Teamsters rally in ULP strike at cannabis plant

BARRY, ILL. - The temperature July 2 was 90 degrees at noon, and hundreds of striking Teamsters outside Ascend’s sprawling cannabis plant on Revolution Road a mile and a half east of Barry, Illinois’ business district rallied to show that the heat is on and time’s running out.

“We had 28 bargaining sessions, and then we went to Ascend’s headquarters on Times Square in New York, and we found out they’d hired Littler, Mendelson, the notorious union-busting law firm,” said Kyle Bollinger, Vice President of  Teamsters Local 916, based in Springfield. “Negotiations stopped. They refuse to bargain.”

Locally, retaliation has arisen, too, ranging from firing a member of the bargaining team to terminating the safety director for doing his job, Bollinger said.

“No one from the [Barry] company will sit down with us anymore,” he said.

Workers went on an Unfair Labor Practice strike June 25.

Due to a quarter mile of parked cars outside locked gates at the plant where workers’ choice for representation was voluntarily accepted by the company in the spring of 2025, picketing was congested. However, live music and speakers from the union and the plant made the event seem like a preliminary to Independence Day celebrations.

“Morale couldn’t be better,” said JP Fyans, president of Local 916. “It’s phenomenal. We’re [also] getting support from the Illinois AFL-CIO, Central Labor Councils, Teamsters Locals from all over the Midwest, and help from the International.”

Strike-benefit checks being distributed helped the mood, too.

“We’re handing out a quarter million dollars [in strike benefits],” Fyans said. “Some were down to their last gallon of gas.”

The 350 Ascend workers make about $19 an hour, but have to pay a majority of their health-insurance premiums, Fyans continued.

“How can people survive like that?” he added. “It’s unconscionable anywhere. In the richest country in the world, how can that happen?

Ascend handles cultivation, manufacturing and retail outlets, with about 50 stores in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania, plus wholesale to other dispensaries. The corporation’s first-quarter report showed net revenues of $116.9 million.

Jesse Case, the International’s Food Processing Division Director, based in Cedar Rapids, came down along with other IBT Locals and representatives from Teamsters Joint Council 25 for Chicago, Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

“We’re fighting a business model in Illinois – and all over the country – that sets up with low wages and no benefits – on the backs of workers,” Case said.

“After cannabis was legalized, it became like the brewing industry after Prohibition was repealed,” he continued. “Most workers were low wage then, too. Today, the Teamsters represent about 90% of brewery-industry workers, tens of thousands of workers with good pay and decant standards.

“We want to help build middle-class jobs,” Case added.

Labor pursues liberty and happiness in many ways, like fighting 'variable pricing'

On the occasion of marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, organized labor surely must recognize its own version: the landmark National Labor Relations Act, which declared that working people specifically share in the promise of a new nation.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” the Founders asserted, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 5, 1935, the National Labor Relations Act clarified that workers’ lives, liberty and the pursuits of happiness don’t stop on the job, and – banding together – working Americans can organize and negotiate for wages, hours and working conditions.

The world took notice, too, and 13 years later established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That United Nations document in Article 23 formalize the right to form unions.

(More recently, the UN’s International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled 10-4 that “the right to strike of workers and their organizations is protected” under the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention of 1948, also known as International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention 87.)

Embracing pursuits of wages, hours and working conditions can take many forms, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and unions take seriously their involvement in social issues beyond the workplace.

Currently, the United Food and Commercial Workers union is leading an effort to control a technological scheme affecting their workers, but all working people and the consumers we all are: “variable pricing” (also known as “surveillance pricing” or “algorithmic pricing” – or the more harmless-sounding “personalized pricing,” “dynamic pricing”). Everyday consumers see this frequently, in situations where hotels, transportation providers, event promoters, and other businesses hike prices when demand increases.

Regardless of its name, it’s the practice of companies using Artificial Intelligence, personal data, and algorithms to charge different individuals different prices for the exact same product.

In particular, the UFCW warns that the adoption of Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) by retailers like Walmart and Kroger creates a slippery slope where prices can secretly change based on customers’ location, browsing history, or personal demographics, and the union is lobbying for the federal “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act,” introduced on Capitol Hill. This legislation aims to ban surveillance pricing, regulate the use of electronic shelf labels, and enforce transparency on facial recognition technology.

Ademola Oyefeso, UFCW’s international vice president and director of legislative and political action, says ESLs are part of a widespread surveillance and data system that can rapidly change prices. At the most basic level, prices are adjusted through centralized control systems, where corporate employees can update the price of products across thousands of stores almost instantaneously with a few clicks. Unlike paper tags, which workers must manually replace aisle by aisle over the course of hours or overnight shifts, ESLs allow prices to change within seconds from a central dashboard.

