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. The collective agreements reached by these negotiations usually set out wage scales, working hours, training, health and safety, overtime, grievance mechanisms, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.
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. Under these laws, employees in unionized workplaces are banned from negotiating contracts which require employees who are not union members to contribute to the costs of union representation. Unlike what the name implies, right-to-work laws do not aim to provide general guarantee of employment to people seeking work.
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.
Kenneth Dunkin, commonly known as Ken Dunkin, is an American politician. He is currently an appointed member of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board of Commissioners. Dunkin previously served as a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives, representing the 5th District from December 2002 until January 2017.
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.
The Graduate Employees' Organization at UIUC (GEO) is a labor union created to defend and extend the bargaining and employment rights of Graduate Employees at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).
The State, County, and Municipal Workers of America (SCMWA) was an American labor union representing state, county, and local government employees. It was created by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1937 along with United Federal Workers of America. SCMWA's leaders Abram Flaxer and Henry Wenning had been leaders of the Association of Workers of Public Relief Agencies (AWPRA) in New York City prior to the formation of SCMWA.
The 2011 Wisconsin protests were a series of demonstrations in the state of Wisconsin in the United States beginning in February involving as many as 100,000 protesters opposing the 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also called the "Wisconsin Budget Repair bill." The protests centered on the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, with satellite protests also occurring at other municipalities throughout the state. Demonstrations took place at various college campuses, including the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. After the collective bargaining bill was upheld by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on June 14, the number of protesters declined to about 1,000 within a couple days.
The 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, also known as the Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill, is legislation proposed by Republican Governor Scott Walker and passed by the Wisconsin Legislature to address a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit. The legislation primarily affects the following areas: collective bargaining, compensation, retirement, health insurance, and sick leave of public sector employees. In response, unions and other groups organized protests inside and around the state capitol. The bill was passed into law and became effective as of June 29, 2011. Public employees exempt from the changes to the collective bargaining law include firefighters and most law enforcement workers. The bill was ruled to be constitutional by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July 2014, after three years of litigation.
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.
The 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, concurrently with the election to Illinois's Class II U.S. Senate seat, as well as other elections to the United States Senate in other states and elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
Bruce Vincent Rauner is an American businessman, philanthropist, and politician who served as the 42nd governor of Illinois from 2015 to 2019. Prior to his election, he was the chairman of R8 Capital Partners and chairman of the private equity firm GTCR, based in Chicago. The Republican nominee in the 2014 Illinois gubernatorial election, he defeated Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn by 50.3% to 46.4%. In 2018, after narrowly surviving a challenge in the Republican primary from State Representative Jeanne Ives, Rauner lost the general election to Democratic challenger J. B. Pritzker in a landslide. As of 2022, Rauner and his lieutenant Evelyn Sanguinetti are the last Republicans to have held statewide office in Illinois.
Jeanne M. Ives is an American politician. A Republican, she is a former member of the Illinois House of Representatives for the 42nd district. She has run for governor of Illinois, and for U.S. Representative for Illinois's 6th congressional district.
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 in 2018 called Janus v AFSCME.
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), is a United States labor law case that came before the Supreme Court of the United States. At issue in the case was whether Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) should be overruled, with public-sector "agency shop" arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment, and whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring employees to consent affirmatively to subsidizing such speech. Specifically, the case concerned public sector collective bargaining by the California Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association.
Juliana Stratton is an American lawyer and politician, serving as the 48th lieutenant governor of Illinois since 2019. She previously served as a Democratic member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 2017 to 2019. She is the first African-American woman to become Illinois' lieutenant governor, and the state's fourth woman lieutenant governor overall, after Corinne Wood, Sheila Simon, and Evelyn Sanguinetti.
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, No. 16-1466, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), abbreviated Janus v. AFSCME, was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on US labor law, concerning the power of labor unions to collect fees from non-union members. Under the Taft–Hartley Act of 1947, which applies to the private sector, union security agreements can be allowed by state law. The Supreme Court ruled that such union fees in the public sector violate the First Amendment right to free speech, overturning the 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that had previously allowed such fees.
The Illinois pension crisis refers to the rising gap between the pension benefits owed to eligible state employees and the amount of funding set aside by the state to make these future pension payments. As of 2020, the size of Illinois' pension obligation is $237B, but the state's pension funds have only $96B available for payouts to retirees.
The Illinois Policy Institute(IPI) is a libertarian nonprofit think tank with offices in Chicago and Springfield. Founded in 2002, it is active in the areas of education policy, pension policy, and state budget issues. IPI advocates for smaller government and lower taxes. It has an affiliated lobbying arm and legal arm. IPI is a member of the State Policy Network, a consortium of free-market think tanks in the U.S.