Amie Rivers

Iowa workers on strike since May have rejected the latest offer from Case-New Holland International to return to work, saying the company wasn’t even offering what replacement workers are currently making. The strike of more than 1,000 workers involves United Auto Workers (UAW) members at Case-New Holland International (CNHi) plants, about 400 of which are…

As Iowa lawmakers kick off the 2023 session today, advocates for Iowa’s working people worry majority Republicans will continue to pass more legislation that will hurt working families. “I just hope there aren’t any more economic attacks,” said Felicia Hilton, political director of the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters. “It’s really impacting families.”…

A facility specifically for those with dementia will close Friday, while an assisted living facility associated with it is set to close next month, leaving 26 residents and their families with one less option and 48 workers out of a job. The board of Country Winds Manor, which owns the two facilities in the Cresco…

A large Marshalltown employer will lay off more than a hundred people—in the very city where the company began. Lennox Industries will lay off 114 workers on Jan. 16, according to Iowa’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act website. The company is Marshalltown’s third-largest employer, with 915 total employees. Many are unionized with the United…

More than 400 manufacturing workers who have been striking since May 2 will get the chance to vote on a possible contract for the first time this weekend. United Auto Workers (UAW) released a statement Monday saying they had finally received an offer from Case New Holland International (CNHi) that negotiators considered acceptable enough to…

Ninoska Campos is a force to be reckoned with. She speaks little English, but is a native Spanish speaker—a language spoken by many immigrant meatpacking and farm workers in many southeastern Iowa manufacturing towns. Over the past year and a half, she has rallied those workers, bringing them to local meetings and encouraging them to…

If you took a class at the University of Iowa lately, it’s likely that class was taught not by a full-time professor, but by a graduate student teaching assistant. That’s common across many large research universities in the US. But those graduate students are making very little money for their outsized efforts, says Hannah Zadeh,…

Iowa remains one of the states least friendly to labor organizing and worker power. But the cracks are starting to show. Iowa workers filed 14 representation cases with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in the 2022 fiscal year, an increase of 180% compared to the previous fiscal year, according to the Economic Policy Institute…

Priscilla Cunningham has been living at the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter in Waterloo for months, trying to get out. During the day, she calls rental companies around Waterloo, asking them about places to rent, taking down names, phone numbers, and the amount of rent they’re asking. Over and over, she finds out suitable places won’t…

As a massive rail strike draws closer, rail unions lambasted a statement President Joe Biden put out Monday asking Congress to impose the agreement, even as the majority of the workforce has rejected it. “I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators—without any modifications…