The 93rd unpacks its agenda

In the new General Assembly, no storyline is likely to be as
compelling as the battle shaping up between unions
and business interests

by Dave McKinney

Illinois’ political cosmos was aligned to enable Democrats to seize the House, the Senate and the Executive Mansion for the first time since Dan Walker was governor in the 1970s. That’s generally considered to be good news for this state’s organized workers. And the new General Assembly’s freshman class does appear poised to transform the Statehouse into a union-friendly domain.

For the first time in a decade, there will be new legislative leaders among the “Four Tops”: Chicagoan Emil Jones will be Senate president; Frank Watson of Greenville will be Senate GOP leader; and Tom Cross of Oswego will be House GOP leader. Thirty-two new lawmakers will be seated this month and eight others will move from one legislative chamber to the other. The Senate will have its first independent in 88 years, Sen. James Meeks of Chicago.

Keeping everyone’s names and positions straight will be a chore until May. But among the immediately recognizable realities of Springfield’s new political landscape are the initials that will come after most of the newcomers’ last names — “D” for Democrat — and two sets of all-important numbers: 33-26 and 66-52. Those are the margins by which the Democrats control the Senate and the House, respectively, and the votes that might arise in roll call after roll call as organized labor flexes its newfound legislative muscle.

In the 93rd General Assembly, no storyline is likely to be as compelling or life-altering as the battle shaping up between unions and business interests. Last fall, organized labor registered thousands of new Democratic voters and pumped millions of dollars into the campaign funds of top party lawmakers and the state’s new pro-union governor, Rod Blagojevich.

Now, they want Democrats at the Capitol to deliver on campaign promises by hiking the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour, ensuring equal pay for men and women who perform the same jobs, providing paid family leave benefits for the first time in Illinois, restructuring workers’ compensation and rescuing the financially imperiled unemployment insurance trust fund.

And those are just a few of organized labor’s priorities that never would have made it out of the one-time GOP killing ground, the Senate Rules Committee.

“I do recognize in the Senate that labor has been shut out, and I intend to bring them back in,” pledges newly elevated Senate President Jones, the second African American to head his chamber and one of labor’s biggest legislative allies.

More complicated are demands from state workers’ largest union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31. They want the Democrats to reverse some of former Gov. George Ryan’s budget cuts that mothballed state prisons, work camps, mental health institutions and other state facilities.

Blagojevich promised to do that. But it could mean lawmakers would have to raise taxes. Before Ryan left office, his budget forecasters predicted a deficit of as much as $2.5 billion in the fiscal year that begins July 1. Undoing Ryan’s facilities closures could deepen that hole by more than $800 million.

Those are some of the decisions that come with the Democrats’ successful efforts in November at ending the GOP’s 10-year grip on the Senate and padding its lead over Republicans in the House. While union leaders have put together a full menu, they say they don’t intend to gorge themselves. After all, history has shown that gobbling too much at once in the legislature can lead to a bad case of political heartburn.

Just ask Rep. Lee Daniels of Elmhurst, who stepped down as House GOP leader in October amid a federal probe into alleged misuse of legislative staffers on political campaigns. Even before that fall from power, Daniels lost his two-year post as House speaker during the mid-1990s after Republicans controlling the legislature and governor’s office rammed through lawsuit caps, threatened to ban political donations from unions and make Illinois a right-to-work state, and repealed a law designed to enable injured workers to seek additional financial remedies. Unions were energized and helped return the speaker’s gavel to Chicago Democrat Michael Madigan in early 1997.

“I think this is a great opportunity for us,” says Margaret Blackshere, president of the million-member Illinois AFL-CIO and a co-chair of Blagojevich’s transition team. “What we have to be careful of is sensitivity and not being greedy. When Republicans took over in ’94, they did everything they could to hurt us. We were able to use that to take back the House two years later. We won’t give them the ability to do that to us. We’ll be cautious, persistent, and we won’t seek to punish the business community.”

From his newfound perch of power, Jones promises not to gore business and says he favors an “agreed bill process,” by which unions and businesses will sit down together and negotiate legislation before it’s sent to Blagojevich. “I don’t think labor is expecting to come in and grab and get everything they want. I don’t believe they can,” Jones says. “Business shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

Business groups, such as the GOP-leaning Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, hope Jones and Blackshere are good on their word. Effectively helpless to stop labor’s political dictates, IMA President Greg Baise says his group’s best line of defense against the possible legislative onslaught by unions comes down to these words: “Really, prayer.”

Baise says it’s incumbent upon Democrats to balance labor’s wish list against the possible damage that could be done to the state’s business community, which is still reeling from the effects of recession.

“In 2002, manufacturing employment fell below 900,000 employees for the first time since records were kept in World War II. The message from that is that manufacturers aren’t expanding in Illinois. They’re looking for other places to do business. It’ll be important to know that making it more difficult for businesses to compete, with more regulatory or tax burdens, may expedite that loss,” he says.

Baise says he’s not particularly worried about such “symbolic” promises by Democrats in the legislature and governor’s office as raising the minimum wage for 155,000 Illinoisans who are at the bottom of the state’s 5.2-million workforce. But he and other business leaders are concerned about having to pay more in unemployment insurance taxes and seeing more than $1 billion in corporate tax breaks repealed, such as the exemption on sales taxes on machinery.

Former Senate President James “Pate” Philip, a Republican from Wood Dale who grudgingly handed control of the Senate over to Jones, predicts many of labor’s issues will “blow out” of the legislature, perhaps starting with Blagojevich’s pledge to hike the minimum wage to $6.50 an hour. But Philip says moves like that will come with a cost, one he says he has witnessed firsthand.

“I’ll never forget this,” Philip says. “Not this election, but the time before when I ran. They have a [campaign] photographer with you all day. You go to schools. You go to senior citizens. We wanted to do some [pictures with] labor guys, so we stopped at one of these coffee trucks, and there were guys who had been working on construction on the state highway. We pull up there and I buy coffee and rolls, and we start shooting the breeze. Four of the five guys were from Indiana. The company, the contractor, was an Indiana contractor who had the lowest bid and was doing the state work. Why? Because the workmen’s comp and all their insurance, everything, is cheaper in Indiana so they can underbid us in Illinois. As far as I’m concerned that should have been an Illinois corporation, not an Indiana one, doing that work. And the Democrats will do nothing to help that at all. It’ll get worse.”

Despite Democratic promises not to make life more difficult for businesses during a recession, some of the party’s allies from the fall campaign are wary about how the labor-business struggle will play itself out in the General Assembly.

“What’s going to happen? I don’t know,” says David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, a Republican-leaning business group that broke political tradition and endorsed Blagojevich over GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Ryan. “I’m hopeful that all members of Illinois government will recognize there’s never been an employee without an employer, and they recognize it’s not a good idea to kill the golden goose who’s providing the jobs for so many people,” Vite says.

“Certainly, the business community will take some hits. To what extent? That’s the $64 million question.”

But if the General Assembly’s cast of Democratic rookies, along with the holdovers who make up the new House and Senate majorities, cost businesses no more than $64 million during the next two years, Vite, Baise and Philip might be pleased.

Illinois Issues, January 2003

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