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Iowa Starting Line

The newsletter for the Iowa worker.

It's Wednesday, Mar. 27, 2024.

Today at noon, unionized graduate students at the University of Iowa are interrupting the university's "One Day for Iowa" fundraising push at the Pentacrest.

The reason? Ending the fees they call "paying to work." (petition at that link)

"For too long, [teaching assistants] and [resident assistants] have footed the bill for basic services that we are entitled to as workers," the petition from the UE Local 896 COGS union reads. "These fees amount to thousands of dollars throughout a graduate school education, keeping workers in poverty and debt. This is unacceptable."

Graduate students protest after delivering a petition to university leadership on March 5, 2024.

Photo courtesy UE Local 896 COGS

After graduate student workers presented their petition to university leadership, they received a response last week, saying "financial and budgetary constraints" prevented the university from dropping or lowering fees charged to students.

COGS notes that UI graduate students make up 60% of those who use the university's food pantry, while the university sits on an endowment of over $3 billion.

Fees were cut in half in the last COGS contract. But the university then raised fees another $100.

"To charge grad workers exorbitant fees despite this endowment, and to request 'donations' from grad workers while doing so, is disgraceful," COGS said in a press release announcing today's action.

And there's breaking news from Waterloo: More than 300 workers at John Deere will be laid off, it was announced Tuesday.

A total of 317 workers will be out of a job on April 29, a Deere spokesperson told the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. That's around 5.7% of the total workforce in Waterloo, per the company.

Cedar Valley legislators put out statements on the news Tuesday:

“We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters losing their jobs and livelihoods due to this decision by John Deere,” Iowa Sen. Bill Dotzler, D-Waterloo, said.
“These layoffs will have far-reaching consequences for Iowa families and the entire Cedar Valley. The state must step up and support these workers, their families, and our communities,” Iowa Sen. Eric Giddens, D-Cedar Falls, said.

Deere made over $10 billion in net income last year.

Community Editor, Iowa Starting Line

This week's Iowa worker news:

Activists promise a Day Without An Immigrant if Gov. Kim Reynolds signs SF 2340, a bill community organization Escucha Mi Voz Iowa calls out as anti-immigrant. The group promises a march and vigil on May 1, a one-day strike on July 1, and signaled it would "go to court" to prevent the law from being enacted.
Subway moving toward slicing its own meat is to blame for 260 workers losing their jobs on the turkey slicing line at West Liberty Foods next month.
Things are so bad at the Grundy Care Center that a judge awarded unemployment benefits to the interim nursing director who quit over appalling scheduling. The home's Florida owner has been fined more than a million dollars over the years for resident and staffing abuse at two dozen nursing homes across the country.
One reason for chronic staffing issues at nursing homes? Wages have risen just 62 cents since 2019, with a median hourly wage of $14.42, according to a new report that asks legislators to increase the Medicaid reimbursement rates to fix the issue.
The invisible homeless problem: In Johnson County, "over half" of Hispanic immigrant workers are "technically homeless," according to a new report.
The good news: New affordable housing is being funded and built in Iowa. The bad news: It's nowhere near enough.
Iowa's newest union: Seven out of nine employees at Plant Site Logistics in Dubuque successfully voted to unionize with the UAW.

Before you punch out 🥊

More than half of Iowa's rural hospitals no longer deliver babies.

In fact, that number is a startling 61%.

The reason (stop us if you've heard this before): Reimbursement rates (from both Medicaid and private insurance) are far too low. Fifty-eight percent of the rural hospitals still delivering babies are losing money.

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