"I didn't get elected to be liked, I got elected to solve problems," Emanuel told the audience. more ›

The three Democratic front-runners came to Chicago this week to seek the endorsement of that other labor federation, Change to Win. Barack Obama and John Edwards made their case in person, but erstwhile local gal Hillary Clinton had to settle for phoning it in from Little Rock Arkansas where her plane was stranded. "Back in the '90s when we had a Democratic Congress and we had a Democratic president, we didn't get universal healthcare," Edwards... more ›

About 17,000 union members, along with their friends and their families, filled the south end of Soldier Field for a debate, hosted by the AFL-CIO, among the Democratic contenders. A sweaty sea of union members in colored T-shirts, representing everyone from the Service Employees International Union to the United Steelworkers, from the AFSCME to the IUPAT, drank cold bottles of water and listened to Democrats talk about how their administration would work for working families,... more ›

Since the news yesterday was dominated with Obama's big tease, a story that has been brewing for a while might have been missed, even if you follow politics pretty closely. Chicago unions, led by break-away schismatic the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and their supporters, have not only withheld endorsing Daley, but are actively targeting aldermen in a series of wards where they think are ripe for change. Citing a whole list of grievances with... more ›

The Sun-Times is reporting on the labor movement's most recent moves in city politics. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has compiled a researched list of "targeted" wards where it will rally its resources to oust incumbent aldermen, or try to fill vacant seats with candidates that are sympathetic to its point of view. Further exacerbating this threat to the entrenched are the alliances that SEIU has made in the past 5 years. more ›

They came to Chicago excited to celebrate 50 years of wedded bliss, but they're leaving divorced. The Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, United Food and Commercial Workers and UNITE HERE (UNITE is the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and HERE is the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) announced that they'd boycott the annual AFL-CIO conference. The conference begins today in Chicago, and labor officials say the SEIU and the teamsters will announce at a press conference today that they will leave the AFL-CIO. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations merged in 1955. more ›

Yesterday twenty-four Chicago aldermen, almost half of the fifty total, submitted a letter to Cook County Tax Assessor Jim Houlihan requesting that the county revoke the non-profit status of the Resurrection Hospital chain, and should have to pay property taxes on their holdings. The reason, the letter states, is that the eight Resurrection hospitals no longer provide enough "charity care" to their patients and community, and are actually just a for-profit organization in disguise. more ›