UTCC Organizer Visits LA Taxi Workers Alliance
I took a visit to Los Angeles over Thanksgiving week to visit my daughter—and also to pay a visit to the folks in the Los Angeles Taxi Workers Alliance.
We here in Chicago in the UTCC had recently had some contact with Professor Jacqueline Leavitt of UCLA, the author of a study of Los Angeles cabdrivers several years ago. She had come in to Chicago and interviewed some of us, and in return, I thought we should pay a visit to our brothers in LA.
A call to UTCC Membership
Chicago cabdrivers! It’s been too long since we spoke to you! The United Taxidrivers Community Council has been extra busy and hard at work building a strong and solid organization to benefit the hard-working Chicago cabdriver community.
UIUC Study: Executive Summary
In 2006 leaders from the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) urged the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to publically respond to the violent murder of taxicab driver Haroon Paryani.
Settlement in Stanley Shen’s Civil Suit
Thomas Gniadek, the batterer in the case of Stanley Shen, entered his voluntary guilty plea in criminal court and was found guilty by Judge Gaughan.
His sentence was 10 days in the House of Corrections (time served, considered served), plus 364 days of probation together with a fine of $500 and $30 per month for probation costs.
Reflections on UTCC’s First Year in the Struggle for Justice
When I heard some drivers were receiving tickets at the O’Hare parking lot while they were praying in the shelter, I knew I had to do something about it, especially I after I received such a ticket. I went home and I wrote a few lines in the form of a petition to protest such action by the Aviation Officers at O’Hare. In the following two weeks, I collected 1,400 signatures and I submitted them to the Commissioner of Aviation during a meeting with city officials at O’Hare.
Documenting the work & lives of Chicago cabdrivers
My name is Tracy Luedke, of Northeastern Illinois University here in Chicago. I am a professor of cultural anthropology.
As a cultural anthropologist, I am interested in the ideas, activities, and relationships that make up people’s experiences of the world. I have done field research in Mozambique (in southern Africa), studying and learning about the networks and organizations of traditional healers and their practices.
Another cabdriver attacked brutally, attacker still at large “An Attack on One is an Attack on All!”
Cabdrivers are demanding stricter safety measures and stringent enforcement mechanisms for attacks against cabdrivers after another driver was brutally attacked in late January.
UIUC Study: Cabdrivers “near the margins of economic failure”
CHICAGO- A ground-breaking study called “Driven Into Poverty” conducted by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s Center for Labor and Employment Relations (UIUC-CLER) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) finds that Chicago cabdrivers are chronically overworked and underpaid close to the point of “economic failure.” Earning an average of only $4.38 an hour, few (6%) can afford to work an 8-hour day, while