* Scott Reeder compares the advancement of gay marriage to “right to work”…
About 15 years ago, when he was running for the Democratic nomination for governor, Paul Vallas told me he supported gay marriage. Shortly after telling me that, an aide called me and said Vallas was backing off the statement.
The idea was too radical back then.
Later, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, and the idea became acceptable for the public to discuss.
It is now legal in 37 states, including Illinois.
And, last year, Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Vallas, along with his running mate, then-Gov. Pat Quinn, ran a platform of touting gay marriage legislation as a major accomplishment of the Quinn administration.
It’s an example of how, in the Overton Window model, an idea can move from unthinkable to radical to acceptable to policy.
The concept can be applied to other issues, of course.
For example, Illinois allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms has moved from unthinkable to a policy in a decade, with the most visible action coming in the last few years.
Right-to-work laws could be another good example.
Five years ago, it would have been unthinkable for an Illinois governor to support a law prohibiting workers from being forced to pay money to a union in order to keep a job.
A year ago, Dan Rutherford, then a candidate for the GOP nomination for governor, told Illinois News Network it wasn’t even an issue.
Now Gov. Bruce Rauner is calling for creating right-to-work zones in Illinois.
It is being treated by the political establishment in Illinois as a radical idea.
* While Illinois did pass a gay marriage bill and a concealed carry bill, most of the national progress on gay marriage has been via the federal courts, and it was a federal court which ordered Illinois to pass a concealed carry bill.
He does have a point, though. There was zero discussion of right to work before Bruce Rauner became governor. Bill Brady favored right to work in the 2010 campaign, but he didn’t talk about it a lot.
The debate is most certainly on, with Gov. Rauner relentlessly pushing his side of the argument. He may be able to swing some opinions his way, but unless the federal courts side with his “fair share” ideas, and/or unless his party gets control of the legislative district map-drawing process in a second Rauner term, this ain’t going anywhere any time soon.
* Long-term? I dunno. The unions need to do a much better job of defining themselves. To too many in the “movement,” it’s very much like a religion. They are actually a service provider, and they need to start thinking along those lines, marketing themselves as such and, most importantly, providing even more valuable services to individuals.
…Adding… From RNUG in comments…
Unions have a decent story about helping to create the middle class and they need to do a better job defining the destruction of unions being part of a plan by the 0.1% for destruction of the middle class.
I’m not sure they need to go all out against the 0.1 percenters, but they do have a great story to tell and people are becoming increasingly aware of the shrinkage of the middle class. They have a solution to a widely recognized problem.
- Macbeth - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:45 pm:
I think Rauner will find himself on the wrong side of the wage issue. McDonald’s just today announced it’s *raising* wages due to two years of union pressure.
The “keep the wages low — and lower them even more” is becoming — or will become, I hope — fringe.
- Pot calling kettle - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:47 pm:
== They are actually a service provider, and they need to start thinking along those lines, marketing themselves as such and, most importantly, providing even more valuable services to individuals. ==
Well put. The unions have moved away from serious organizing at least in part because they have trouble communicating the benefits of collective bargaining. If they did a better job explaining what they offer, they might reverse the downward membership trends and begin to organize workers at the big box retailers and other low wage employers.
- Liberty - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:48 pm:
Why bother to repeat anything that comes from IPI? Reeder’s “journalism” is as biased as it comes and his opining is lightweight.
- Wordslinger - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:51 pm:
There was substantial grassroots activity for many years in support of both gay marriage and concealed carry.
And, in the end, Madigan and Cullerton muscled them both through the GA.
Where’s the grassroots for right to work? As for the GA, forget it.
- Oswego Willy - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:51 pm:
===The unions need to do a much better job of defining themselves. To too many in the “movement,” it’s very much like a religion. They are actually a service provider, and they need to start thinking along those lines, marketing themselves as such and, most importantly, providing even more valuable services to individuals.===
Agreed.
The idea of promoting and pushing a narrative that would help with thd Union optics should be the top priority, ailing with a structured marketing strategy to promote the benefits society gets, not the “bad optics” others portray about the Unions.
The governmental affairs Crews of the Unions, besides counting noses and blocking green lights shoujd be more about positive promotion of image in cooperation with stare and local government.
If I were they?
I’d revamp the governmental affairs aspects to compliment a strong PR push as a help to Illinois, and try to deflect the negatives and selfishness other want as the optics, while…working the GA and local government and be seen, again, as a partner, no a villain.
