As John Tillman noted yesterday, the last few days have been full of political melodrama as the Illinois General Assembly holds a special session that is unlikely to do more than pass a sliver of a reform — if they can even muster that. But I’d like to call attention to the role that AFSCME is...
The spectacle of government union members booing the best friend they ever had off the stage Wednesday at the Illinois State Fair made for entertaining video. Gov. Quinn may not have liked the boos, but he certainly understands his starring role in this fiction of a drama. Here’s the truth: the pension proposals under consideration in Springfield...
Lawmakers will return to Springfield for special session Friday to consider a woefully inadequate fix to the state’s pension system. On Tuesday, the Chicago Sun-Times published comments about the pension mess from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel: “If we do nothing throughout … our five funds, we have to raise property taxes 150 percent, and I will...
The budget that CPS produced is not without its flaws but CPS Chief Administrator Tim Cawley at least managed to display a certain bedraggled graciousness – too tired to be strident – as he walked the audience of 200, mostly CTU partisans, through the board’s handiwork. By contrast, the union members and their allies in...
It is a standard bit of Alinskyite strategy: couch your demands in moral terms. It makes your opponents seem small and puts them on the defensive. But while it sounds simple – replace “we want” with “we deserve” – it’s not foolproof. As AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall demonstrated earlier this week, sometimes the moralizing wears thin, and the...
The City of Chicago recently released its Annual Financial Analysis 2012: 85 pages detailing the city’s awkward financial position. There are two sections worth highlighting. The first deal with public employees in general, the second has to do with pensions. The city’s workforce is getting small but more expensive: dropping from almost 42,400 full-time-equivalent positions in...
There are close to 400,000 government employees in Illinois, and millions more across the country, who are forced to pay union dues or agency fees in order to keep their jobs. But now a majority of the United States Supreme Court has signaled that they are ready to rethink the entire thing. The millions of...
Read John Kass's column about Illinois's own budget problems, featuring the Institute's John Tillman.
The more one looks at Gov. Scott Walker
As Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker emerges victorious from a union-backed recall campaign, it is time to step back and look at the larger picture.
by Dan Proft I stand corrected. The teachers’ unions do have the ability to educate. New Jersey Education Association Executive Director Vincent Giordano recently provided, however inadvertently, the greatest teachable moment in public education since American Federation of Teachers President Al Shanker said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the...
Gov. Quinn and the unions are still bickering over money for state raises, but the contract had called for two raises at the start of 2012.
by Mark Cavers A new 50 state study shows Illinois ranks second worst in the nation in a taxpayer versus big labor index. Last week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute launchedwww.workplacechoice.org, a comprehensive ranking across “23 individual aspects to determine the degree to which states favor organized labor and which favor taxpayers.” No surprise here, out...
As the battle over collective bargaining in Wisconsin continues to unfold, check out this timely video from our friends at the Heritage Foundation.