#News Obama’s Presidential Center is under fire after staff say leadership froze pay, suspended promotions, cut paid time off, and raised healthcare costs while workloads grew, and people kept quitting – so they are unionizing.
This is in addition to subcontractors – who built the Jackson Park campus – say they are still owed millions of dollars, and one plumbing firm shut down and laid off union tradesmen after The Obama Foundation failed to pay them. 68 employees signed an open letter launching Obama Workers United with AFSCME Council 31 – but it covers more than 250 workers at the center. The letter that went out said: “Amidst increasing workloads we have seen our benefits rolled back and support from leadership to be minimal. When we voice concerns, we are met with vague responses, leading to uncertainty about our future with the foundation.” It also said the foundation has a “high turnover rate” and that people “continue to leave, taking with them their institutional knowledge and expertise.”
Luke Gilday, an Obama Foundation employee in DC and a member of the organizing committee, said “At the end of the day, we’re the ones who are facing those impacts, and we don’t even have a seat at the table.” He also said workers have always been left out of talks on benefits, pay, and insurance, and that forming a union was “living out” what he called the Obama legacy of hope, fairness, and transparency. Critics say this is what you get when Democrats run organizations; underpaid, overworked employees who don’t have a voice and are forced to unionize.
Meanwhile,
🟩Mike Owen, owner of Adamson Plumbing in Elgin, Illinois, who worked on the center says the job left his company about $3.9 million in the red on work that started from a $6.9 million bid and grew with delays, rework, and more than 100 change orders.
🟩He has described an $800,000 redo over a clamp dispute.
🟩The firm filed a $1.72 million mechanic’s lien.
🟩Owen suspended operations on June 25, 2026, six days after the grand opening, and laid off about 25 to 30 union workers.
🟩He has called the project the “final death blow.”
🟩Omar Shareef, president of the African American Contractors Association, said that 8 to 10 Black subcontractors, most of them Black-owned, contacted him about overdue invoices totaling about $100 million.
🟩In July 2026, there were fresh mechanic’s liens of nearly $900,000 on the Home Court basketball building alone: Area Erectors about $620,000, CSI 3000 about $236,000, and Floors Incorporated about $25,000, plus other liens of about $557,000 elsewhere on the campus. Two minority-owned or minority-led firms that worked on the project, Vision Painting & Decorating Services and Glass Management Services, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Glass Management because of project delays and cost overruns among the causes. The center was initially expected to cost $300 million to $350 million. By opening, reported project cost was about $850 million, often described as approaching $1 billion.
The foundation pledged a $470 million endowment as a financial backstop. In June 2026, about $1 million had been deposited. In addition, Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett, a longtime Obama adviser, was paid $740,000 in 2024, and total salaries and benefits rose from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024. The foundation has said executive pay tracks the market for comparable nonprofits. Conservative outlets have also noted a March call for unpaid skilled volunteers while that salary was on the books.
#ChristinaAguayoNews
