The state’s largest government-worker union has no strike fund, but refuses to agree to a contract taxpayers can afford.
Illinois House Democrats failed to muster the 71 votes needed to override Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of HB 580, which would have allowed government-worker unions to remove the governor from labor contract negotiations and replace him with a panel of unelected arbitrators.
Illinois government-worker unions demand pay that outstrips that of Illinois private-sector workers and propose numerous tax hikes to fund their contract demands.
AFSCME members lobbied for $3 billion in additional pay and benefits, showing their lack of concern for Illinois’ overburdened taxpayers.
The Illinois Federation of Teachers is the latest union to work out an agreement with the state.
Illinois state workers receive the highest wages of any state workers in the country, when adjusted for cost of living.
AFSCME promised to play nice at the negotiating table with Gov. Rauner, but it never intended to keep that promise. The union is doing everything it can to muscle the state’s taxpayers into an outside arbitration process that will practically guarantee that AFSCME’s unreasonable demands are met.
The testimony of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees before the Illinois Labor Relations Board and the union’s refusal to compromise on any contract provisions reveal that AFSCME and Gov. Bruce Rauner have reached impasse.
Since 2014, nearly 12,000 Illinois caregivers have stopped paying SEIU costing the union $4.4 million in dues and fees.
AFSCME’s push for HB 580, which would allow a panel of unelected arbitrators to draft a binding contract between the state and the union, is the latest power play in AFSCME’s long and uncompromising battle for pay hikes and benefits that could cost Illinois taxpayers more than $3 billion.
The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board determined there is enough evidence of the illegality of CTU’s April 1 walkout for CPS to pursue a court order to prevent CTU from waging any similar strikes.
Given AFSCME’s and the Rauner administration’s disagreement on core contract issues – such as wage freezes and merit pay – and the likely appeal of any impasse decision reached by the administrative law judge, a final determination on whether AFSCME and the Rauner administration have reached impasse will probably not come until well into the summer – or beyond.
Residents of suburban Chicago’s Community Consolidated School District 15 have seen their incomes remain flat – or drop. Meanwhile, school district officials have committed these same taxpayers to fund a 10-year contract, which the public has never seen.
A new report from the Heritage Foundation shows that in 2014 alone, collective bargaining between Illinois’ government-worker unions and Illinois officials inflated state and local government spending by $4 billion to $9 billion.