her up on the offer when first introduced.
“One of the things that’s happened, of course, is that my relationships with SEIU have been damaged, but my primary responsibility is not, frankly, my relationship with SEIU,” Preckwinkle said. “It’s to the residents and taxpayers in Cook County, to be a good steward of county government, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
Earlier on the radio segment, Palmer said the county was not prioritizing SEIU 73′s contract demands compared with the other unions who reached deals with Preckwinkle’s team. The county board president dismissed those statements later, saying her administration’s offer to SEIU 73 was “in the same framework” as that of the other groups, the local chapters of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Teamsters; National Nurses United; and the Fraternal Order of Police.
SEIU and county did come to agreement on other areas of pay including hazard pay, which includes temporary bonuses for front-line workers during the coronavirus pandemic. The four-year contract includes a total 8.5% raise over that duration. Seniority will also become a key factor in hiring and promotions.
SEIU 73 had been negotiating a new contract for about 10 months when its strike began on June 25. The same employees also held a work stoppage in December that Preckwinkle said “deeply disappointed” her because it happened during the pandemic’s winter surge.
Preckwinkle was endorsed by SEIU 73 during the 2019 mayoral race and received nearly $2 million from them in campaign contributions. During this most recent labor dispute, she struck a more neutral tone with both SEIU 73 and the nurse’s union, which held a one-day strike before coming to a contract agreement
“I’m proud of our record of good working relationships with our labor unions for a decade,” she had said the day before the SEIU strike began.
SEIU employees work in offices under the Cook County president, in the county clerk’s office, in civilian positions in the sheriff’s office and for Cook County Health. About 1,473 of those workers are part of Cook County Health, working at Stroger and Provident hospitals, clinics and in mental health services at Cermak, which provides health care to jail inmates. They include technicians, physician assistants and service and maintenance workers, among others.
The labor disputes come as Preckwinkle’s administration last month projected a $121 million budget deficit for next year, compared with a deficit of $410 million this fiscal year, but she noted that $1 billion in federal stimulus aid could help close the gap.
About 2,500 members of SEIU 73 originally had planned to strike, though the Illinois Labor Relations Board found in June that just under 500 of them, many in health care, should be required to work because of the danger a walkout could pose to the public.
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Cook County workers end strike after 18 days - Chicago Tribune
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