ILSA Issues Statement Following Suppression of House Bill 4148
Union condemns House Speaker Welch and Senate President Harmon after bill to establish framework for legislative staff to unionize is effectively killed.
We are the Organizing Committee of the Illinois Legislative Staff Association.
When House Bill 4148 was passed by the House in November last year, we dared to hope that a new day had begun in Illinois. We looked forward to the opportunity to work with the Senate to refine the bill, work out some of its shortcomings, and to begin the process of good-faith negotiations with the Speaker’s office toward which we had worked for so long.
Sadly, this has not been the case. Instead, once HB 4148 arrived in the Senate, it was sponsored by Senate President Don Harmon, who simply sat on it. It was not voted on, it was not debated, it was not assigned to a committee, it was not so much as considered. And when we reached out to Harmon’s staff to begin a dialogue on October 25, 2023, November 28, 2023 and February 9, 2024, we were ignored.
There will no doubt be a great deal of hand wringing and excuses about how the Speaker “can’t control the Senate.” Indeed, we’ve already been subjected to just this type of disingenuous rhetoric during our most recent perfunctory meeting with the Speaker’s team.
It’s easy to see why such excuses don’t hold water. Just look at Senate Bill 2412, which abolished the practice of parties slating candidates for election. That bill came out of nowhere on a Wednesday and was not only passed by both House and Senate, but signed into law by Governor Pritzker, by that Friday.
That is what happens when legislative leadership prioritizes a bill.
The handling of HB 4148–and the return of leadership to their former policy of stonewalling us–confirms what we already suspected, that there was never any intention of this bill becoming law. It is clear to us that Speaker Welch and President Harmon had an understanding: Welch would pass a bill to deflect rising criticism, and Harmon would make sure that the bill went no further.
Speaker Welch took advantage of our sincere desire to work with him and used it to score political points while continuing to undermine our efforts to organize. This whole exercise was nothing but a hollow ruse, meant to gaslight us while we drafted his bills, staffed his committees, crafted his talking points and analyzed his budget.
Following the introduction of HB 4148, Speaker Welch implied for all the world that ‘allowing’ us to unionize was his idea. We chose to tolerate this political theater while there appeared to be a good faith dialogue between ourselves and management. As long as there was finally going to be progress, we were content to allow Speaker Welch to save face.
But now, the Speaker and his team have chosen to spurn our goodwill and abuse our trust.
The truth is that Speaker Welch first had his aides rebuff his staff, then repeatedly ignored us for ten months, whined to other members of the House that we were ‘bullying’ him, and only accepted that he’d have to act after being repeatedly embarrassed in the press and realizing that we weren’t going away. Even then, he thought that he’d get away with passing a bill that created an empty husk of a union without the power to achieve any meaningful change.
Speaker Welch promised that there would be a new day in Springfield, but his stance when it comes to this issue shows that he intends to continue right on living in the Madigan era. It’s time for this Speaker to decide what his legacy will be in the context of workers’ rights. Will he deliver on his promise, or is he just another machine politician?
With the 2024 elections approaching, we hope our union siblings throughout Illinois are paying attention. We hope they are watching how Speaker Welch treats unions when they don’t have the money to fund his war chest—or to help him hamstring his political opponents during the primary season. We hope they are considering what this means for them–and whether their trust in the Speaker is misplaced. We hope they are asking themselves whether Speaker Welch will be there for them if, someday, they should need him more than he needs them. The same goes for President Don Harmon. We encourage our union siblings to think long and hard, and to act accordingly.
We hope businesses and chambers of commerce see how Speaker Welch is comfortable telling them to work with unions while he does the opposite. We hope they see how his stance on unions suddenly changes the moment it is he who would be potentially inconvenienced, not just the “little people.” “Unions for thee but not for me.”
With the DNC fast approaching, it’s also perplexing that the Speaker is comfortable showing such blatant hypocrisy when it comes to unions, given the unequivocal support for the right of every worker to organize explicitly laid out in the Democratic Party platform. Time will tell whether the DNC is so comfortable saying one thing while doing another that this is who they feel should represent the Democratic Party in Chicago this summer.
Where does that leave us? Now that it’s clear that there’s nothing to be gained by following any “process” laid out by the Speaker’s office, we’re through bending over backwards to be cooperative and collegial. We have always maintained that no new law is required to enable us to unionize, and that the Workers’ Rights Amendment guarantees all workers in Illinois the right to organize and bargain through their chosen representatives. We now intend to exercise that right, with or without the Speaker’s cooperation and without waiting an additional year, or more, for another poison-pill “legal framework”. The Speaker had the chance to craft a framework with which he was comfortable, and squandered it. That ship has sailed.
A legislative staff union has been formed and will negotiate on behalf of willing legislative employees. It is only a question of when–and of how much unpleasantness must impede the people’s work before that can happen. That decision is entirely Speaker Welch’s to make, and we call on him to make it.
ILSA would have preferred that it not have come to this. We would have preferred for the Speaker and his aides to have had the maturity, character and integrity to deal with us openly and honestly. But, sadly, this has not been the case.
Speaker Welch should put aside his misguided, union busting policies and voluntarily recognize ILSA’s proposed bargaining unit or hold an election administered by an impartial third party.
Regardless of the Speaker’s decision, ILSA will continue to fight until our rights are taken seriously. If Speaker Welch thought that charades and delaying tactics would put this behind him, then he is about to discover that he has been mistaken.
The people of Illinois deserve a government that embodies the principles it advocates, that conducts itself with integrity and that can effectively serve its constituents. Speaker Welch and President Harmon are not living up to that standard.
We are the Illinois Legislative Staff Association. We’ve said before that we are not giving up or going away. We will not be intimidated. We will not be dismissed. We will not be ignored.
