Harsh statements and public and private
threats by Senate President Emil Jones in the past two years have
prompted Senate Republican Leader Frank Watson to reach out to some
labor leaders.
Jones has been sharply critical of the
construction-trades unions, accusing them of freezing out
African-Americans and Latinos from apprenticeship programs and job
sites. Black and Hispanic legislators have tried for years to
convince the unions to open up their rosters, but Jones upped the
pressure after he became Senate president in 2003, and his efforts
have not been received well by the other side.
During a recent television interview on
WMAQ-TV (Channel 5) in Chicago, Jones uttered the phrase
“right to work,” which startled host Dick Kay.
So-called right-to-work laws allow workers to opt out of union
membership, and Kay pressed Jones about what he meant. “Black
and Hispanic people deserve a right to work,” Jones
explained, but his use of the loaded phrase infuriated some labor
leaders. He knew what he was doing when he said that, they claimed.
For good measure, Jones also threatened to
oppose other sacrosanct union rights. “I’m not going to
be supportive of prevailing-wage, project-labor agreements if my
people [and] Hispanics are not included,” Jones said on
Kay’s At Issue program. Prevailing-wage laws require that workers
on public construction projects be paid essentially the same as
local union members. Project-labor agreements require that
construction projects use union laborers and pay them union wages.
These are not things that a Democratic legislative leader usually opposes, especially considering how much
money unions give to Democratic campaigns.
Jones’ comments prompted Watson, the
Republican leader, to write a letter to labor bosses in Illinois a
week ago. “I opposed ‘right to work’ [in 1982]
and my position hasn’t changed,” Watson wrote. “I
can’t understand why any elected official would threaten to
undermine the wages of working people in the construction trades in
order to make a point with union leadership,” he continued.
Jones also made a not-so-veiled threat on
Kay’s TV show to strip the unions of their control over their
own apprenticeship programs and give that control to the state.
Watson addressed this in his letter as well: “It’s
wrong for the Legislature to micromanage the successful
apprenticeship programs run by trade unions.”
Members of construction-trade unions are
generally more socially conservative than the rest of the labor
movement, and many of them vote Republican. An alliance, however
temporary, with Watson would not only put some counterpressure on
Jones but may be popular with the rank-and-file. That may be why
Jones sought to somewhat soft-pedal his remarks in a subsequent
interview last week.
When he spoke about “right to
work,” Jones says, he was talking about minorities who
“deserve a right to work in these trade unions.”
“The issue has been around for
years,” he adds. “People in the community are raising
holy hell about this.”
The state, he says, “should be more
involved” with the apprenticeship programs, but he sidesteps
questions about whether the state should take complete control.
Jones won’t repeat his threat to oppose
prevailing-wage laws, but he makes it clear that he isn’t
happy. “Prevailing wage for whom?” he asks.
“Black people aren’t working.”
“I supported it in the past,”
Jones says of prevailing wage, claiming that Watson has
“always opposed it.” And he notes that the black and
Latino legislators who are bringing up the problems with the unions
all have 90 percent pro-labor voting records, unlike the
Republicans who are “twisting” his words and trying to
obtain a political advantage.
“It’s gotten to the boiling
point,” Jones admits.
On that, he’s entirely correct.
This article appears in Apr 14-20, 2005.
