Category: City of Chicago / Cook County

Fully vaccinated individuals are five times less likely to get infected, more than ten times less likely to die of COVID than unvaccinated individuals and more than ten times less likely to be hospitalized.

Vaccines have proven to be the most effective way by far to protect against the coronavirus and its variants, reducing infection and preventing hospitalization and death.

Americans’ approval of labor unions is at the highest point it’s been in decades—68%—a recent Gallup poll found.

More than 300 employees of the Art Institute of Chicago are forming a union, the Art Institute of Chicago Workers United (AICWU), with AFSCME. The announcement came Aug. 3 in a public letter signed by 60 employees.

Last week AFSCME members got a big boost in their “mailboxes”—the largest-ever tax cut for working families in American history is the newly expanded child tax credit, part of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

After months of bargaining, 4,000 Cook County employees secured a new union contract with significant pay increases.

In a win for the labor movement, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act on March 9. The PRO Act reforms labor laws to give power back to workers so they can freely organize unions.

Get answers to your questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. Watch this Feb. 4, 2021, virtual forum and Q&A with AFSCME staff and union members.

Getting vaccinated can prevent getting sick with COVID-19 and spreading the virus to your co-workers and loved ones.

School closings have kept kids at home and, as a result, many parents—mothers in particular—are struggling to meet the needs of both their children and their jobs.