Dear Brothers and Sisters,
For months we, LiUNA Local 1001, have been attempting to have the City of Chicago make whole the group of our members who were underpaid on their retro checks back in January 2024, and to issue the one-man truck pay retro checks to hundreds of others.
In early January the City came to Local 1001 and admitted that the one-man truck pay was difficult to calculate and if we chose to have that portion of the retro included with the rest of the retro checks there would be an incredible delay in getting everyone, including the rest of COUPE’s checks out. We as a Union did not feel it would be fair to the thousands of our Union brothers and sisters in the trades to delay what all of us have been waiting for since ratification of the CBA in September 2023. This next point is very important, we had an agreement with the City that none of the one-man truck pay would be included on the initial retro check and would be issued separately as soon as they were done calculating them.
Upon the City issuing the retro checks in January, Local 1001 received hundreds of calls asking about the City’s calculations. We proceeded to ask the City for a copy of those pay registers. The City continually fought us NOT to turn over those pay registers. We knew they were hiding something when they sent us a pdf file in a font so small you would need a microscope to read it. We literally had to threaten to go to court to receive a readable excel document of the retro pay registers, which they finally turned over in late February. From the minute we were able to open the registers, which by the way were 36 columns wide and over 152,000 lines long, we knew there were problems.
For almost 6 weeks after we received the pay registers the City continued to fight us and would not admit that they had underpaid a large group of our members on their retro checks. After finally seeing they had made a huge error in their calculations and began correcting them we were into mid April 2024. Still no one that was shorted was made whole nor were the one-man truck retro checks paid.
We continued to express our frustration to the City on how they were handling the payments long overdue to our members. At some point in early May 2024, after almost daily calls on the subject with the City Comptroller he finally admitted that the City’s calculations were so bad that he had called in a private audit firm KPMG to review and fix the City’s horrendous mistakes.
The audit proved right that our members were due in some cases thousands of dollars in retro pay. As we moved on to the one-man pay we once again found insane mathematical errors committed by the City and to make matters even worse some of those errors had already been paid even though NONE of the one-man truck pay was supposed to be included on the original retro checks.
As late as yesterday afternoon, Sunday, June 9, 2024, they were still calling us to try and figure out the correct one-man pay. Insane but sadly all true.
During their audit the City also discovered that not only did they totally mess up Local 1001’s retro check but hundreds of other union’s members retro checks. So in their words “we were not alone in this”.
In an attempt to hide their thousands of mistakes the City has contacted us and tried to get us to compromise a large number of our members to basically close the books on the retro and the one-man pay, an offer I am sure was or is going to be made to all of the other COUPE Unions.
I told the City in these exact words “ GO F**K YOURSELVES!”
The City of Chicago made every single one of these mistakes and now you want my members to pay? My members have been waiting months for their money and now they want to play games, well then City of Chicago, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
You will be seeing some things online and in the press about this and some of the other things going on between Local 1001 and the City of Chicago, and we may be calling on you to show your support during some upcoming events, so please remember even if you are not one of those who has been waiting patiently for your retro or one-man pay, we are all in this together. The Mayor can spend 30k on haircuts and makeup, throw away millions of dollars on developing a toxic site for migrant housing and use almost $300 million dollars of taxpayer money to service them, yet the men and women that keep this City running, pick up the trash, fix the streets and sidewalks, trim the trees, keep the airports safe and clean, and so much more, are being punished because the City cannot do 2nd grade math.
I ask you to join me and your brothers and sisters of Local 1001 in telling Mayor Johnson and the City of Chicago to “ GO F**K YOURSELVES, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”
We’re Stronger Together, We’re Union and We Ain’t Going Nowhere!
Bob Chianelli
LiUNA Local 1001
Business Manager