Already, the union has successfully pushed for localized legislation. Model laws requiring analog (paper) shelf pricing in stores over 10,000 square feet has been introduced or passed in 12 states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Tennessee.

In Illinois, State Rep Maura Hirschauer (D-Batavia) recognizes the problem of jacking up prices unilaterally, and she’s pushing a bill to ban the practice.

“Companies collect enormous amounts of information about us,” she said, “ – about where we go, what we search for, what we buy, how long we stay on a web site, and even what devices we use. Increasingly this information is being fed into algorithms that can decide how much each of us pays for the exact same product or service.

“This bill does not ban ordinary sales, discounts, loyalty programs, coupons, or legitimate market-based pricing that Illinoisans have come to rely on,” she continued. “Businesses can still respond to supply and demand, transportation costs, promotions, and competition. What this bill does is stop the use of personal surveillance data to manipulate prices for consumers.”

The measure, HB5756, is currently stuck in the House Rules Committee.

But the UFCW isn’t stuck.

Since February, the UFCW – which represents about 1.2 million essential workers across the U.S. and Canada, including grocery store workers – not only has endorsed the “Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act,” S. 3892 in the Senate and H.R. 4966 in the House but has expanded its related nationwide initiative, a framework for regulations called the “Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs” initiative.

“The goal of the campaign is to stop it before it happens,” Oyefeso told Civil Eats, an independent, nonprofit digital news publication. “Let’s not be Pandora and let it out of the box. Let’s keep everything in the box and stop it.”

Most retailers say Electronic Shelf Label (ESL) technology is just n efficiency move, UFCW reports that some workers say it makes what used to be routine labeling much more complicated and also could result in reduced hours or job cuts.

“I’m super worried about what ESLs are going to do to the price tag and the idea of fairness in the marketplace,” Katie Wells, a senior fellow at AI Now Institute who has done research on Instacart’s algorithmic pricing practices,” she said. “Big Tech-like injection into grocery store operations should be cause for alarm.”

Oyefeso agreed, adding that preventing algorithms from driving up prices is tied directly to both affordability and labor protections: goals that are baked into the union’s campaign name.

“The name of the campaign is ‘Affordable Groceries and Good Jobs’,” he said. “Because if the groceries aren’t affordable, it doesn’t matter what job you have.”

5 questions for Blair Gambill: ‘I’ve always been independent’

Mention Peorian Blair Gambill, and hear him called disruptor or conciliator, a wheeler-dealer or civic-minded neighbor, a mover & shaker or a loose cannon.

The 69-year-old businessman is none of those, really. But – like Star-Lord in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” he concedes he’s “a bit of both. I’m not afraid to step on toes. If you’re liked by everybody, you’re maybe not doing very much.”

Born in Cleveland and raised in suburban Chicago, he attended Maine West high school in Des Plaines, played football and graduated in 1975, then went to Kankakee Community College before transferring to SIU-Carbondale. There he took business administration courses and thought of law school, but ended up earning an MBA there.

Returning to Chicago, he did a little commercial acting and modeling (including a spot for Breck shampoo) before entering the insurance business, selling door-to-door to farmers before convincing colleagues there were mor farmer downstate than in Chicagoland. We drover to Champaign and other cities “but when we came to Peoria and I saw the Pere Marquette, I was sold. It’s a city.”

Here, he became involved with the opera, the Peoria County Republican Party, and the Central Illinois Landmarks Foundation, plus issues ranging from organizing against building a Walmart where Peoria  Stadium is and, lately, the Detweiller marina.

For decades selling group health and life insurance (“I’ve always been independent”), he and his wife Molly have a blended family with five kids from 3 to 30 years old – and 26 cars, including a Rolls Royce, Mercedes,, Ferrari, Lincoln and Corvette. (“I have a sickness there,’ he says, laughing, “ – and with boats”).

 

Cantaloupe or watermelon?

It depends on the time of day. Cantaloupe in the morning; watermelon in the evening.

 

What’s your favorite movie?
“American Graffiti.” Parts remind me of driving around in my 1967 GTO, including Hillary Rodham’s neighborhood years long before she married Bill Clinton.

 

Bookstores or libraries?

Libraries. I went there a lot in college. They have everything; bookstores don’t. I enjoy history and old pictures.

 

Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse?

Bugs. He got into mischief, but he was never in any real trouble.

 

What’s something people might be surprised to know about you?

I ski. I’ve skied at Corbet’s at Jackson Hole, Big Sky in Montana, Vail and Beaver Creek and Aspen in Colorado. I’m a damned good skier.

Religious freedom struggle intensifies

From Peoria, Ill., to Peoria Ariz., Washington, D.C., to Washington, Ill., the fight to freely worship is accelerating.

Stark differences continue between government authorities advocating for Christian nationalism on the one hand and on the other following the law, the U.S. Constitution, and officials’ oaths of office.

