Amendment 1’s codification into the constitution was a mistake. We’ve repeatedly written about the troubles it’s about to cause: higher property taxes, complicated labor disputes, a tied-up court system, fewer parents rights, and a host of legal challenges in the private sector. See our Amendment 1 page for full details.
But what will make Amendment 1 untenable and eventually strangle Illinois is that it prioritizes and protects just 7 percent of Illinois’ adult population, those with government jobs, over Illinois’ other 93 percent. Amendment 1 provides constitutionally-protected collective bargaining guarantees, with new “economic welfare” and “safety” provisions, to 142,000 state workers and nearly 585,000 local government workers in Illinois. Those new bargaining powers means they’ll be able to push for bigger pay and benefits, more generous work rules and a bigger social justice agenda.
Who’ll pay for all that? The 9.9 million adults who won’t benefit directly from Amendment 1.
The effect of Amendment 1 will be to cement two distinct classes of workers in Illinois. The first class, Illinois’ government sector, will be protected by laws that guarantee workers’ long-term employment contracts, multiyear salary increases, constitutionally backed lifetime pensions, the power to strike, and much more.
The second class, made up of private-sector workers who get no such protections or benefits, will be increasingly forced by lawmakers to pay for the first class.
Some of the costs ordinary Illinoisans endured even before the amendment passed were the nation’s highest property taxes, the country’s biggest pension debts, stripped-down parents’ rights and non-stop corruption. Count on all those things to only get worse.
Finally, there’s the public sector unions’ handout to private unions: the amendment’s permanent ban of Right to Work. Expect Illinois’ economic and business competitiveness to fall even further with that in place. Future legislatures have lost any chance of going the same way as Illinois’ neighbors, sans Missouri.
Amendment 1 simply isn’t going to work. Illinoisans aren’t trapped in a feudal system working for their lords and masters. Unless a wall is built to keep people in, expect the exodus from Illinois to accelerate.