More than 230 members of Teamsters Local 700 working for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County went on strike Monday, the unit’s first-ever strike at the preserves.
The workers are in the district’s landscape maintenance, conservation and experiential programming, fleet and facilities departments — clearing roads, mowing lawns, cleaning buildings, maintaining trails and emptying trash cans. The strike comes just shy of Labor Day and at the tail end of summer, when the threat of storm damage and demands for the preserves’ public spaces are high.
About 40 to 60 of those members are seasonal, the rest are full time.
Forest Preserves spokesman Carl Vogel said in a release that the district would remain open and operational as negotiations continue, with other workers taking on strikers’ duties and by “using existing and emergency contracts with vendors.”
Local 700 represents the bulk of unionized county employees. The unit representing Forest Preserves maintenance workers authorized the strike on July 30 after what the union termed the district’s “last best and final offer” the week before. The main disagreement centers on what the union says are inferior pay scales compared with nonunion workers.
Local 700 President Ramon Williams said in a late July release that the pay scale “advances everyone else ten times faster than the people doing the hardest, dirtiest, most essential work out in the preserves.”
The district’s offer includes a total of 8% in raises over two years — 2% retroactive to the start of this year, another 2% for this past July and 4% next July — plus a $2,500 one-time payment for full-time employees. The district recently added an offer of a paid 30-minute lunch, broader overtime pay and a $1,250 one-time payment for seasonal staff, according to the release.
But Anthony McGee, the union’s vice president, told the Tribune that members insist the gap in annual step increases between union and nonunion employees “needs to be closed.”
“Our members at the Forest Preserves have the least lucrative wage scale in all of county government,” McGee said. “A secretary — God knows they do great work — or a receptionist who one would go to to pay for a permit would receive a step increase from year two of nearly 5%, whereas a laborer who has to clean bathrooms, mow the lawns and do coordinated burns would receive half a percent. So our members have dealt with this issue for far too long and aren’t willing to accept anything other than a road map to correcting this issue.”
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Six other FPDCC unions “have accepted the exact or similar terms as the original offer” as part of a contract extension last year and the district has steadily increased compensation over the last six years, the district said. That includes police, sergeants and other trades, Vogel said.
McGee noted the majority of those workers have much higher starting salaries to begin with.
Offering more to maintenance workers would require raising public fees, cutting services or restoration work, or trying to raise property taxes via referendum, the district said in its release. “With the offer of three more raises this year and next, the starting salary for a member of Local 700 will have increased fully by a third since June 2021. A person who joined the Preserves in the position of laborer in June 2021 will have their salary jump from $47,278 to $65,045—a 38% increase—and also received payments totaling an additional $6,500.”
Negotiations have been ongoing since mid-2025, around the same time that the district’s new general superintendent, Adam Bianchi, was nominated for the job.
“This isn’t a matter of greed, these employees are not well-paid individuals,” McGee said, confirming there would be public demonstrations in the days to come but noting some workers likely couldn’t afford to join the picket line. “They are far below market value even within county government. A laborer at the Forest Preserves tops out at under $28 per hour. A laborer in Cook County Highways tops out at $50 per hour. Our members aren’t even asking for that same parity, they’re asking to be treated the same way and be valued the same way as nonunion employees within the Forest Preserve District and right the wrongs taking place for a number of years.”