Trade Show Partiers, Picketers Gather at Navy Pier

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters

The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters will demonstrate late this afternoon outside Navy Pier while #Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton host a cocktail reception fundraiser for the hospitality industry inside the venue.

The Carpenters and other trades have been significantly affected by new work-rule #legislation at the city’s two major exhibition centers, McCormick Place and Navy Pier. The legislation, which is the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Carpenters union and the Teamsters union in federal court, permits #exhibitors to use their own #employees to perform the work without restriction at the expense of union members’ jobs and hours worked. It is the contention of the Carpenters union that in many cases its local workers who are city and/or state residents are being supplanted by exhibitor employees who reside outside of Illinois and even outside the country.

Carpenters at McCormick Place have documented thousands of lost man-hours since the new legislation went into effect, directly stinging the workers and their pay checks, their health care, and the #retirement benefits of the union as a whole. (Written by Don Scott while employed as Carpenters' Communications Director)