Lots of work to do, Unions…
- Skeptic - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 3:58 pm:
Part of the sales job has to be cost. How much more will it cost me to become a full member and what do I get for that? I read general answers to the latter, but have yet to find any information about the former. If you want me to buy your product, I need to know how much is going to come out of my pocket.
- OneMan - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:03 pm:
I would have thought the guy was kind of wrong too until Michigan became right to work, never thought that would have happened.
- Rod - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:03 pm:
Rich your comment reading: “The unions need to do a much better job of defining themselves. To too many in the “movement,” it’s very much like a religion. They are actually a service provider, and they need to start thinking along those lines, marketing themselves as such and, most importantly, providing even more valuable services to individuals,” was interesting. It assumes I think that the right-to-work zones are limited to unionized public sector workers or workers who interface with a consuming public.
The proposal goes beyond that and could even extend to UAW auto workers at Local 1268 at the Chrysler LLC Belvidere Assembly Plant if the township of Belvidere IL were allowed to enact Governor Rauner’s proposal. Really those auto workers have no direct interface with consumers and any thought about them modeling their image as a service provider is difficult to imagine. Maybe they should do more happy stories about the quality of their work, they have run a few of those ads on TV already.
- Precinct Captain - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:03 pm:
Far too many unions abandoned the organizing model and jumped wholeheartedly into business unionism. The problem is that too many unions see themselves are providers of services (insurance, travel, etc.) and have done a poor job of organizing new industries, keeping existing workers organized, and marketing all the great things unionism has done for the working people of this nation.
- Macbeth - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:04 pm:
Vaguely fascist idea, this ‘Overton Window’ — and a title of book by Glenn Beck (which pretty much says it all).
And then Frederick Douglass:
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
- Georg Sande - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:04 pm:
Some of the comments here make Reeder’s point all the more. The comparison he draws about relatively quick societal attitude changes is insightful and may well occur. It is happening around Illinois and with the Governor banging the drum could occur here to someday (soon?).
- RNUG - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:04 pm:
On at least one state employee union blog, unions claim they don’t have the money for PR because of the money they are spending defending themselves in lawsuits.
News flash: Unions, you need to find the money … even if it requires a fund raising drive among your members or higher contributions to your political action arm. Understand, this is a life and death struggle and you are treating it like a kid’s school yard name calling.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:07 pm:
Unions have a decent story about helping to create the middle class and they need to do a better job defining the destruction of unions being part of a plan by the 0.1% for destruction of the middle class.
- The Captain - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:15 pm:
“Illinois allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed firearms has moved from unthinkable to a policy in a decade.”
In 2006 Illinois was one of only two states that didn’t allow for concealed carry, how unthinkable was it that Illinois would eventually join 48 other states?
- Grandson of Man - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:19 pm:
I agree, unions need to promote what they do for workers, and the ways in which they improve the workplace. Wages and benefits are only part of what unions bring to workers. When they’re at their best, they strive to enforce contracts and are successful in grievances for a variety of workplace issues.
If unions can message properly, they have a lot going for them, such as unionized workers earn more than non-union members in the vast majority of occupations, right to work states cluster at the bottom of state median incomes, less income inequality, better job security, tradition (unions helped build America), middle class prosperity, etc.
- RNUG - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:19 pm:
Rich,
OK … maybe I should have just said “… destruction of unions is part of the decline of the middle class”
- SallyD - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:22 pm:
Unions were the cornerstone of the middle class. The problem is that they have become Republicans because they falsely believe that they are the upper class.
They have turned their back on their own deviding the unions into separate class. With new hires making less than the older workers.
Once unions feel that there should be seperate classes then the whole idea of all for one is gone and only weakness and greed will be their undoing until the pendulum swings back.
Until the old get theirs taken away from them will the all for one true Union belief to fix this country and its greedy nature.
- Federalist - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:27 pm:
Plenty of cheap labor in this country and more is imported all the time. Unions could seem to care less about their own citizen workers.
This coupled with globalization of what really amounts to relatively unskilled labor that can make products that can be shipped to the U.S. makes unionism just that much more difficult.
Both of these issues have been developing for the past 50 years and it will probably get worse.
As fewer people are members of unions they are more resentful of their higher wages. This is most noticeable right now in terms of public employee unions.
