Worker’s Almanac

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  • 📈 Are you worried about higher food prices?

    Share with a friend It’s Wednesday, June 25, 2025.   Iowans are worried about food prices. But they’re especially worried that the policies of the Trump administration (namely, his tariffs on foreign goods) will cause prices to rise further.   That’s not some left-leaning think tank study, by the way; that’s according to the latest…


  • Tenants union in Johnson Co. goes on offense against private equity

    Share with a friend It’s Wednesday, June 18, 2025.   Remember the 2023 story of mobile home residents in Johnson County whose parks were bought by investment company Havenpark Communities, then had their services taken away while their lot rents were jacked up?   They started a couple of tenants’ unions—the Iowa Manufactured Home Residents…


  • Regents try their own diversity ban. Professors fight it

    Share with a friend It’s Friday, June 13, 2025.   If you haven’t already, please take our short survey about Iowa Worker’s Almanac. Thanks! ~Amie   The Iowa Legislature passed a bill this session banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and trainings by “public entities,” including Iowa’s public universities.   And they spelled out exactly…


  • Fighting Against Local ICE Agreements—And Winning

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, June 5, 2025.   Can you take this short survey? We’re trying to see what people like and don’t like about Iowa Worker’s Almanac, and you can help. Thanks! ~Amie   Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is raiding workplaces across the country, showing up in tanks and wearing tactical…


  • Health Care Workers Say They’re Overworked and Patients Suffer

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, May 29, 2025. Workers at River Hills Community Health Centers in south central Iowa were fed up with being overworked and seeing their patients suffer as a result.   So they decided to unionize.   Over a hundred workers across six River Hills clinics announced this week in Ottumwa…


  • Pensions Are Dead? Not For These Iowa Workers

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, May 22, 2025. Meatpacking workers at JBS plants across the country, including two in Iowa, just ratified a first-ever national contract across all plants.   And they got their pensions back for the first time in 40 years.   Brazil-based JBS, one of the world’s largest meatpacking companies, and…


  • How’s the Labor Market Look for Iowa Graduates?

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, May 8, 2025. Amie here. Happy graduation month to Iowa’s newest high school and college grads!   Though they’re graduating into a strong labor market—teens and young 20-somethings have had higher wage growth since 2020, and are more employed than other age groups—Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce, apprenticeships,…


  • Find a May Day Rally in Iowa

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, May 1, 2025. Amie here. Happy International Workers’ Day, celebrated by all the countries around the world except the US and Canada (because we’re mad about its socialist underpinnings).   It’s also the basis for today’s May Day National Day of Action, put on by grassroots groups like the…


  • What Kilmar’s Deportation Means in Iowa

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, Apr. 24, 2025. Amie here. I saw a few “Free Kilmar” signs at the latest protest I covered this weekend, and for good reason: Folks are worried about what it means that the Trump administration is deporting people directly to a foreign torture prison with the flimsiest justification, and…


  • Has DOGE Hacked Your Union?

    Share with a friend It’s Thursday, Apr. 17, 2025. Amie here. Elon Musk told us DOGE (the “department” of government efficiency that isn’t a real department but definitely gets real taxpayer money anyway) was simply looking into all of our internal systems to tackle “waste, fraud, and abuse.”   Turns out that DOGE, which is…