People have the right to practice whatever faith they choose – or no religion.

The issue was covered last month in my Community Word commentary about a lawsuit filed against the Trump White House’s Religious Liberty Commission. A coalition of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others sued the Trump administration, challenging the commission’s secrecy and makeup, but mostly that panel’s betraying its purpose – defending religious liberty for all since it’s slanted toward evangelical Christians. Plus, it violates a 1972 law mandating such commissions to reflect competing ideas and different viewpoints, the suit says.

Now, a second suit has been filed about government proselytizing (this time focusing on USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins) by a labor union and USDA employees – including a Peorian.

The National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), seven USDA workers, and other plaintiffs in federal court accuse Rollins of repeatedly violating the Constitution’s First Amendment, which forbids the “establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Defying religious freedom by forcefully endorsing one version of one faith may be common government-wide, NFFE President Randy Erwin says, but Rollins’ “bully pulpit” actions stand out.

“We’re seeing this blurring of the separation of church and state in many different places,” he said. “But for our members, USDA was an outlier. It was so explicit and so obviously illegal. In 25 years, I don’t ever remember this becoming an issue.”

The plaintiffs include 35-year-old physical science technician Ethan Roberts, who said, “We work for the federal government, not a church.

“I just want to go to work and make my country better,” said Roberts, who works at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (the “Ag Lab”). I shouldn’t have to suffer through sermons and other religious messages forced upon me by the head of a federal agency.

“When the Secretary sends an email, I have to read it,” he added. “And when those emails are telling me what to believe, they make me feel unwelcome in an agency I’ve dedicated 10 years to.”

Rollins has advocated her interpretation of Christianity to all USDA employees. For example, last December, she e-mailed a video to them preaching, “The spirit of generosity flows from the very first Christmas when God gave us the greatest gift possible, the gift of his Son and our Savior Jesus Christ, who came to free us from our sins and open the door to eternal life.” She followed that in April with what the lawsuit calls her “Easter Sermon,” a lengthy message stating, “So like the very first disciples to encounter our risen Lord in the Upper Room almost 2,000 years ago, this Easter let us too be alive with hope, full of Paschal joy, and confident in the mission each of us has been called for.”

One imagines the response to Buddhist bureaucrats emailing their worldview or an elected official endorsing Scientology or atheism.

All this is happening in the wake of other Trump events in Washington, such as the government-sponsored Christian nationalist rally May 17 and this summer’s Great American State Fair, cancelled after its announced acts withdrew when they discovered it was a Trump propaganda stunt. Trump reacted by suggesting a rally with him as headliner, commenting, “I am thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, … DONALD J TRUMP, to … give a major speech.”

That’s entertainment!

On May 17, speakers were mostly evangelical hardliners who’ve mistakenly claimed the Founders established the country as a Christian nation. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who’s supported laws and policies based on conservative interpretations of select Bible passages, Also appearing was Jonathan Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University, founded by Jerry Falwell, who started the Moral Majority, and Pentagon boss Pete Hegseth, who referred to a painting of George Washington praying at Valley Forge and said, “Let us pray for our nation on bended knee, and let us ask our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as Washington did on that momentous day: 'So help us God’.”

NFFE and its supporters say all that is coercion for its 19,000 USDA workers, some of whom are not Christians.

“People have a right to their religious views, but this crossed into someone’s official capacity,” Erwin said of Rollins’ sending Christian advocacy messages. “When the Secretary of Agriculture does that, it’s a violation of religious freedom.”

In Idaho, the Rev. Benjamin Cremer, a pastor at a United Methodist Church, warned, “Beware of any Christian movement that demands the government be an instrument of God's wrath but never a source of God's mercy, generosity, or compassion. Beware of any political movement that demands Christianity be an instrument of religious justification for its authoritarianism, bigotry, and greed, and never speak truth to its power." 

Artificial Intelligence: promises and problems -- Controlling AI before it’s too late

There’s consensus about Artificial Intelligence and the need for it to be regulated – agreement exists from conservative Steve Bannon and liberal Bernie Sanders to a leading AI developer and the Vatican, plus almost all Americans. So one would think rules would happen. But Big Tech and the billionaires it created and the politicians they fund generally oppose regulations.

Pope Leo sees the threat, and in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), he urges “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence” and warns about the imbalance of power behind it.

In Illinois and dozens of states, lawmakers are trying to address AI.

“The Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act requires big AI companies to implement thorough transparency and harm reduction frameworks, strengthening safety regulations, requirements, and civil protections,” Illinois state Rep. Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-92^nd) told the Community Word.

