Is This What Illinois Needs?

When the editors of the Wall Street Journal single out my home state for attention it always gets my attention. In this case they’re criticizing Amendment 1 on which I’ll be voting in November:

Democratic supermajorities in the state House and Senate voted last year to put the measure before voters. Amendment 1 would change the Illinois Constitution to read that “employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work.”

The National Labor Relations Act already governs private workers and limits who can bargain about what. Illinois can’t expand the collective-bargaining rights of private employees beyond what federal law allows.

Democratic state Sen. Ram Villivalam, who is sponsoring the measure, admitted as much last year. “The Amendment refers to ‘employees,’ and not workers or individuals,” he said. “This was done with intention. As the Members of the House should be aware, the National Labor Relations Act governs organizing and collective bargaining in the private sector and, as such, preempts any direct State regulation on the subject.” He added that Amendment 1 thus “could not apply to the private sector.”

For the last several weeks we’ve been inundated with phone calls, many of which open with “do you support union workers”? Which probably polled better than “do you think public employees’ unions don’t have enough power in Illinois?”

I suspect that if you asked Illinoisans what the state’s most important priority was that probably wouldn’t be the pick of a large percentage of us. A greater problem is how we’re going to live up to the commitments we’ve already made to public workers with fewer Illinoisans than there were ten years ago and Illinois’s median household income declining.