The Latest Breaking News from AFSCME

About 300 workers will become members of Council 31 of the American Federation of State, county and Municipal Employees.

A joint statement from Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Roberta Lynch, executive director of AFSCME Council 31, said the agreement would “improve the economic security and working lives of thousands of dedicated frontline” employees in about a dozen city departments.

Fifty-one Democratic members of the Michigan House of Representatives and all 20 Democratic senators are sponsoring companion bills that would repeal a section of law prohibiting public employees from being required to pay union fees. 

“I want this to be a policy of not only the city of Chicago but of sister agencies. But it has to be done through the collective bargaining process,” the mayor said Wednesday.

Adjunct professors and lecturers voted overwhelmingly to join AFSCME, adding to the union’s winning streak in recent elections.

Leaders of the union effort say a majority of the 330 workers it would represent have signed on but museum officials want to see it put to a vote.

“We are standing together in one voice saying that we want to form our union,” a museum employee said Tuesday after delivering a letter to the head of the museum.

By a 35-11 vote, the employees agreed to affiliate with Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

In the last 20 months, the union’s 3,000 city employees have received a 2% pay raise as inflation has spiked. For starters, the union says it wants a “fair” wage.

The Alaska Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a case where the state of Alaska claims that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME requires annual opt-ins for union membership.

The Supreme Court’s next term will begin on Monday, Oct. 3. As of Sept. 29, appellants had filed seven petitions for writs of certiorari—requests for the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling—in public-sector union cases we’re tracking. The Supreme Court began considering petitions for this term on Wednesday,…