- respect workers - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:28 pm:
The concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of 0.1% is difficult to overcome. Unions are the only entity that has fought more than a century in this country for wage equality. Unions are under absolute attack for the very reason that they are out there every day fighting for decent wages and benefits. Suggesting the solution is that somehow unions should just open their coffers and come up with good commercials is inaccurate and impractical. The middle-class is shrinking, and workers will wake up and fight back.
- AC - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:36 pm:
It is true that unions could learn a lot from the movement toward marriage equality. The problem with unions is that they expect their members to act in their own self interest without sufficiency engaging non union members. Union leaders speak as though everyone is aware that the wealthiest have been the primary beneficiary of increases in productivity for several decades. The decline of the middle class is strongly correlated with the decline in union membership, and well financed opponents are partially to blame for that. I believe Citizens United is the primary driver of the recent move toward so called right to work. One connection I see between the two issues are the wonderfully 1984 newspeak terms of “Religious Freedom Law” and “Right to Work Legislation” which are both intended to reduce rather than increase individual liberty.
- Madison - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:37 pm:
RNUG is right to the extent that B Von R and his ilk believe that the only way to do business is as they do. The bargaining units have let what was once a fringe concept and repackaged it h astrategy of divide and conquer. And the unions let them. These unions use A backwards sort of 1930’s labor management model that has not evolved like the ideas that capitalists are repackaging. They are selling lower middle class as success in todays day and age. The unions had better evolve here or we will all be working for peanuts.
- AC - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:42 pm:
I must be stuck on Indiana and intended to reference “Defense of Marriage Act” rather than “Religious Freedom Law” but both apply.
- Six Degrees of Separation - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:45 pm:
When unions help raise the bar of the workforce they represent (the “guild” model with required proficiencies, training, and the like) as well as a unified representative voice, they will represent the maximum value to employer and employee alike. When their primary purpose is to try to force higher wages and protect underperforming employees to the nth degree no matter what, the concept falls apart and employers will seek to avoid them at all costs. Many people are sympathetic to the better angels of the labor movement, but have also seen stubborn labor practices drive jobs away.
- Wordslinger - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 4:56 pm:
Note the tweet from Gov. Rauner as to how he’s looking forward to working with the Pullman Historical Society to “create a lasting legacy….”
Dude has a twisted sense of humor.
- Noper - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:00 pm:
We should believe Mr. Reeder on this one. He has has helpfully tipped the hand of his masters as to their long-term strategy. No surprise - if you repeat something often enough and loud enough, maybe it starts to stick.
- Michelle Flaherty - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:08 pm:
Ummm … How does taking rights away from people equate with giving equal rights to people? Other than that, great premise for a column.
- BlameBruceRauner - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:11 pm:
Unions are critical to the overall stability of the middle class. Trying to make the point that view pints will change is elementary. Unions do have some PR work to do, but BVR is setting that ball on the tee for them, and they are belting balls off the wall. All this seems like a big charade, leading up to the upcoming AFSME negotiations.
- Bemused - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:31 pm:
Like a lot of institutions, when they were at the peak of their power in the fifties and sixties the unions got a bit arrogant. The connection with the memberships began to weaken and most of all they started to lose public backing. That got worse as they started to lose the marketing wars to the .01%ers. With todays labor laws bottom up organizing is a tough row to hoe. Part of the reason for better numbers in the public sector is the process is a bit easier.
Organized labor needs to stop squabbling among themselves, reconnect to the membership and start a campaign to win back “The People”. To many are buying into the idea that organized labor is no longer needed or down right bad.
- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:34 pm:
===With todays labor laws bottom up organizing is a tough row to hoe. Part of the reason for better numbers in the public sector is the process is a bit easier.===
Exactly right. And why they keep endorsing candidates who don’t tear down the multitude of impediments to organizing has long been beyond me. What has Obama actually done to lighten the rules load on them? Maybe some, but not much.
- Republicrat - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 5:52 pm:
Now we’ve changed the conversation. Rich is right about Obama doing almost nothing for unions. The Democratic party has all but abandoned their support for unions and the working class. Hillary will be even worse. The problem is that big business and the wealthy fund Democrats as well, so it is more difficult to get a candidate elected who supports union issues. Rich, you say a battle with the .01% isn’t necessary, but how can anyone compete with all that cash? The work to build up the grassroots support has to take place first along with more education about what the billionaires are trying to do.
