Illinois community’s firefighters' attempt to end union representation succeeds

[April 09, 2022]  By Kevin Bessler | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – A group of part-time Illinois firefighters have won their battle to remove a union from their firehouse.

Village of Carpentersville firefighters filed a petition last September seeking a vote on whether to remove Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 from the workplace.

After the Illinois Labor Relations Board (ILRB) executive director blocked the vote based on accusations union officials made of village officials, lawyers filed an appeal that they said revealed union officials had actually staged the scenario in which the alleged misbehavior arose.

Rather than respond to that appeal in March, SEIU union officials filed paperwork relinquishing power over the firefighters.

“Lots of work and lots of courage by these individual firefighters in Carpentersville to exercise their rights,” said president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Mark Mix, who represented the group free of charge. “No surprise that union officials were making it very difficult but the end result was a good one.”

Mix said SEIU bosses’ departure from the bargaining table are a sign union officials were trying to coerce village officials into assisting the union in quashing the employee-led decertification effort.

A similar situation is playing out in Galesburg. Some paramedics and EMTs at the Galesburg Hospitals Ambulance Service are trying to assert their right to vote the Teamsters Local 627 out of power.

“A lot of workers across the country are starting to exercise these decertification rights, and according to the National Labor Relations Board, last year the unions only won 20% of these elections,” Mix said.
 

Public-sector unions in Illinois have been losing members in recent years. According to Illinois Policy, over 22,000 Illinois teachers have stopped paying dues or fees to unions since 2017. That was the last full year before government workers’ right to not be forced to pay a union they don’t support was restored by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Janus vs AFSCME case.

“Janus says no government employee can be forced to pay dues, but here we are still litigating cases where the unions are doing it,” Mix said.

Other workers who have voted to decertify Teamsters local unions in the past year include Rush University maintenance workers in Chicago, Frito-Lay salesmen in Texas, and Allied Central Coast truckers in California.

Kevin Bessler reports on statewide issues in Illinois for the Center Square. He has over 30 years of experience in radio news reporting throughout the Midwest.