Click to access MayorjohnsonPR07282026c.pdf
July 28, 2026 For Immediate Release
Mayor Johnson’s NOT the Working Man’s Mayor if you’re a member of LiUNA Local 1001
The Mayor’s hand-picked Commissioners’ in the Department of Aviation, Michael McMurray, and the Department of Transportation, William Cheaks Jr., have been treating the members of my Local Union, LiUNA Local 1001, like indentured servants, without rights or the value of the work they do every day for the City of Chicago.
Most of the members of Local 1001 are middle class working men and women with families who go to work every day and just want what’s coming to them. They don’t need to be insulted, degraded and abused by these two rogue Commissioners who think they are Kings and not public servants. When you think it’s OK to treat your fellow employees without respect and that they should just take what you give them, then there is a problem with YOU, not them.
This Mayor is continually trying to sell the notion that he is for the working men and women and how his administration if focused on the black and brown citizens of Chicago. Yet, when it comes to his employees, of which LiUNA Local 1001 consists of over 1,900 members who a vast majority are black and brown, he treats them completely different.
The examples of this disrespect for the hard-working men and women of Laborers Local 1001 have been mounting for months now and it’s about time the members and the voters in the City of Chicago are informed of these unfair, unjust and anti-labor incidents.
Commissioner McMurray of CDA is intentionally shorting members contractually mandated pay raises and reducing their paid holiday days off, amongst other contract violations that harm our members.
Commissioner Cheaks of CDOT has NO problem suspending members without due process, sending hundreds of men and women home for days without pay, ignoring the collective bargaining agreement on numerous other issues, and thinking he can do whatever he wants because he has Mayor Johnson’s blessing.
Mayor Johnson, and his Commissioners, Cheaks and McMurray, are forcing Local 1001 to go to arbitration on the most basic of issues, which costs the taxpayers of the City of Chicago tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and hundreds of hours of City employee hours and resources. And for what, to prove they are the Boss?
Mayor Johnson, the charade is over, your treatment of your devoted, hardworking, Local 1001 Laborers by your Commissioners is out there for all the public to see. The three of you should be ashamed of yourselves and are a disgrace to the term public servant for how you treat our brothers and sisters of LiUNA Local 1001.