- VanillaMan - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:10 pm:
The problem here is that unions don’t know how to speak to anyone who isn’t a Democrat.
- steve schnorf - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:24 pm:
Does anyone but me think that a large part of private sector unions’ problems stem from the fact that they won their big battles, correcting the major injustices, years ago? That left them fighting for less important things (it’s hard to claim that paternity leaves, while important, rise to the level of child labor laws), resulting in they themselves becoming less important, a victim of their own success.
At the same time, public sector unions try to convince their members that they are fighting the labor battles of 75 years ago, huddled in tin shacks in Appalachia while gunshots from the scabs rattle the walls. But they have to do it, because unless there are great labor wars to be fought and won, enthusiasm lags. Yet, at the same time they bargain for things that seem more and more outrageous to the general public, who long since lost the ability to leverage even small luxuries out of their employers.
There may be some unions, public or private, that seek the greater good, but I didn’t run into them (perhaps with one exception) during my time in government). Try offering AFSCME a hundred million dollars for k-12 education if they will accept a 2% COLA rather than 3%. Try offering the teachers a hundred million more for the child care program or mental health services if they will cap their demands at contract time. Good luck!
- Anonymous - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:30 pm:
- I didn’t run into them (perhaps with one exception) during my time in government -
You’ve said on this blog before that you found AFSCME to be reasonable to deal with.
How quickly you became a Rauner shill is breathtaking. Maybe you should look into ethics before being appointed to the commission that enforces it. I guess $45k buys a lot of good will.
- Emily Booth - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:43 pm:
I know someone who was given a choice of layoff or returning to his original plant where he was 1st hired. He has seniority. He chose returning to his original plant. He will still have a job, benefits & his 401K because he’s in a union.
- steve schnorf - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:45 pm:
“Reasonable to work with” is a very different beast than pursuing reasonable things. As what I said earlier reflects, they are out of most reasonable things to pursue, but they must pursue something. And as to the greater good, that has nothing to do with being reasonable to deal with unless someone is stupid enough to offer them one of the deals I hypothesized.
But, I’m interested. Do you disagree with what I said in the post above, or do you just wish I wasn’t so impolite as to say it? And, it wouldn’t bother me if you would sign your name so I could get at least some sense of your knowledge and credibility on the issue.
As to “reasonable to work with”, there are several different levels to bargaining a major contract, and the individuals I met with were certainly reasonable (so long as you accepted the premises of the bargaining, e.g., we have public unions, they are entitled to bargain, we have a responsibility to bargain in good faith, etc). There was little swearing, no histrionics, no threats, etc.
- justthefacts - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 6:50 pm:
I am not a legal expert, but my guess is that unionism is probably much easier in a country like Germany whose constitution was written in 1940’s by a New Deal Roosevelt-Truman admin vs. a country whose constitution was written in the 1700’s by a slave-owning aristocrat (Madison).
- Bemused - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 7:22 pm:
My credentials are this. Before I retired I was a paid Union Field Organizer for 6 years and then a Business Agent. I actually worked on both top down and bottom up organizing campaigns. IMHO bottom up is a joke. After fighting tooth and nail thru an organizing campaign and maybe winning an election all the employer is required to do is “Bargain in Good Faith” for at least a year. After that time in most cases they have run off the union supporters and can run a decert.
Rich, as to your post. Can’t say I disagree but really you think he could get something substantial thru congress. I was laughing over the uproar over card check legislation. Even if it went thru you were back to that ole bargain in good faith crap. The employers still wanted that time frame between filing for an election and the vote itself to rough the workers up. I am trying to be kind here.
Steve, once again you are of course somewhat right. If leadership does not try to do something members wonder what they are paying for. I am sure you know in the trades there is a thing called pattern bargaining. If one trade gets four percent I look like an ass if I don’t get for my guys.
Lot of blame to go around here folks. The people with money pay very bright folks to exploit all that.
- PublicServant - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 9:01 pm:
Steve, if the offer is clearly inadequate to what the unions would be giving up, why would they take it? The unions see offers coming from an overall atmosphere of reducing benefits. So, any offer that is presented must do the present value math. Is what is being offered at least equivalent to what is being asked to give up long term? If not, your quoting big numbers without that context is, um, puffery.
- K3 - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 9:34 pm:
I remember before his IPI days when Scott Reeder was thoughtful and independent.
