(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Business and labor leaders agreed the newly approved Workers’ Rights Amendment to the Illinois Constitution will mean big changes in the workplace.
They just can't agree what those changes will be.
Marc Poulos, Vice President of the Vote Yes for Workers’ Rights Committee, said public and many private sector employees will now have protections to bargain for wages, working conditions and more.
“The whole point of that is to say, ‘We no longer, as workers in the state, have to worry about the next election, where the next politician is elected and could strip them of those rights,’” Poulos said.
Illinois Chamber of Commerce President Todd Maisch, though, said he believes the language of the amendment will also allow labor to attack some long-standing protections for taxpayers. He suggested organized labor will try to overturn tax caps.
Poulos, who’s an employment attorney, said he sees no grounds for such a suit.
Still, Maisch insisted the bargaining table is now tilted in organized labor’s direction.
“Yes, you can say that we’re going to go ahead and negotiate to strike a better deal, but when you walk into that room to negotiate over the table, it’s going to be an issue of who has more leverage … that is the reality of it,” Maisch said.
The Workers’ Rights Amendment is the focus of WBBM’s “At Issue” program, which you can hear Sunday at 9:30 p.m.
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