Leaders of area small towns are bracing for a
flurry of union activity because of a new law that makes it easier
for government workers to organize.
Signed last month by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and
effective on June 1, the new law allows government units or
departments with five or more workers to seek union representation.
Previously the threshold was 35, preventing public employees in
many of the state’s smallest towns and villages from
organizing.
Many Springfield and Sangamon County
employees are already unionized, but that’s not true of
workers in the dozens of small, incorporated municipalities outside
the capital city.
Government leaders in these communities worry
about the cost of paying unionized workers more and retaining legal
counsel to help with the complexities of collective bargaining.
“Without having to express it in
curlicues and stars, it’s a good, cheap freebie the governor
put in for his former union supporters,” says Dave Armstrong,
mayor of Rochester. “It will make it more difficult for
village officers in small municipalities who don’t have the
expertise to deal with a union. Most likely they will deal with a
professional union person.”
Petersburg Mayor Diane Kube says she has no
problem with unions from a managerial standpoint but worries about
the financial impact. “I don’t know if it would
cost the city on the bargaining issue alone,” she says.
“Bargaining alone will be very costly to the city. We’d
like to stay in the black.”
“This is not a good financial time for
any city,” Kube says.
The Illinois Municipal League, which fought
the bill, has estimated that about 25,000 workers statewide are
newly eligible for unionization thanks to the law, and the
organization is already hearing from concerned members.
“Local governments call to reiterate to
us that it’s a horrible bill, especially now that they are
facing financial difficulties,” says Joe McCoy, the
league’s legislative associate. McCoy says the change in the
law was a plum for unions that keep losing ground among
private-sector workers.
Nationally, 12.5 percent of workers were
represented by unions in 2003, down from 23 percent in 1979. Most
of the drop, however, has occurred in the private sector —
from 22 percent in 1979 to 8.2 percent in 2003. Among
government workers, it’s a different story: 36.4 percent belong
to unions, according to the latest U.S. Department of Labor statistics.
“One of the only places unions
still have good presence is the public sector,” McCoy says.
And that presence will only get stronger if
Sean Stott has his way. Stott, lobbyist for the Laborers’
International Union of North America, says that his union, which
already represents about 8,000 public-sector workers in Illinois,
is gearing up for an organizing push.
“We’re going to utilize the law
to help workers in smaller communities get bargaining
rights,” he says. “We feel that all workers should have
the opportunity to have representation.
“This doesn’t require them to
join; it simply gives them the same rights as employees in larger
units,” Stott says. “The bottom line is that it is
giving them the same level playing field.”
The village of Buffalo is too small to be
affected even by the lowered threshold, but that doesn’t keep trustee and acting Mayor
William Vetter Jr. from voicing concern. Small towns, Vetter says, move
employees around to perform different tasks: “The guy who cleans
the village hall also drives the village truck.” A union contract
could end up locking workers into specific job descriptions.
Before retiring, Vetter was the state
technology officer for the state’s Central Management
Service, responsible for supervising 500 to 600 people. Most were
represented by unions, but that was fine: “They didn’t
have to move around,” Vetter says.
“We are getting closer and closer to
saying that anyone who works [for a city] has to be union,”
he says.
Stott disagrees. If a government unit is
organized, he says, employees won’t be required to join and
pay dues. Laborers’ contracts, however, include a
“security clause,” which allows the union to assess
“fair share” dues on nonmembers to offset the cost of
representation in bargaining and presenting grievances.
Sherman Mayor Frank Meredith supports the
idea of collective bargaining — “Everyone has the right
to organize,” he says — but he worries about the
financial impact. “There are only so many dollars a community
has,” he says. “I spend many nights trying to figure
out how to juggle monies to meet our obligations as it is. The
process of developing bargaining will come out of the same pot as
that for salaries.”
When people work for smaller communities,
they usually understand that there is a limit on what they can
expect to be paid, Meredith says: “Public service is not a
career in which you get rich. I don’t do this job for the
money.”
Meredith isn’t even sure that Sherman,
with seven employees, is subject to the new law. Two of the
employees are the mayor and the police chief — and, as managers,
they are likely ineligible.
Although it was one of the most visible in
lobbying for the lowered threshold, Laborers’ International
is only one of several unions that’s likely to take advantage
of the change in the law.
Unions such as the Service Employees
International and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have
already made significant inroads among public-sector employees.
Tony Barr, president of Teamster Local 916,
says that his union has already “talked to several groups
about organizing.” Until the law changed, the potential
bargaining units were just too small. “This puts a whole new
light on it,” he says.
The Teamsters filed a petition in September
to organize the Riverton Police Department, but the petition was
dropped because the department only had a half-dozen people, says
John Meyer, village attorney. Meyer says Riverton’s mayor,
Joe Rusciolelli, has had a recent inquiry from a union. Meyer says
he doesn’t know which union; Rusciolelli referred
union-related questions to Meyer.
Government officials who are concerned about
workers’ getting organized may want to check with Del McCord,
village administrator of Chatham, where most employees have been
unionized for some time.
McCord says that collective bargaining gave
village officials the ability to talk about financial realities:
“Everything was laid out on the table.”
“People thought their salaries and
benefits would go way up,” he says, “but when they got
a good look at city finances, they knew why they
wouldn’t.”
This article appears in Feb 24 – Mar 2, 2005.
