(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Federation of Labor A-F-L-C-I-O president Charlie Wishman says the pandemic has changed the way workers think about their jobs. Charlie Wishman says it was no surprise members of the United Auto Workers turned down John Deere’s contract offer. “You’re seeing what’s dubbed as ‘Striketober’ but that has started since before that,” Wishman says. Wishman says John Deere workers are drawing a line in the sand for themselves and future workers.

“These folks are out here striking on behalf of members they haven’t even met yet, who haven’t even been hired yet,” Wishman says, “because one of the issues if they want to remove the retirement system for anybody hired after November 1.” Paul Iversen is a labor educator at the University of Iowa Labor Center. He says the two-tiered system the union’s striking over doesn’t provide the same level of pay and benefits to every worker.

“There is a huge difference between a two-tiered system and a seniority system,” Iversen says. “In a seniority system, you get more pay as you go along, but at some point, everybody doing the same job is making the same amount. Equal pay for equal work.” Iversen says in a tight labor market, striking workers appear to have more leverage. “Ultimately, employers will have to change the way that they approach employees,” Iversen says, “or they’re not going to have anybody to do the work.” The Iowa Federation of Labor’s president says it’s not just union workers who are challenging the status quo.

“In the past two weeks in Sioux City, in non-union facilities, you’ve had walk-outs over pay and shift differential,” Wishman says. “…I believe we’re at the front end of a worker uprising in this country.” Wishman and Iverson made their comments this week on the “Iowa Press” program on Iowa P-B-S. Late Friday, John Deere announced it will continue providing health care benefits to union workers and employees will not lose bonuses they earned before the strike started October 14th.

The bonuses are paid for exceeding performance goals. The union would have had to start providing health care to striking workers, but the benefits would not have been the same as the plans Deere employees have now. A spokeswoman for the company said Deere and Company is taking these steps to demonstrate its commitment to doing what’s right by John Deere employees. Contract negotiations resumed last Monday.

(Sidney, Iowa) – Officials with the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office, Sunday evening, 41-year-old John Robert Washburn, of Hastings, IA, was arrested Sunday, following a report of a possible theft from a building at AgriVision Equipment, in Hamburg. At around 9-a.m. Sunday, employees were alerted by a witness that someone had backed a vehicle into one of the sheds and was still in the building. Employee’s arrived and questioned Washburn.

He told the employees he was working on his vehicle in the building, so he could stay out of the rain. The employees obtained information from Washburn including his name and vehicle license plate number. After Washburn left the building, the employees noticed that some items had been moved and that a pump was taken off of an industrial air compressor and was missing. A Fremont County Deputy along with a Mills County Deputy went to a rural Hastings location and located the stolen pump outside a building.

John Washburn (Fremont County S/O photo)

After an investigation at the scene Washburn was arrested for Burglary Second Degree and Theft Second and transported to the Fremont County Jail where he is being held on a ten-thousand-dollar bond.

(Afton, Iowa) – A collision in Afton Saturday evening resulted in two people being transported to the hospital, in Creston. According to the Union County Sheriff’s Department, a 2007 Chevy Impala driven by 18-year-old Raenna Price, of Afton, was traveling north on U-S Highway 169 at around 5:50-p.m.  A 1998 Volvo semi tractor-trailer driven by 40-year-old Chad Pontier, of Osceola, was stopped at the stop sign on Railroad Street. Officials say Pontier looked, but did not see the Chevy. When he proceeded to turn north onto Highway 169, he struck the Impala on the passenger side.

Pontier was not injured in the collision, but Price complained of pain afterward and was transported to the hospital by private vehicle, to be checked-out. A passenger in her car, 17-year-old Terence Sheley, of Lenox, was injured and transported by EMS Air to the Greater Regional Medical Center, in Creston. The car sustained $5,000 damage. Damage to the semi was estimated at $2,500. While no citations were issued at the scene, authorities noted Pontier failed to yield the right of way to Price, when he pulled away from the stop sign.

Both drivers and the passenger were wearing their seat belts.

(Atkins, Iowa) – A head-on crash west of Cedar Rapids resulted in injuries to six people (including three juveniles), Saturday night. The Iowa State Patrol reports the crash happened on Highway 30 just east of 32nd Avenue, west of Cedar Rapids, at around 8:30-p.m.  Officials say a 2017 Toyota Corolla was traveling east in the westbound inside lane of Highway 30, when it struck a 2010 Dodge Avenger traveling west in the westbound inside lane. A non-contact, third vehicle..a 2014 Ford Fiesta…was struck by and ran over debris from the initial collision.

The names and ages of the injured were not immediately released.  One of the injured was transported by EMS to a hospital in Cedar Rapids. Another was transported by helicopter to the University of Iowa Health Center, in Iowa City. The report did not indicate if the remaining individuals were transported to a hospital or treated at the scene and released.

The accident remains under investigation. Benton County Sheriff’s Deputies assisted the Patrol at the crash scene.

