AFSCME Council 31 is the Illinois state chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a union of public service workers in the public, private and non-profit sectors. AFSCME Council 31 has "100,000 active and retired members", [1] including "approximately 40,000 state employees working in more than 50 departments, authorities, boards, and commissions under the authority of the Governor." [2]
During the Great Depression, a group of workers in Wisconsin created a group "to protect their jobs and the public services they provided". The organization that grew out of the group became AFSCME. In 1936, the American Federation of Labor granted a charter to AFSCME. [3]
The first AFSCME local union in Illinois was formed in 1942. It had 20 members. [3]
By the 1960s, AFSCME had more than 240,000 members nationwide. [3]
In 1973, Illinois Governor Daniel Walker signed an executive order recognizing the collective bargaining rights of public sector workers. Walker stated his intent to keep "patronage out of state government", encourage qualified people to join state government and make the serving of this state's citizens a professional career." [4]
In 1983, Republican Governor Jim Thompson signed the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act, enshrining the collective bargaining rights of public employees into state law. [5] The number of AFSCME members in Illinois soon increased from 40,000 to 60,000. [3]
On its website, AFSCME Council 31 encourages its members to politically organize: "Unions can never hope to match the hundreds of millions of dollars big business pours into every election. But working people have superior numbers, so they can get out in the streets and work for candidates." [6]
The following table documents protests by members of AFSCME Council 31 and its local organizations:
| Location | Protest issue | Participants | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aurora, IL | Proposed cuts to library hours and services | Aurora library employees represented by Local 2283 | 7/12/16 | [7] |
| Springfield, IL | Governor Bruce Rauner's budget | "More than 10,000 Illinoisans" | 5/18/16 | [8] |
| Kewanee, IL | Closure of the Illinois Youth Center at Kewanee | Over 1,000 AFSCME Local 801 members | 3/30/16 | [9] |
During the Illinois state budget crisis in 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner initiated layoffs of around 150 state workers. The issue went before an arbitration panel, which sided with Rauner's decision. As a reaction to the arbitrator's decision, both the state and AFSCME Council 31 filed lawsuits. The arbitrator based his decision on the argument that the governor was within his rights to make the layoffs. The state and the nation's largest union of public employees will head to court over an arbitrator's decision that Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner was within his rights to order the layoffs of more than 150 state workers last year. [10]
The state filed a suit before a Sangamon County, Illinois judge to uphold the arbitrator's ruling. AFSCME Council 31 filed a counter-claim asking for the ruling to be vacated. [10]
According to Crain's Chicago Business, "In response to a grievance by the union, the arbitrator ruled that the union failed to prove that the Rauner administration acted improperly or violated contract language governing layoffs. The arbitrator said the administration had the right to exercise broad powers to deal with the state budget crisis." [10]
In early 2015, Governor Bruce Rauner and AFSCME Council 31 began negotiating a new contract for state employees represented by AFSCME. [11] In January 2016, Rauner broke off talks and walked away from negotiations. [12] AFSCME sought to restart negotiations, but Rauner refused. [13] As of April 2017, the issues between the two parties were not resolved, with litigation pending.
In 2008, AFSCME Council 31 and the state of Illinois agreed on a multi-year contract that covered members' wages, hours, and employment conditions. The contract went from September 5, 2008 to June 30, 2012. One provision of the contract called for a wage increase on January 1, 2009, and then every July 1 and January 1 through the end of the contract. The wage increase amounted to 15.25 percent through the overall life of the contract. [2]
During the Illinois budget crisis, the state could not afford the increase scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2011. AFSCME Council 31 sued in the circuit court of Cook County. AFSCME won the suit at the trial level. The state appealed and lost at the appellate court. The case was then brought before the Illinois Supreme Court. The court held that the arbitration award violated Illinois public policy, and reversed the judgments that AFSCME Council 31 had won at the appellate and trial court levels. [2]
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The interests of the employees are commonly presented by representatives of a trade union to which the employees belong. A collective agreement reached by these negotiations functions as a labour contract between an employer and one or more unions, and typically establishes terms regarding wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs. Such agreements can also include 'productivity bargaining' in which workers agree to changes to working practices in return for higher pay or greater job security.
In the context of labor law in the United States, the term right-to-work laws refers to state laws that prohibit union security agreements between employers and labor unions. Such agreements can be incorporated into union contracts to require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation. Unlike the right to work definition as a human right in international law, U.S. right-to-work laws do not aim to provide a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work but rather guarantee an employee's right to refrain from being a member of a labor union.
A union security agreement is a contractual agreement, usually part of a union collective bargaining agreement, in which an employer and a trade or labor union agree on the extent to which the union may compel employees to join the union, and/or whether the employer will collect dues, fees, and assessments on behalf of the union.
An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment.
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District Council 37 is New York City's largest public sector employee union, representing over 150,000 members.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. It represents 1.3 million public sector employees and retirees, including health care workers, corrections officers, sanitation workers, police officers, firefighters, and childcare providers. Founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1932, AFSCME is part of the AFL–CIO, one of the two main labor federations in the United States. AFSCME has had four presidents since its founding.
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2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill or the Wisconsin Budget Adjustment Act, is a controversial law enacted by the 100th Wisconsin Legislature which significantly limited the rights and compensation of state and local government employees in Wisconsin. It was the signature act of Republican governor Scott Walker, who described it as a tool needed to address a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit. The introduction of this bill provoked immediate outrage from labor unions and their allies, and resulted in months of mass protests at the Wisconsin State Capitol. Democratic members of the Wisconsin Senate then fled the state to deny a quorum for the bill, remaining in Illinois for three weeks. Republicans in the legislature eventually stripped out budgetary items to circumvent budget-related quorum rules and passed the legislation on March 9, 2011. The law was signed by governor Walker on the morning of March 11 and was followed by a ceremonial signing later that day.
Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), was a US labor law case where the United States Supreme Court upheld the maintaining of a union shop in a public workplace. Public school teachers in Detroit had sought to overturn the requirement that they pay fees equivalent to union dues on the grounds that they opposed public sector collective bargaining and objected to the political activities of the union. In a unanimous decision, the Court affirmed that the union shop, legal in the private sector, is also legal in the public sector. They found that non-members may be assessed agency fees to recover the costs of "collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes" while insisting that objectors to union membership or policy may not have their dues used for other ideological or political purposes.
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Harris v. Quinn, 573 U.S. 616 (2014), is a US labor law case of the United States Supreme Court regarding provisions of Illinois state law that allowed a union security agreement. Since the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 prohibited the closed shop, states could still choose whether to allow unions to collect fees from non-union members since the collective agreements with the employer would still benefit non-union members. The Court decided 5–4 that Illinois's Public Labor Relations Act, which permitted the union security agreements, violated the First Amendment. A similar case was decided by the Court in 2018, Janus v AFSCME, overturning the Court's unanimous decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) which the appeals court had upheld in Harris.
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