The battle lines are drawn between organized labor and business leaders over a proposed Illinois constitutional amendment facing voters on the Nov. 8 ballot. Depending on who’s doing the talking, the proposed Workers Rights Amendment will protect Illinoisans’ right to bargain collectively for wages, benefits and working conditions or it’s a union power grab that […]
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The battle lines are drawn between organized labor and business leaders over a proposed Illinois constitutional amendment facing voters on the Nov. 8 ballot.
Depending on who’s doing the talking, the proposed Workers Rights Amendment will protect Illinoisans’ right to bargain collectively for wages, benefits and working conditions or it’s a union power grab that will hurt the state’s economy and cement Illinois’ reputation as a bad place to do business.
No matter which side the main players are on, if 60% of Illinois voters approve Amendment 1 – its official name – to Illinois’ Bill of Rights, the state will join a handful of others in guaranteeing the right to collective bargaining in their constitutions. That would bar future legislatures from enacting “right-to-work” laws without first amending the document again.
Under such laws, workers cannot be required to join a labor union to get or keep a job. Today, 28 states have right-to-work laws including five of Illinois’ six neighbors: Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Mississippi and Indiana. That makes Illinois “an outlier when it comes to the desire to create jobs and bring big employers to the State of Illinois,’’ said Todd Maisch, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce.
Also weighing in is the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce, whose Government Affairs Director Rhonda Ludwig told the QCBJ that the organization “continues to be driven by the best interest of its business members.”
“This amendment is simply not necessary for the best business climate to be achieved in Illinois,” she said. “As it currently stands, the Illinois Constitution is conducive to supporting the needs of employees and employers.”
Among those representing the other side is Joe Bowen, communications director for Vote Yes for Workers Rights. He said support for the amendment has come from a growing and diverse group of labor unions, community organizations and everyday workers. They are campaigning throughout the state and raising millions of dollars because “we know that collective bargaining is one of the most powerful ways to raise wages.” And that, in turn, is good for the state’s economy, he added.
Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association (IMA), disagrees. “This politically-motivated amendment pushed by public sector labor unions will expand their power on issues beyond wages and benefits while prohibiting state and local elected leaders from enacting safety and workplace rules,” he said.
“We have already seen how the Illinois Constitution has impaired the ability of elected officials from managing our state’s huge pension debt and this new amendment, if ratified, will result in a significant cost for taxpayers while further damaging Illinois’ economic reputation,” he added.
Despite such adamant opposition to the amendment, however, business groups are the underdogs in this labor vs. business faceoff. That could be changing, said Mr. Maisch, who also argues that the amendment has “the potential for substantial economic disruption for Illinois and should be defeated.”
That’s why the state chamber opposed it through the General Assembly process. He said it will continue to make the case that “it’s a terrible idea and it’s a terrible message to people that make an investment in Illinois.”
Mr. Maisch did acknowledge that “this issue is a little bit orphaned early on in the process” while opponents focused on electing candidates who could flip the Illinois Supreme Court to the GOP and reduce the partisan imbalance in the Democrat-dominated Illinois General Assembly.
“I think we kind of rediscovered this issue and it’s getting more and more attention from the opponents’ side,” he said. For example, a meeting of “like-minded groups” was only recently convened to discuss strategy.
“Let’s face it,” Mr. Maisch said, “organized labor has chipped in millions of dollars from out of state and they have employed substantial resources from their members who don’t have a say in how their dues are spent or not, so we are under the gun in terms of actual spending.”
That won’t last, he predicted. “I think that labor has hit a high water mark because they have been running their ads and putting up their signs without organized opposition largely until now,” Mr. Maisch said. “This is about as good as they‘re going to get. They have to be concerned about two things: that more and more people are going to find out what this amendment really does and the second is that they have an electorate that is frankly very surly right now.” He expects that to translate to “no” votes as opponents make their case.
Western Illinois University Professor Peter Cole, however, predicts a large majority of Illinoisans will back the amendment.
“While only 14% of Illinois workers belong to unions, public support for unions is surging. Multiple recent polls indicate about 70% of Americans support unions,” said Mr. Cole, a researcher who has studied and written about labor organizations. “This sentiment is in no small part due to the ever-increasing divide between the richest and the rest along with the COVID pandemic, which both uplifted many workers as ‘essential’ while also demonstrating that many employers were unsympathetic to the many challenges American workers experience.”
Younger Americans are leading the charge “as a logical response to being whipsawed by multiple crises. In a country so deeply divided, one issue that huge majorities of Americans support is the right of workers to form unions,” he added.
Amendment backers are taking nothing for granted, however. “One of the reasons why we spent time to raise those resources is because we always know that there’s another attack coming,” Mr. Bowen said. “Our opposition waited until early September to file an actual campaign and the first and only donation they’ve received so far is a $1 million check.”
Those opposition dollars are likely to be used to “try and distract and confuse” voters, he said.
To counter such arguments, Mr. Bowen also pointed to studies that show union workers “make about 15% more than their counterparts. They’re also more likely to have health insurance and own their own home which makes them not only more economically secure as a family but also allows them to contribute more to the communities that they love and call home,” he added.
Proponents also point to the Illinois Economic Policy Institute’s study of the Workers Rights Amendment conducted with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In it, researchers concluded the amendment would:
- Promote $43 billion in annual income by ensuring workers will continue to negotiate pay raises.
- Protect health insurance coverage for 281,000 Illinois workers.
- Prevent 135,000 workers from being hit with pay cuts that would cause them to lose their homes.
- Keep 70,000 Illinois workers from falling below the federal poverty line.
- Promote safe workplaces and save 900 lives over a decade because there are 32% fewer on-the-job fatalities in Illinois compared to states that currently do not protect the right to collectively bargain.