A traffic stop on a speeding vehicle Saturday morning in Montgomery County, resulted in the arrest of a man from Madison County. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office reports 28-year-old Matthew R. Garcia, of Macksburg, was arrested a little before 8-a.m. Saturday, after it was determined he was Driving While Revoked for a prior offense. Garcia was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $1,000 bond.

[Updated 10/24] (Des Moines, Iowa/KCCI) -The Des Moines Police Department announced an arrest Saturday, in the city’s ninth homicide of 2021. According to police, 27-year-old Darren Antwon Diggs, of Des Moines, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder and first-degree robbery in a deadly Friday morning shooting.

Early Friday morning, police were called to the 1600 block of Hull Avenue to investigate multiple reports of gunfire heard in the area. Arriving officers found 21-year-old Kalvyn Roy Kline dead after suffering from gunshot wounds inside a vehicle at an apartment complex.

Diggs is being held in the Polk County Jail, awaiting an initial court appearance. Police said Diggs and Kline knew each other. The motive appears to be a drug-related robbery, according to police. According to police, this is the ninth Des Moines homicide of 2021. There were 21 homicides in Des Moines in 2020.

The broadcast News from Ric Hanson.

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(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Congresswoman Ashley Hinson says the Biden Administration needs to focus on the supply chain issues that have ships backed up waiting to unload and businesses not getting what they need. Hinson, a Republican from Marion, says she saw issues first hand during a tour of Oak Street Manufacturing in Monticello Monday. “They told me they had to raise their prices more this year than in the last 25 years combined — that’s because the cost of the materials they use has skyrocketed,” Hinson says. “And then on top of that, the supply chain bottleneck has seriously impacted their operations. You talk about a cost differential here — they told me they typically spend about four thousand dollars on a shipping container — last month they spent 29-thousand-500 dollars.”

The company makes furniture primarily for restaurants. Hinson says the extra federal unemployment payments are one of the issues. “We paid people to stay home for far too long and that obviously has had ripple effects. And so when you see proposals coming out of Democrats in Congress like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to continue those unemployment benefits — I can tell you that’s the fastest way to continue to have these supply problems long-term,” according to Hinson. She says forcing workers to get vaccinated is also an issue. “Vaccine mandates are torpedoing the workforce as well. All of these things I think are problematic in terms of policy coming out of the administration. I think getting those barriers out of the way is step one,” she says.

Hinson says the administration is spending too much time trying to pass the multi-trillion-dollar reconciliation package. “The Biden Administration is not focused on fixing that supply chain, they seem more focused on spending money right now. So, we need to work together on this and work all the way up and down the chain, state, federal, and local to make sure we are fixing this problem,” Hinson says.

Hinson made her comments during her weekly conference call with reporters.

(Radio Iowa) – Friday morning’s cold snap into the low 30s was a reminder for Iowans that wintery weather may not be too far away. The Iowa Department of Transportation is already gearing up for the season ahead, even though the start of winter isn’t officially until December 21st. D-O-T Winter Operations Administrator Craig Bargfrede (BARG-freed) says preparations are well underway to fight snow. “We’ve been doing a lot of maintenance on the trucks, on the equipment, making sure everything is functioning properly, making sure trucks are outfitted properly, getting blades replaced, calibrating trucks,” Bargfrede says. “We’ve been doing a number of training events.”

The agency typically brings on more than 600 temporary workers during the winter time-frame, with many of them becoming snowplow drivers. So far, only about three-dozen of those 630-plus jobs have been filled. “But that’s really kind of a function of the weather and the kind of year as well,” Bargfrede says. “A lot of the folks that apply and that we hire as seasonal employees, a lot of them are farmers, a lot of them work in construction and other areas that are still real busy this time of year.” The D-O-T has 101 maintenance garages statewide that employ more than one-thousand full-time equipment operators, mechanics and supervisors. Those garages house the agency’s 902 trucks, 42 motor graders and 32 tow plows. As far as the agency is concerned, we’re -already- in winter and it started October 15th.

DOT Snowplow cam

“That’s the date we’ve had in our policy for many years as the first date that we have to be prepared to do some kind of treatment, somewhere in the state, on the roadways,” Bargfrede says. “You may remember last year, around the 18th or 19th, we had that snow squall that came through that brought a real dose of reality to everyone.” D-O-T officials have already been meeting with officials from the National Weather Service and other agencies to get a solid feel for what icy perils may lie ahead. “What we’ve heard is that it sounds like we’re going to have a winter than could be above -normal temperatures but also above normal-precipitation,” Bargfrede says, chuckling. “Talk to us in April and see if that prediction comes to fruition.”

Salt is a valuable snow-fighting tool, both in chunks and mixed with water to form a brine solution. While salt has been in short supply in previous years, Bargfrede says Iowa has an excellent stockpile of some 240-thousand tons of salt.

Interested in a snow-fighting job with the DOT? Visit https://iowadot.gov/careers and click on the “Seasonal/Temp” tab.