The Illinois Policy Institute and Constitutional Amendment 1

To the editors:

The Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) takes to the pages of the Chicago Tribune once again to attack the idea of providing retired public-school teachers and other state employees with a decent pension when we retire. The focus of their complaint is the language in the Illinois constitution that protects our pension from any diminishment or impairment. Those words were put in the constitution in 1970 precisely because the constitution’s authors correctly assumed that without that specificity future legislators and governors would go after public pensions as their piggy bank.

The Illinois Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the pension protection clause against legislative attempts at diminishment.

Now the IPI is expanding their attack on Illinois’ working families by opposing Constitutional Amendment 1. This amendment would guarantee the right of workers in Illinois to engage in collective bargaining through union representation.

Union contracts cost money complains the IPI. But as someone who has bargained on behalf of my teacher union members for years, I can testify that collective bargaining is a process between two parties. It is not a money give away. Collective bargaining is a process of give and take.

Illinois is a union friendly state and for that we can be grateful. Unions and the right to collectively bargain contracts already exists on the books. The purpose of a constitutional amendment is to ensure we retain those rights, knowing that - as with public pensions - some future legislature or governor may not be so friendly towards working people and their union representatives.

Vote yes on Constitutional Amendment 1.

Fred Klonsky

Chicago

Retired teacher and former local teacher union president.

Re: 

It is well known what the Illinois Policy Institute means by “promoting personal freedom and prosperity in Illinois” on their website. Their focus is on free market principles which cater to self-interested desires and profit to the detriment of other peoples’ lives, all the while promising so-called “personal freedom and prosperity.”

Free market principles advocate that the rich and poor should be taxed at the same flat rate, despite creating a vast inequity; that, for example, education, health care, retirement pensions, national parks (and most any function intrinsic to essential governing) become privatized; that publicly-owned companies, services and their assets be auctioned off to private investors; that besides allocating vast amounts of wealth and resources from public to private ownership and the willingness to transfer private debts to the public sector while public ownership is systematically dismantled, the Illinois Policy Institute is also attacking a constitutional amendment that will guarantee the rights of workers to engage in collective bargaining.

Glen Brown