This month in the Chicago union landscape, Second City actors and stage managers are enjoying the security of steady wage increases in their new contract. State-funded home care and childcare workers are also celebrating a fresh influx of cash from the state and the city, hoping it will offset the number of workers who leave the profession because of low wages. Lastly, workers at the Chicago Botanic Garden and Northwestern University postdoctoral fellows are both trying to establish unions of their own.
Second City contract win
Performers at the Second City, Chicago’s historic improv and comedy club, last month signed off on a new, five-year contract with their employer that raises wages across the board. The agreement averts a looming strike and guarantees raises of almost 20 percent at the club where Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Steve Carrell, John Belushi, and hundreds of others got their start. As part of the deal, Second City committed to raising wages 40.5 percent by 2030.
Second City performers and stage managers are affiliated with the Actors’ Equity Association, a national union representing more than 51,000 actors and stage managers in live theater and entertainment from Broadway to the small theaters across the country.
Many Second City Workers are paid a weekly salary for up to eight performances a week on contracts that range from six months to a year. Sometimes, those contracts are renewed, but actors often feel their creative path and income is dependent on the success of their shows, according to David Kolen, a senior business representative at Actors’ Equity Association in Chicago.
“Second City has always been one of the heartbeats of the Chicago entertainment community,” Kolen says. “Our workers who develop, who write, who create, who improvise, and who perform those shows, and the stage managers who oversee those processes, are an incredibly important part of that Chicago theatrical landscape,”
The contract also guarantees pay increases for workers in Second City’s touring companies.
Raises for home and childcare workers
After years of organizing for better wages and despite a tight state budget, home care workers at the Illinois Department of Aging are celebrating a $0.75 hourly raise. Home care staff, who work with older people and people with disabilities, had been pushing for increases of $2 per hour and say they’ll continue to fight for better pay.
“This raise was about survival—and we fought hard for it,” says home care worker Margaret Heywood-Smith. “We went to Springfield to talk to our elected representatives and to rally for it—over and over and over again.”
Heywood-Smith took a job in home care after retiring from 45 years as a nurse. She works seven days a week for more than 14 hours per day—visiting clients, preparing medication, cleaning, and cooking—but still struggles to survive. “I shouldn’t have to choose between paying my utilities or paying for my medications or my rent,” she says. “I’m always at risk having the lights cut off or being homeless.”
Home care workers leave their jobs at a rate 50 percent higher than the average occupation, according to Service Employees International Union Healthcare Illinois Indiana (SEIU HCII), which represents home care workers in the state. The dearth of workers means more than 20,000 older people in Illinois are without care, the union says.
Separately, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in May that he was committing $7 million for raises for childcare workers at publicly funded day cares, who are also affiliated with SEIU HCII. Some staff will see their pay increase as much as 13 percent.
Alice Dryden, who works at the Mary Crane Center in Rogers Park, says childcare workers serve kids during crucial years of growth and learning and provide year-round care without the breaks and shorter hours afforded to public school teachers. Low wages and long hours have spurred high turnover, which she says forces publicly funded childcare centers to close. “In order to provide the care we want . . . we have to have everyone working there do as much as possible. A lot of people feel very stretched thin by that,” Dryden says.
Organizing at Chicago Botanic Garden
Just north of Chicago, staff at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe are organizing a union with the help of the Chicago and Midwest Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Karina Herrera is a seasonal worker and mother of four who has been at the garden for almost two years. She says she and her coworkers are constantly understaffed and feel that their work isn’t valued. She makes $18.30 per hour and is considered entry-level, despite the painstaking work of designing, cleaning, detailing, weeding, and watering plant beds.
As a seasonal worker, Herrera works seven months a year. She only receives health insurance and benefits while employed; workers like her are terminated at the end of the season and then rehired. She hopes a union will provide greater job security and benefits.
Herrera says she installs 3,500 plants a year, and at the end of every season, she faces an intense walk-through where her bosses painstakingly review her work. Herrera says she receives the highest score—a four—every season, “but that’s only a number for me. That’s nothing that goes on my pay,” she says. “If they see that I’m a four—I’m an excellent worker—then I should get better pay.”
“We’re a living museum, so these plants matter,” says horticulturalist Lorilin Meyer. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can really mess things up. The standards are high. We are held to the standard, but the work that we’re putting into that is not always acknowledged.”