Gordon-Booth was a co-sponsor of the measure, which would implement an AI framework for companies such as Google and OpenAI to address risk assessment, governance, cybersecurity, and independent evaluations. It passed the state Senate May 21, 52-5, with support from area Sens. Li Arellano (R-37^th) and David Koehler (D-46^th). The state House of Representatives on May 27 approved it unanimously, backed by area House members Gordon-Booth and fellow Democrat Sharon Chung (91^st) plus Republicans Norine Hammond (94^th – also a co-sponsor), Dennis Tipsword (105^th) and Travis Weaver (93^rd). Ryan Spain (R-73^rd) did not vote. Gov. Pritzker said he’d sign the bill, which would take effect Jan. 1

However, President Trump, the U.S. House and MAGA-cozy elected officials seem to resist meaningful controls on the new technology.

Why? Maybe money and power.

IBM defines AI: “Artificial intelligence is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity and autonomy.”

It includes “traditional” AI (performing defined functions such as traffic routing via Google Maps, etc., based on set rules); “generative” AI (creating new content—text, images, code—derived from existing material, responding to user prompts), and developing “superintelligence” AI (which could have self-awareness, the capacity to self-improve and outperform humans on cognitive tasks).

For Pope Leo’s 42,000-word encyclical, he was helped by theologians, scholars, consultations with Amazon and Meta, and even AI developer Chris Olah, the 33-year-old cofounder of AI giant Anthropic (which recently proposed that top AI companies pause development of advanced AI systems, warning, “It would be good for the world to have the option to slow development if advanced systems increase the risks of humans losing control over AI.”)

Leo warns about AI’s potential to worsen inequality, erode workers’ dignity and automate war.

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know … what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean,” Leo writes. “Nor do they have a moral conscience … they do not judge good and evil, … or bear responsibility for consequences.

“Technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he continues. Nevertheless, “artificial intelligence now demands to be ‘disarmed,’ freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion or death,” Leo says, adding, “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion.” 

Control should not be confined to the few when so many could be affected, he says.

“AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data,” he writes. “This raises serious concerns, since small but highly influential groups can shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage.

“We cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own,” Leo continues. “A culture of power is taking hold, in which the availability of resources and the ability to dominate tend to dictate the agenda. The common good of humanity is relegated to the background.

“Entrusting an algorithm … with the power to select who is worthy or not is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities,” he writes. “Faced with this concentration of power in the digital world, the criteria for judgment and discernment in this new situation are the noble principles of … the inalienable dignity of the human person, the common good, … solidarity and social justice.” 

Margaret O’Mara, a University of Washington historian of technology told the Washington Post, “We’re in this weird uncharted territory in which politics, business and now religion are so bound up in one another. That’s not something for which we have historic precedent.”

The public wants AI controls. Gallup Polls shows that 97% of Americans believe AI safety and security should be governed by regulations, and civic groups ranging from Americans for Responsible Innovation, the ACLU and the AFL-CIO are weighing in. Labor federation President Liz Shuler said, “Pope Leo’s first encyclical is a testament to the urgency of this issue. Workers are being surveilled, fired, hurt and have even died in workplaces that recklessly use AI without guardrails and worker input. If we don’t harness it properly, AI is the single biggest threat to working people of our lifetime.”

Political figures demanding controls include Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Sanders (I-Vt.).

Sanders says he will introduce the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act to give the public an ownership stake in the largest AI companies in our country through a one-time 50% tax — paid not on profits of OpenAI, xAI and other companies, but paid with stock.

“It would give the public a direct role in determining the future of this technology,” he said, and “would guarantee that the trillions of dollars potentially generated by AI are used to improve the lives of all of us.

“Given the fact it is the people … whose work is the foundation of AI, they should have some say in the future of AI,” he told CQ-Roll Call.

(Trump has engineered such deals, with government owning percentages of Intel, U.S. Steel and other companies.)

“Four AI companies are spending $670 billion this year building data centers,” Sanders added. “That’s 10 times greater, in GDP, than what we spent on the moon landing. Who will own and control that future? Who will benefit from it, and who will be hurt by it?”

Elsewhere, Bannon and fellow conservative Glenn Beck are two of more than 137,000 people who’ve signed an open letter from the Future of Life Institute calling for a “prohibition on the development of superintelligence, not lifted before there is broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably, and strong public buy-in.” Signers include Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, five Nobel laureates, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, rapper will.i.am, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, business magnate Richard Branson, Prince Harry and Meghan (the Duke and Duchess of Windsor), and Mike Mullen (ex-Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

In Peoria, Gordon-Booth added, “AI can be a tremendous tool, but like all emerging technologies, we need to develop regulations and guardrails to protect people in our community and across the state from exploitative practices.”

Even with roadblocks from Trump’s MAGA base and the billionaires who contribute to their campaigns, the advocacy by Anthropic’s Olah and the pontiff could change that.

“The Catholic Church is more enduring than MAGA,” O’Mara said.