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The amendment, certified in December, puts into the state
Constitution prohibitions on regulating collective bargaining
rights for wages, work conditions and other issues.
Attorney Philip K. Howard recently released the book "Not
Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee
Unions." In an interview on WMAY, he said he plans to take the
amendment to court to argue its constitutionality.
"I am talking to lawyers in Illinois, and I will be flying out
in a week or so to begin planning such a lawsuit," Howard said.
Howard says this is an issue that can only be solved with the
help of the court system.
"You can't fix it politically, so there needs to be a lawsuit
brought in federal court arguing that these controls in Illinois
are unconstitutional," Howard said.
The measure prohibits future laws from regulating collective
bargaining in Illinois, which Howard said sets up a partnership
between the public unions and the government that is unfair to
taxpayers and voters.
"The government is over a barrel here, and even worse, the
negotiating is collusive," Howard said. "The unions helped J.B.
Pritzker get elected, and then they come in and sit on his side
of the bargaining table."
Howard said the state could have financial problems due to
removing specific powers from public department heads.
"The people running these departments don't have the authority
to manage it. Think about how much waste there is," Howard said.
"Are they wasting half the money, two-thirds of the money? You
just simply can not get anything done without having a hub on
the wheel that's deciding how to best deploy the resources."
The Illinois Policy Institute and the Liberty Justice Center
teamed up in the spring of 2022 and filed a lawsuit that sought
to remove the amendment from the November ballot. The lawsuit
was originally shut down by a Sangamon County judge; later, that
decision was reaffirmed by the state's 4th District appellate
court.
Labor unions have supported the amendment through the election
process. The AFL-CIO, a group representing union workers from
all over the state, released a statement after the measure was
passed.
“History was made with the passage of the Workers’ Rights
Amendment," said AFL-CIO President Tim Drea. "This would not
have been possible without the strong solidarity of a statewide
labor movement that came together in unison to protect the
rights of our hardworking families."
Andrew Hensel reports on issues in Chicago and
Statewide. He has been with The Center Square News since April
of 2021 and was previously with The Joliet Slammers.
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