Two States to Vote on the Union Shop: One to Protect it, One to Prohibit it

By Steve Wishnia

This Nov. 8, voters in Illinois will consider amending the state’s constitution to protect the union shop, while Tennessee will consider adding the state’s law banning the union shop to its constitution.

In Illinois, the Workers’ Rights Amendment (Amendment 1 on the ballot) would declare that workers have a “fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively” and prohibit laws interfering with that right — including those that bar contracts “requiring membership in an organization as a condition of employment.”

The goal is to ensure that “no politician can ever take away those rights,” says state AFL-CIO President Tim Drea.

In Tennessee, the “Right to Work Amendment,” also Amendment 1 on the ballot, would do exactly the opposite. It would outlaw denying anyone employment for either joining or refusing to join a labor union — with emphasis on the latter.

“Union bosses, Joe Biden, and Democrats in Tennessee want to repeal our right-to-work law,” Gov. Bill Lee, chair of the Yes on 1 campaign, said in a statement in late October. It would “force Tennesseans to bend the knee to union bosses,” he added.

Drea told Work-Bites that the Illinois constitutional amendment was conceived because Gov. Bruce Rauner, elected in 2014, “wanted to be Scott Walker,” and held the state budget up for 2½ years “because he wanted to break the unions.”

That came amidst a barrage of antiunion legislation in the Midwest and Ohio Valley regions. Wisconsin’s Act 10, the 2011 law that was Walker’s signature achievement as governor, barred unions from negotiating almost anything other than pay increases that didn’t exceed the rate of inflation. From 2012 to 2017, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri enacted laws against the union shop, although Missouri’s was voided by a voter referendum before it went into effect.

The Workers’ Rights Amendment would make Illinois the fourth state to declare collective bargaining a constitutional right, after New York, Missouri, and Hawaii, says Joe Bowen, head of communications for the Yes on Workers’ Rights campaign. It would be the first one to have voters enact such an amendment.

It would “prevent an easier path to gutting workers’ rights,” says Chicago Teachers Union spokesperson Chris Geovanis.

Opponents, such as the Illinois Policy Institute, the far-right think tank that represented Mark Janus in his Supreme Court case that ended the union shop for public-sector workers, are claiming that the amendment would increase property taxes by up to $4 billion, by driving up the cost of public-sector salaries.

“They just made that up,” says Geovanis.

The institute also claims that the amendment could not legally apply to private-sector workers, because it would be pre-empted by the National Labor Relations Act. In reality, says Drea, while the Janus decision would prevent Illinois public-sector workers from having a union shop, the amendment would protect them against limits on bargaining rights such as those in Wisconsin.

Other opponents include Dan Proft, a Chicago talk-radio host and Republican fundraiser, and billionaire megadonor Richard Uihlein, owner of the Wisconsin based Uline office-supply company — whose rules for employees, ProPublica reported in late October, prohibit workers from wearing corduroy or denim in the office or having personal items larger than 5 by 7 inches on their desks.

Organizing

Both amendments would need more than a simple majority to become law. The Tennessee proposal would need enough yes votes to equal more than half of the votes cast for governor. In Illinois, it would need either a 60% majority or more than half of the votes cast for governor.

“In either scenario, we feel very confident,” says Bowen. “No one in Illinois wants to be in a race to the bottom with states that don’t protect collective bargaining.”

The campaign has been running ads on TV and Spanish language radio since August, he says, and the unions involved are doing intensive phone banking and door-to-door canvassing.

Drea says he’s seeing “more participation than we’ve ever had” from locals in any election.

“This is the most important piece of legislation that Illinois locals have ever had the chance to get passed,” Don Finn, business manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 134 in Chicago, said in a message to members. The union says hundreds of members have been phone-banking and canvassing “nearly every day.”

The Chicago Teachers Union is working with the statewide labor coalition, doing get-out-the-vote efforts among its members and their families, and talking about the amendment when it canvasses on educational issues or for candidates in Chicago’s February municipal elections.

“It’s embedded in everything we do,” says Geovanis. The amendment is also an antiracist measure, she adds: Most of Chicago’s public-school students are the children of working-class Black and Latino parents, and “our students’ well-being is tied to their parents’ well-being.”

Tennessee

In Tennessee, the campaign to put the union-shop ban in the state constitution is headed by Gov. Lee, with former Gov. Bill Haslam, who actively opposed the United Auto Workers’ effort to organize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga factory in 2014-15, as treasurer. The state’s two U.S. senators and the leaders of the Republican majority in the state legislature are also involved.

The state has had a law against the union shop since 1947, but amendment supporters say it “has come under attack both nationally and at the state level, including right here in Tennessee, where a bill to repeal right-to-work was recently filed.” If it were enacted as a constitutional amendment, repealing it would take a two-thirds majority of the state legislature in two consecutive sessions and then approval by the state’s voters.

“Amendment 1 doesn't change the status quo; it is simply a signal to the corporate cronies of anti-worker politicians: Do whatever you want. Get away with whatever you can,” Gay Henson, secretary-treasurer of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, wrote in the Chattanooga Times Free Press in October.

It “more accurately should be called the ‘Muzzling of Workers and Right-to-Work for Less Amendment,’” she said.

Tennessee has a relatively small labor movement, with less than 6% of the state’s workers represented by unions in 2021, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report released in February. But the number of union members there increased by 24% from 2020 to 2021, the most of any state in the U.S.