The Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved a new agreement with unionized staffers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 73.

The nursing home industry is still reeling from COVID-19, which exacerbated pre-existing challenges in long-term care — difficulties hiring and retaining staff and a population more reliant on government-funded care chief among them.

SEIU Local 73 says it represents more than 11,000 CPS support staff, including special education classroom assistants, custodians, crossing guards, bus aides, security officers and parent workers. CPS and the union had been negotiating on a contract for a year.

More than 2,200 Chicago Park District workers, represented by the union SEIU Local 73, have been in contract negotiations for nine months, the union said.

Unions representing nurses in Illinois are pushing for legislation that would impose mandatory staff-to-patient ratios in hospitals, nursing homes and other health care facilities. But lobby groups representing hospitals and nursing homes argue a nationwide nursing shortage makes it impossible to comply with such a mandate.

Workers at a group of nursing homes in the Chicagoland area owned by Infinity Healthcare delivered a 10-day strike notice Thursday. Workers say there is a worsening crisis of short staffing fueled by low wages.

Hospital workers at Loretto Hospital in Austin went to the picket lines Monday after the hospital and its workers union failed to come to an agreement on key bargaining issues such as increased wages and staffing, and adding Juneteenth as a permanent holiday.

Nearly 200 workers at Loretto Hospital in Austin delivered a 10-day strike notice to management Wednesday over calls to address low wages and unsafe staffing conditions.

The Greektown workers’ announcement comes on the heels of Starbucks workers at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie and the location near Main Street and Chicago Avenue in Evanston voting last month in favor of joining Starbucks Workers United, an SEIU affiliate.

A technical delay is holding up payments to providers who care for children of low-income families that are part of the state’s Child Care Assistance Program, designed to help parents go to work or school with the help of subsidized child care.

A union representative who works with Loretto Hospital staff says members have complained about so-called VIP lists of vaccine recipients since the vaccine rollout began in January.

They’ve been on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19. Now they’re on the picket lines. Why University of Illinois and UIC health care workers, including about 800 nurses, are on strike.

Hundreds of nurses at the University of Illinois Hospital took to the picket line Saturday for a weeklong strike amid contract negotiations between their union, the Illinois Nurses Association, and the hospital system.

Everything is set in motion for a Chicago teachers strike, but teachers aren’t the only ones considering a walkout. The city of Chicago could be facing multiple government employee strikes – all at once.

SEIU Healthcare Illinois members reached a tentative agreement on a three-year contract with the Illinois Association of Health Care Facilities late Wednesday night, avoiding a strike in which 5,000 nursing home workers across 53 Chicago-area facilities were expected to participate.

Thousands of nursing home workers at 53 Chicago-area facilities have threatened to go on strike beginning next week, according to an announcement from SEIU Healthcare Illinois.