Three years after Chicago’s labor peace ordinance, what has changed?

In 2023, the Chicago City Council approved the Human Service Workforce Advancement ordinance—also called the labor peace ordinance—after more than three years of debate. The agreement was designed to make it easier for workers at certain city-funded human service organizations to organize in unions without employer retaliation and without disrupting publicly funded services.

During its more than three years of consideration, this ordinance managed to divide unions, city officials, and nonprofit leaders. Supporters argued that the agreement would provide meaningful protection to nonprofit workers while critics argued that it would increase costs and operational burdens.

But now the question is no longer about what each side predicted. The bigger question is what evidence exists that the ordinance changed what happens inside publicly funded nonprofits in Chicago.

What did the ordinance actually do?

The ordinance was created to address a core tension: Labor disputes should not interrupt services that the city has contracted nonprofit organizations to provide. Under the new rules, which have been incorporated into the Chicago Municipal Code, contractors providing health and social services through the Department of Public Health (CDPH) and Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) will need to enter into labor peace agreements with unions that represent their workers.

The ordinance outlines that these rules apply to any nonprofit with 20 or more employees. The only organizations that are exempt from this ordinance are hospitals. Under 2-112-205 essential service contracts, the rules require covered contractors to notify the city within 72 hours of learning that employees are seeking union representation or a union has approached its workers. Following that, the contractor will have 90 days to enter into a labor peace agreement with the union. In addition, the agreement must also provide a way to resolve any disputes between the union and employer.

What’s interesting about this ordinance is that a contractor can be considered compliant with this ordinance if the contractor has a Collective Bargaining Agreement with a labor organization or if no labor organization represents or seeks to represent the employees.

This distinction matters because there are publicly available records of unionized city-funded nonprofits and collective bargaining agreements. But there is very little visibility into the labor peace agreements. It also raises the question of how and how often that framework has actually been used.

While there is very little visibility into how many nonprofits have entered into labor peace agreements with unions, there is clear evidence that the ordinance has moved from legislation and is now an active part of the city’s contracting process. The current municipal code requires covered contractors to include labor peace agreement provisions.

A recent procurement document shows that the requirement is being actively applied. For example, a Request for Proposals issued by the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) for proposals for a Community-Centered Wellness Microgrant Program required applicants to comply with the ordinance. So, while the requirement is visible in current procurement documents, public records do not identify how many organizations have actually entered into labor peace agreements.

Three years later, has the ordinance changed labor relations?

Public evidence shows that union organizing and collective bargaining are taking place at the nonprofits receiving city funding. The caveat is the timing. For example, Chicago Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides early childhood education and senior services to support seniors and vulnerable adults, has current contracts with both the CDPH and DFSS. The organization also has a unionized home-care workforce represented by SEIU Healthcare. The contract was finalized in March 2026 and resulted in wage increases and expanded retirement benefits.

Howard Brown Health offers another example. In May 2024, the nonprofit ratified its first collective bargaining agreement with the Illinois Nurses Association that will cover around 400 administrative, clinical, and retail employees. But this progress came with a contentious relationship.

Neither case shows that the ordinance prompted these agreements. In fact, these efforts took place before the new framework took effect. But what it does show is that the labor issues the ordinance was designed to address are playing out inside publicly funded nonprofits. But some of the concerns that nonprofit leaders had about the effects on costs have also been proven valid.

In 2024, the National Labor Relations Board announced a $1.3 million settlement with Howard Brown as a result of unfair labor practice allegations like refusal to provide information to the union and bad-faith bargaining. This case highlights the concerns raised against the labor peace agreement at the time. Nonprofit leaders warned that additional labor obligations could put pressure on organizations already dealing with constrained public funding.

Three years later, there is evidence of unionizing workforces negotiating and securing improvements, but what the record doesn’t establish is whether this is specifically from the Human Service Workforce Advancement ordinance. The harder question is whether the ordinance changed the conditions under which conflicts like the above occur, and whether the city has collected enough information to answer it.

What Chicago’s experience could mean for the nonprofit sector

The Human Service Workforce Advancement ordinance tests whether a city can strengthen workers’ ability to organize while also making sure that organizations delivering publicly funded services have the resources to meet those workers’ obligations. On paper, this looks good, but reality tells a different story. The lack of readily available public data on its implementation highlights the difficulty in measuring policy effects in a sector where nonprofits often operate under government contracts and where union relationships predate new regulations, as in the cases of Chicago Commons and Howard Brown.

Three years later, the Human Service Workforce Advancement ordinance is clearly a part of the city’s contracting framework, but its broader impact remains difficult to properly measure. Chicago’s implementation of the ordinance offers a lesson to other cities considering their own labor peace agreement, and suggests that passing the labor standard is only the first step. It teaches that governments need clear mechanisms for implementation.

The most important takeaway is that cities will need enough public data to determine whether the new labor protections are meaningfully changing nonprofit workplaces, and at what cost.