Local 700 Teamster members at the Cook County Forest Preserves in Chicago are on strike.

The nearly 200 Teamsters do everything to maintain the preserves, from cleaning bathrooms and picking up trash to maintaining trails and conducting prescribed forest burns. 

“Without our work, many Forest Preserves spaces will become unsanitary and potentially dangerous,” said David Yokley, a Laborer. “We know that the public respects our work. Now it’s time for management to show us some respect.”

The pay scale is a major issue. Nonunion employees advance through their pay scale ten times faster than Teamster employees do. 

“Our members would rather be out in the preserves doing the work they take pride in, but the District left them no choice. It pays them a fraction of what every comparable public employer in this region pays for the same work, it advances its non-union staff ten times faster up the pay scale, and it would rather hire outside contractors than fairly pay its own people,” said Ramon Williams, President of Teamsters Local 700.

After members overwhelmingly rejected management’s “final offer” and mounted a credible strike threat, county management made an improved offer. But management did nothing to address the pay scale issue. 

“We’re not going to stop until management makes a meaningful commitment to address the inequities in our wage scale,” said Brannon Curtis-Wittenberg, a Senior Resource Technician.

Members are asking the public to email cook county commissioners to demand that the county offer a fair contract.