Power

Illinois Governor’s ‘Reckless’ Anti-Union Plans Meet Resistance

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) defeated incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn (D) after campaigning on a platform of ultra-conservative policies, including curtailing labor unions and workers' rights. Rauner, since being sworn into office, has delivered on those campaign promises.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) defeated incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn (D) after campaigning on a platform of ultra-conservative policies, including curtailing labor unions and workers' rights. Rauner, since being sworn into office, has delivered on those campaign promises. Nic Neufeld / Shutterstock.com

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) defeated incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn (D) after campaigning on a platform of ultra-conservative policies, including curtailing labor unions and workers’ rights. Rauner, since being sworn into office, has delivered on those campaign promises.

Rauner has not been able to follow the playbook created by Midwestern Republican governors like Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Mitch Daniels in Indiana. While Republicans in those states hold comfortable majorities in their state legislatures, Democrats dominate the Illinois General Assembly, holding a 71-48 advantage in the state house and a 40-20 advantage in the state senate.

With Democrats likely to block any conservative legislative agenda, Rauner has used his executive authority to unilaterally alter the state’s public employee laws and bludgeon union rights in the state.

Right-to-work policies, pushed by right-wing think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), have become commonplace even in states with strong union traditions.

Rauner’s executive order states that “fair share fees” violate the First Amendment because they “compel some state employees to subsidize the political speech of public sector labor unions of which they have chosen to not be members.”

Unions argue that automatic fees eliminate the issue of “free riders,” when non-union employees benefit from contracts negotiated by the unions without contributing financially to the union.

The “fair share fees” are designed to allow non-union workers to abstain from supporting political candidates and legislation they personally oppose, while preventing them from free access to the benefits of union membership.

Rauner’s executive order states that “fair share fees” violate the First Amendment because they “compel some state employees to subsidize the political speech of public sector labor unions of which they have chosen to not be members.”

Illinois Institute of Technology law professor Martin Malin told Al Jazeera that Rauner does not have the authority claimed in his executive order, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977’s Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that “fair share” fees do not violate workers’ constitutional rights.

“The governor seems to think he has the authority to overrule binding Supreme Court precedent,” Malin said.

The same issue is at play in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court. The legal groundwork for that case has been laid out over the past several years by a series of court cases designed to attempt to overturn Abood.

Rauner isn’t just targeting state workers in public sector unions. He has proposed so-called “empowerment zones,” which would allow voters in different areas of the state to decide whether or not to institute right-to-work policies. The so-called empowerment zones are a concept that is currently being pushed by Republicans in Kentucky.

Right-to-work laws have negative effects on wages, income, access to health care and other measures of quality of life. Median household income is 11.8 percent less in states with right-to-work policies, compared to states in which “right to work” isn’t written into law. Almost 26 percent of jobs in right-to-work states are in low-wage occupations, compared with 18 percent of jobs in other states, according to data from the Corporation for Enterprise Development.

Six out of the ten states with the nation’s highest unemployment rates have right-to-work laws, according to national research.

Richard Longworth, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, told the Chicago Sun-Times that right-to-work laws are designed for business interests and that there is no evidence that they have any positive impact on workers. Rather, right-to-work laws are designed to weaken unions for political reasons.

“There really is a campaign against unions among Republican governors in the Midwest. It makes sense that Rauner is simply joining that campaign. If he’s not interested in undermining the status of unions, I don’t think he’d be talking the way he is,” Longworth said.

An Illinois state official has responded to the governor’s executive action by refusing to implement the order, according to a Reuters report. Illinois’ comptroller Leslie Munger, a Republican appointed by Rauner, said she will not implement the executive order, according to the state’s attorney general’s office.

“We agree with the comptroller’s assessment and actions in that fair share fees are applicable under current law,” Natalie Bauer, spokeswoman for attorney general Lisa Madigan (D), told Reuters. “Fair share fees are constitutional.”

Rauner has made it clear that he wants to institute a host of other conservative policies. He has proposed $6 billion in budget cuts to state programs, including higher education, public transportation, mental health programs, and Medicaid. His first executive order after taking office was to freeze hiring and discretionary spending and to direct state agencies to sell surplus property.

During his state of the state address, Rauner said he wants to change public employee contracts to reward performance rather than longevity, and change laws mandating how much the state has to pay workers on public projects.

“Government unions should not be allowed to influence the public officials they are lobbying, and sitting across the bargaining table from, through campaign donations and expenditures,” Rauner said during his address.

Rauner will appoint the trustees who oversee the state’s pension investment decisions.

He accepted more than $140,000 in campaign contributions from executives of firms in which the Illinois pension systems has investments, according to reporting by the International Business Times. Rauner told state lawmakers he would reform and replace that very same pension plan with a 401k-style system that he claims would save the state $2.2 billion in the first year.

It’s a plan critics like Democratic house speaker Michael Madigan called “reckless.”

Rauner, before entering politics, made a fortune as chairman of private equity firm GTCR. That fortune was used to partially self-fund his gubernatorial campaign, as he contributed more than $37 million to his run for governor. That represents 41.6 percent of the money his campaign received in donations.

Quinn’s top individual campaign donor was Chicago hedge fund manager and billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who contributed more than $13 million to the Rauner campaign. Griffin, who believes wealthy elites have “insufficient influence” on democratic politics, has contributed millions to right-wing super PACs.

Griffin also expressed admiration for the billionaire Koch brothers and their political views, which include attacking labor unions in the same way Rauner is doing in Illinois.