- Norseman - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 10:16 pm:
=== Yet, at the same time they bargain for things that seem more and more outrageous to the general public, who long since lost the ability to leverage even small luxuries out of their employers. ===
What have they asked for that is more and more outrageous to the public? Higher pay, seniority and workplace protections. Isn’t that the very nature of unions. The public is bombarded with negative propaganda by the wealthy because they have been successful and that affects the bottom line. As so many have mentioned in this post, unions need to do a little propaganda themselves to let the public know of the importance of leaving a stopgap to corporate greed.
Having been in a management position, I objected to many seniority and workplace rules. When we were looking at cycle time reduction during the Edgar years, IMHO union rules made the process more difficult to implement. Is that the unions fault or the fault of the management negotiators. I would have no objection if Rauner focused on trying to address some of these workplace issues and to hold down salary and benefit increases during this trying time. However, his focus is on totaling eliminating the unions. If he succeeds, who will step up to fight for decent wages and working conditions. All we’ll hear is the mantra from the plutocracy that we all should be happy that we have jobs.
=== There may be some unions, public or private, that seek the greater good, but I didn’t run into them (perhaps with one exception) during my time in government). Try offering AFSCME a hundred million dollars for k-12 education if they will accept a 2% COLA rather than 3%. ===
I’m completely befuddled by this comment. I have the opposite complaint. I think unions spend too much time using their political capital to advocate costly social programs that don’t directly impact their memberships. Obviously, in our democracy they are, as are the one percenters, free to advocate for social and policy change that goes beyond their membership. However, I think it drains resources that should be devoted to their core mission. I also think it’s government’s core mission to provide funding for education, health regulation, public safety and infrastructure … not the union’s.
- Bemused - Wednesday, Apr 1, 15 @ 10:44 pm:
Went back and read the top again. Reeder is correct in that what was once unthinkable has moved to the realm of the possible. This due in large part to folks like him and IPI constantly pounding the anti-union message home. Studies almost always show that even with all those useless and corrupt union leaders and those terrible dues, a worker more often then not comes out ahead as a union member. Yet people seem to want to buy the story that corporate America has their best interest at heart.
Goes to show who hires the best marketing people.
BVR and Reeder and those like them do not have a problem with you joining a union as long as that union is nothing more than a social club with no power to improve the condition of workers.
- Norma Rae - Thursday, Apr 2, 15 @ 8:18 am:
This issue is so much bigger than Illinois. At some point, something has to give in this country when it comes to stratification of income, working conditions and retirement income. The latter is on the cusp of coming home to roost as the first edge of the 401(k) generation nears retirement age and discovers there’s not enough nest egg there, even after a lifetime of labor. Meanwhile, the stock market rallies while incomes plummet.
It may not be unions that force this issue, although they certainly might help. People are going to look to cities like Seattle, where voters implemented a $15 minimum wage, and ask, “Why not us?” And it doesn’t take a union to do that. People who’ve worked all their lives and find themselves forced to survive on meager Social Security payments and whatever interest comes from a $200,000 401(k) account are going to start demanding something better, and politicians will respond regardless of what unions do or don’t do.
It’s a near historical certainty, considering how the pendulum has swung in American history–when the rich get too rich, the government has stepped in to reign in the wrongs. Sometimes it has involved unions, sometimes it has not, but even when unions were the entity that pushed, they did so only as much as the government would allow. Of course, the government was pressured. Unions, socialists and even the Communist Party (which are not the same, much as Rauner might believe) became viable entities during the Depression and years leading up to it. Government responded with the New Deal.
The way this country is headed, there is going to have to be another New Deal. Whether it will be pushed by unions isn’t yet clear. But it is going to happen. It has to happen. America doesn’t exist to make the 1 percent rich on the backs of the rest of us.
- VanillaMan - Thursday, Apr 2, 15 @ 9:26 am:
Union bashing is rooted in fear. Rauner is a fear monger using unions as an excuse for being a new governor unable to figure out how to fix the state budget.
We actually have a governor bashing his own state, fearmongering that businesses don’t want to come to the US’s fifth largest state economy because of unions.
He is governor. Somehow he can’t figure out that anyone bashing the state he is governing, is calling him a loser or worse. So it is almost idiotic to listen to an actual governor belittle himself publically as though he isn’t responsible for the problems he is pointing out.