* From the Illinois Policy Institute’s news service…

What should be a resolved labor dispute between the state and its largest public employee union is instead costing taxpayers an additional $3 million each day, Gov. Bruce Rauner said.

AFSCME has been without a contract since July 2015. Although the state labor board ruled over a month ago that the two sides were officially at an impasse and Gov. Rauner can enact his “last, best, and final” offer, the union continues to challenge that ruling.

Rauner said last week that there’s a daily cost from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union’s appeal to a higher court of the state labor board’s ruling that the talks had reached an impasse.

“Every day that we delay through these court actions costs the people of Illinois almost $3 million per day,” Rauner said. “Think of how much we could do for our children in poverty, think of how much we could do for our schools and our human services if we weren’t wasting almost $3 million a day on this contract.”

$3 million a day seems kinda high, so I checked in with AFSCME. I was told that if you look at just the people on whom Rauner is attempting to impose his contract demands, that’s “about 25,000 employees.”

$3 million per day divided by 25,000 unionized workers is $120 per person, per day.

That’s a huge cut. Gigantic, even. I mean, that’s $600 a week, man.

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