Meyer was promoted from a seasonal position to one year-round. With her promotion came new responsibility for two additional garden areas, in addition to designing beds and cataloguing plants, but she only received a $0.19-per-hour raise. Meyers says there is a strong disconnect between the people in charge and workers on the ground.
Meyer and Herrera say the Chicago Botanic Garden has hired anti-union lawyers and workers are afraid of retaliation for discussing union matters. The company’s management has sent staff video messages expressing anti-union sentiments, like claiming that staff would be barred from working additional jobs if they unionized. Workers filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board in response to one such video from vice president of human resources Aida Z. Giglio.
Northwestern postdocs demand a union
Northwestern University postdoctoral researchers are unionizing with United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. They are among the last sects of workers on the school’s campus to organize.
On July 8, postdoc workers marched on the Evanston campus to deliver a petition asking school officials to voluntarily recognize the union. Northwestern graduate students, maintenance employees, and food service employees are all unionized.
The workers are pushing for higher salaries, better health insurance, job protections, and safeguards for international staff.
After graduating with a doctorate, many people work in postdoctoral roles, often called postdocs, for three to five years to further specialize and develop research projects. Postdocs work under experienced professors, joining their labs and creating projects related to the labs’ focuses. Northwestern has 1,300 postdocs across its Chicago and Evanston campuses working in the sciences, economics, history, and arts, who would be eligible to join the union.
“Postdocs are in a very vulnerable position,” says Ahmad Othman, who has a PhD in tumor biology and is currently a postdoctoral scholar in the urology department and is focusing on bone metastasis of prostate cancer. “We don’t have the protections of being a student, and we also don’t have stable contracts as the faculty do.”
Postdoctoral contracts tend to be renewed on a yearly basis, which leaves researchers without recourse if their assigned lab closes due to funding cuts. Othman says many postdocs work second and third jobs to cover their expenses. In addition to his research job, Othman says he’s also an adjunct faculty member at Saint Xavier University and is looking for a third job as a biology tutor because he still doesn’t make enough to cover his expenses.
“The university will say, ‘We’re in a budget crunch. Funding is halted.’ But the reality is universities across the country have unionized under similar circumstances without issue,” Othman says. “It can be done.”
Postdocs are also hoping to secure better health care coverage and protections for international students. The average postdoc at Northwestern is between 40 and 45 years old. Othman says health care is a concern for many postdocs.
Additionally, 70 percent of postdocs are from outside the U.S., and a majority are living in the country on visas tied to their employment. Frequently, professors leave for jobs at other universities, shutting down their labs and leaving postdocs in a spiny financial situation, unsure of whether to break their leases and travel to a new state or to leave the country.
“The reality is we come to work every day, and we work in good faith to answer questions that nobody knows the answer to. We developed the new generation of drugs, the new generation of screening technologies and treatments for diseases. Material science and engineering departments, they develop stronger, better materials, better batteries, better computers. We bring the future to the people. And I think given the amount of work that we do and effort we put into what we’re doing, we deserve equitable pay,” Othman says.
“We’re looking for enough money to be able to put bread on our table and a roof over our head without having to work a second job.”
Changes impacting workers effective July 1, 2025
Minimum wage
Beginning July 1, workers earning minimum wage in Chicago will notice a bump on their paychecks. Chicago’s Minimum Wage Ordinance increased the base hourly wage from $16.20 to $16.60 for any workplace with four or more employees. The minimum hourly wage for subsidized youth employment programs and subsidized transitional employment programs increased to $16.50.
Under the One Fair Wage Ordinance, tipped workers—such as servers, bartenders, bussers, and runners—will receive annual, 8 percent raises until the subminimum wage reaches parity with Chicago’s standard hourly minimum wage on July 1, 2028. On July 1, the minimum hourly wage for tipped workers rose to $12.62.
Paid and sick leave
Under the Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinances, Chicagoans who work at least 80 hours within any 120-day period are guaranteed up to five days of paid leave and five days of paid sick leave. Employees accrue paid and sick leave at a rate of one hour for every 35 hours worked (up to 40 hours in a 12-month period). Employees can use paid leave for any reason.
Fair workweek
Beginning July 1, the Fair Workweek Ordinance covers workers in seven industries—building services, health care, hotels, manufacturing, restaurants, retail, and warehouse services—who earn $32.60 per hour or less ($62,561.90 per year) and are employed by a company with at least 100 employees anywhere in the globe (or 250 employees and 30 locations if working at a restaurant). The Fair Workweek Ordinance requires employers to provide predictable work schedules and compensation for changes.
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