Illinois Farm Bureau Sees ‘Moral Obligation’ to Protect Livestock from Extreme Weather. It Opposes Temperature Standards for Workers. By Sky Chadde
April 22, 2026
Introduction:
(Investigate Midwest)
• No federal heat protection standards exist. If signed into law, the legislation would make Illinois the eighth state to implement requirements for employers related to extreme heat. It would make Illinois just the third state to have standards related to cold temperatures.
• Extreme temperatures affect workers across Illinois’ food system, from crews detasseling corn in rural areas to sanitation workers cleaning frozen pizza factories in Chicago.
• Organizations representing employers across Illinois’ food system have argued the legislation’s requirements, such as paid water breaks at a certain temperature, could impact supply chains.
Since last year, worker advocates and industry representatives in Illinois have negotiated over a potentially groundbreaking piece of legislation that would require employers to protect laborers from extreme temperatures.
In private discussions, the Illinois Farm Bureau, a powerful lobbying organization for the state’s agricultural industries, voiced concern that the bill would impede farmers’ ethical duty to care for their livestock. But, to some participants, one thing seemed to be missing: No mention of workers.
After Three-Week Strike, JBS Concedes to Meatpacking Workers By Caitlyn Clark and Lisa Xu
April 23, 2026
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Last month, 3,800 meatpacking workers in UFCW Local 7 in Greeley, Colorado launched the industry’s first major strike in 40 years.
The three-week unfair labor practice strike was the first time workers had ever struck the JBS Greeley beef packing plant, one of the company’s largest. ULP charges against JBS included the illegal termination of a member of the bargaining committee and surveillance and intimidation of workers for participation in union activity.
With 57 languages spoken under one roof, the strike united the plant’s largely immigrant workforce to take on the biggest meatpacking company in the world.
The local had spent nearly a year in negotiations following the contract’s expiration last July. JBS returned to the bargaining table after the strike—and when the dust settled, the company had conceded to almost every demand.
WON PROTECTION
In addition to $1.50 an hour in wage increases over the short two-year agreement, workers won a groundbreaking policy on personal protective equipment, challenging JBS’s previous system of garnishing wages to replace necessary PPE when it was lost, damaged, or stolen. JBS was charging workers up to $1,100 to pay for mesh vests, gloves, arm guards, and knife sharpeners.
Counter Manufacturers are Killing Workers with Silica Dust, Safety Group Charges By Jenny Brown
April 28, 2026
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) Silicosis is a lethal workplace illness that killed thousands each year up through the 1960s. In recent decades, thanks to union workplace safety fights, it became much rarer. Annual deaths dropped to the hundreds. The disease affected mostly older workers with longer exposures.
So it was hard for stonecutter Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, 35, to get a clear diagnosis in 2019 when he first developed a cough and shortness of breath. It wasn’t until two years later that he was told he had silicosis—and only had a year to live.
Reyes Gonzalez had worked for 15 years in a fabrication shop cutting and shaping the manufactured stone now commonly used for countertops and showers (also known as quartz or engineered stone).
Around the time Reyes Gonzalez started working as a stonecutter, the material was becoming popular in the U.S. as a cheaper, more durable replacement for natural stone (marble or granite). But manufactured stone, which is made of crushed quartz and resin, contains much more silica–it comprises up to 95 percent of the material, compared to 5 percent for marble or 10 to 50 percent for granite. This makes manufactured stone much more hazardous for workers to cut, grind, and polish. These processes release silica particles that can embed themselves in the lungs, causing scarring and ultimately lung failure.
As many as two million workers may risk exposure, from manufactured stone as well as from mining, quarrying, sandblasting, and another new hazard, “frac sand” used in hydraulic fracturing in the oil and gas industry.
‘Hands Off Our Pensions’: Belgian Workers Take to the Streets in General Strike Against Austerity Measures By Stephen Prager
May 13, 2026
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Much of Belgium ground to a halt on Tuesday as tens of thousands of workers flooded the streets of Brussels as part of a general strike against government austerity measures.
Schools closed, public transit operated with reduced service, and flights out of major airports were grounded as workers walked off the job. Instead, they marched through the capital clad in red and green, the colors of Belgium’s major labor unions, with some carrying signs that read, “Hands off our pensions” and “We will not pay the price of their wars.”
According to Morning Star, as many as 100,000 people took part in the strike, which was called by the nation’s three biggest trade unions in protest of measures by Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s government that the unions say slash pensions, reduce wages, and attack collective bargaining.
The marchers called on the government to roll back plans to raise Belgium’s retirement age to 67 and have called for an end to what the unions have dubbed a “pension penalty” that would cut benefits for those who retire early.
Amid rising costs caused by the US-Israeli war against Iran, the unions are also outraged by a proposed temporary cap on wage indexation, which requires wages to rise in tandem with inflation.
In Bus Factories, A Triple-Decker Win By Keith Brower Brown
May 29, 2026
Introduction:
(Labor Notes) What does it take to unionize factories today, especially in the South? In the last two years, bus manufacturing workers secured first union contracts and a national master agreement across New Flyer facilities in three states.
Their strategy shows how, with pressure from transit agencies that buy the buses, union members from organized sites leading outreach to non-union workers, and fighting stewards on the line, workers can unionize plants across a whole company.
New Flyer, North America’s largest bus-making company, expanded heavily in the South during the last decade, a common employer strategy to move to areas with few unions, sharp poverty, and racial splits to exploit. About a quarter of its production is electric or hydrogen buses.
But in the last three years, 600 New Flyer assemblers in Alabama, 700 parts makers and warehouse workers in Kentucky, and 100 workers in upstate New York won union recognition and first contracts with the industrial wing of the Communications Workers (CWA).
Alongside 1,000 already-unionized members at the company’s two Minnesota plants, they just settled a national master agreement that locked in new holidays, more humane attendance policies, health care cost caps, and a slew of other benefits. During the campaign to win that national deal, a supermajority of workers at each plant signed on as dues-paying members, even in Southern states where they could get full benefits without paying dues.
Labor Unions Celebrate World Court Ruling Enshrining Right to Strike By Marjorie Cohn
May 31, 2026
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) The right to strike is under attack throughout the world, including in the United States. Labor strikes are currently forbidden or restricted in the majority of countries.
Now, in a landmark 43-page advisory opinion issued May 21, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, or World Court) has determined that the right to strike is protected under the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention No. 87 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise.
“At a moment when workers’ organizations face sustained attacks around the world, this opinion reaffirms that the freedom to withhold one’s labor is not a privilege granted by the powerful, but a fundamental human right grounded in international law,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement.
The ILO is the United Nations agency that sets global labor standards. It has 187 member states and has adopted 191 conventions since its founding in 1919. The ILO considers Convention No. 87 to be one of its 11 fundamental conventions.
