Union leaders use City Council hearing to bash Gov. Rauner's right-to-work zones | Chicago

 

Two weeks ago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel flatly declared that, “As long as I’m mayor, Chicago will not be a right-to-work city.”

On Tuesday, union leaders who helped the mayor get re-elected added an exclamation point at the end of that sentence.

They turned a City Council hearing on Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposed right-to-work zones into a bash Rauner fest that was so lopsided, it was over in 35 minutes.

They argued that right-to-work zones that limit prevailing wages and workers’ compensation laws and eliminate project labor agreements would reduce annual employee income by 6 percent, with minorities suffering most, and increase workplace deaths by 53 percent.

They poked holes in the governor’s claim that his “turnaround agenda” would put more people to work, noting that seven of 11 states with the highest unemployment rates are right-to-work states.

“Let’s turn around Gov. Rauner’s turnaround agenda, because after all, right-to-work is nothing more than right to work for less for all working people in the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago,” said Don Finn, business manager of IBEW Local 134.

James Ellis, business manager for Laborers Union Local 1001, added, “Right-to-work doesn’t work. It has never worked. Right-to-work works for who? Corporate America.”

Dan Allen serves as executive director of the Construction Industry Service Corporation. That’s an organization representing 6,000 union contractors and 140,000 members of the building trades in Northeastern Illinois.

“Gov. Rauner’s turnaround agenda is an attack on the entire middle class . . . It is an attempt to unfairly demonize working people as the cause of the state’s financial woes. It is a slick, divisive, deceptive, well-packaged campaign that will have a detrimental effect on our city and state’s economy and greatly weaken already-struggling middle class families,” Allen said.

“It is a law to rob us of both our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and freedom of collective bargaining, by which unions have improved wages and working conditions for everyone. Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights.”

After the hearing, Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the Emanuel floor leader who chairs the Committee on Workforce Development, said he finds it hard to believe that right-to-work will become little more than a bargaining chip for the rookie governor.

“I’m not quite sure what the strategy is because this was part of the campaign. This was part of his inauguration message. If one thinks that what he’s set forth as a premise all along was always meant to just be a bargaining chip, I think that’s a stretch,” O’Connor said.

“I think he truly believes that this is something the state should engage in. His past practices in terms of his business would indicate that this is a true belief — not a bargaining chip,” he said. “But it may become a bargaining chip when they find that they can’t accomplish what it is they really set out to try and do.”

O’Connor didn’t miss a beat when asked about people in job-starved, inner-city neighborhoods who believe Rauner when he says he can create jobs, if only union shackles were removed.

“What do you say to people who already have these jobs who own homes, who pay taxes and tuitions for their children who will then be out of a job or making less money?” O’Connor said.

“Shouldn’t we all be about creating more good-paying jobs as opposed to saying `I can offer you a whole bunch of half-jobs, but I can’t offer you a good job?’ Clearly, that’s what the governor’s offer is.”

In an emailed statement, Catherine Kelly, Rauner’s press secretary, wrote: “The Turnaround Agenda is about empowering local communities and voters to have greater control over the costs inside government and their ability to compete for more jobs. If Chicago doesn’t want to compete and drive value for taxpayers, that shouldn’t prevent other communities from having that right.”

Union leaders use City Council hearing to bash Gov. Rauner's right-to-work zones | Chicago