Illinois Is Poised to Pass a Huge Win For Workers

The state’s pro-labor amendment is the first of its kind—and it leads by 16 points.

Zuma

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Illinois workers are on the verge of a historic win: a labor rights amendment to the state constitution that—among other things—would make the state the first to ban so-called “right-to-work laws” throughout its territory. The amendment, on the ballot in Tuesday’s election, has to meet a high bar: either 60 percent approval (not counting blanks) or more than half of all ballots, even ones that skipped that question. With more than 95 percent of votes counted, unions across the state have already started to celebrate: the yes vote holds a 58 percent lead and looks set to win.

Amendment 1, also called the Workers’ Rights Amendment, makes collective bargaining a constitutional right that can’t be legislated or contracted away. It goes further than any state ever has in barring right-to-work laws—and any other legislation that “interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.” That mandate, and the bill’s wide support, are the high point so far of a pro-worker push under Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, kicked off by the 2019 Collective Bargaining Freedom Act (which forbid legislation that interfered with union security agreements, where employers agree to require union membership or dues). Amendment 1 protects gains like those from conservative rollback attempts down the line.

Right-to-work laws allow employees in a union workplace to not join, not pay dues, but enjoy all the benefits of the union contract. That compels the rest of the employees to work, for free, on behalf of people who specifically don’t want to help or pay—with the idea of starving their funding and killing incentives to join. In right-to-work states, wages are lower across the board, union or not, there’s less employer-provided healthcare, and workers are poorer in retirement. They’re also considerably less safe: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in 2016 that the rate of workplace fatalities in states with right-to-work laws is 54 percent higher than in those without.

For the cherry on top, their history is also incredibly racist, as noted in 2012 by Dissent :

Southern conservatives feared that if unions united working-class whites and blacks, they could upend the politics of the South, where Jim Crow laws helped keep white and black workers on opposite sides of the political fence. They argued that unions could bring “black domination in the South”…

With President Truman also beginning to move forward on civil rights, southern segregationists ramped up their anti-union efforts. As the CIO began Operation Dixie, southern Democrats joined northern Republicans in voting for the 1947 Taft-Hartley legislation to cripple union organizing, in part by authorizing states to adopt right-to-work statutes.”

That anti-union legacy still permeates the country, particularly in the South, where almost all states make unions support so-called “free riders.” That makes the Illinois amendment even more significant. While Illinois would be the first state to forbid right-to-work, nine already enshrined right-to-work in their constitutions. On Tuesday, Tennessee voters made their state the tenth one.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate