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 Rauner
reaches labor deals, but still in fight with AFSCME
By By Mark Fitton | Illinois News Network
SPRINGFIELD – Gov. Bruce Rauner’s
administration on Wednesday announced it has reached new four-year deals
with several trade unions, as well as with Service Employees
International Union Local 1 of Chicago and the International Union of
United Food and Commercial Workers.
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 More than 500 employees are covered under the new agreements, the governor’s
staff said.
The governor’s office and the biggest state employees union — the American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — offered very different
takes on the significance of the new pacts.
The governor’s office said the new agreements mean Rauner, a first-term
Republican from Winnetka, has so far reached agreements with 17 bargaining units
that represent more than 5,000 state employees.
“These developments stand in stark contrast to the ongoing negotiations with
AFSCME Council 31,” the governor’s office said in a news release.
“Despite being offered substantially the same material terms as the Teamsters
and the Trades, AFSCME has to date rejected the governor’s chief proposals” the
administration said.
The administration described AFSCME as being “on the opposite side of these
negotiations from their own colleagues in organized labor.”
AFSCME said the governor’s office was using misleading and confrontational
tactics and noted it and several other large unions still without contracts
represent about 40,000 state employees, or the bulk of the workforce.
The issues in the trades talks and AFSCME negotiations are often quite
different, AFSCME said, citing health insurance as one example.
“Because these (other) unions have independent health plans, their members have
the option not to take state health insurance,” Council 31 said in its own
statement.
Similarly, Council 31 said, trade union members pay “is typically set by the
prevailing wage. Our union negotiates the health plan covering state and
university employees and retirees, and bargains wage schedules for more than 500
job titles.”
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 Besides its health insurance offer, the governor’s office said
AFSCME continues to reject or resist other items accepted by some or
all of the other units, including a four-year wage freeze; a
performance incentive program; a collaborative managed competition
program; moving the overtime trigger to the common workplace
benchmark of 40 hours; and a program to enable Illinois to address
minority underutilization in state government.
AFSCME said the wage freeze coupled with increases in employee
health costs, including doubled premiums, would severely hurt its
members take-home pay.
Further, it argued the administration is “seeking to eliminate our
contract’s safeguards against reckless privatization of public
services and demanding a so-called ‘merit pay’ scheme that opens the
door wide to cronyism by letting politically appointed bosses
determine who gets a raise.”
The contracts for the state’s unionized employees expired at the end
of June.
The administration and the unions without contracts have signed
“tolling agreements,” in which both sides promise to stay at the
bargaining table without threatening strike or lockout.
The agreements do not make a lockout or strike impossible, but the
initiating party would have to declare talks are at an impasse, and
the Illinois Labor Relations Board would examine that claim.
AFSCME and several other unions are also suing in St. Clair County
Circuit Court in an attempt to lock in pay while the state operates
without a budget, as well as to get medical claims paid, stop
layoffs and retain certain raises during the budget standoff.
The Rauner administration has agreed to suspend planned layoffs
while the matters are being litigated.
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