More than 20 staffers in Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch’s office renewed calls on Friday — three days before the Labor Day holiday — to be recognized as a union.
The employees, whose roles include research and legislative functions, formed the Illinois Legislative Staff Association earlier this year in a bid for higher wages and better benefits. They went public with their intentions to unionize in May but in a statement issued Friday, the association said that Welch, a Democrat from Hillside who became House speaker in 2021, has not been willing to discuss the issue with the group despite requests it has made over the last nine months.
Welch and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker backed last year’s passage of the Workers’ Rights Amendment, codifying in the state constitution a “fundamental right” for workers in Illinois to unionize and collectively bargain.
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“Despite his outspoken pro-labor rhetoric and vocal support for the right of all employees in Illinois to unionize, he is apparently intent on denying this right to his own staff,” the association said of Welch in a statement. “It should not be controversial in 2023 for a group of workers in a blue state with a strong union tradition to form a union, especially when the right to organize is enshrined in the state constitution.”
The association has said that among the issues it would like to see addressed are policies related to compensatory time and higher wages. But Brady Burden, a Welch staffer who is part of the association, said Friday that the speaker first needs to recognize the group as a union for meaningful negotiations to convene.
According to the association, the $40,000-a-year starting salary for staff members is more than $4,000 less than it was in 2011 if adjusted to 2022 dollars, while the workload has increased.
The association said there are currently about 2.9 House Democrats per legislative staffer this year, compared to about 2.5 per staffer last year and roughly 1.9 per staffer in 2021 when the Illinois General Assembly was emerging from frequent remote state business due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The association said there has been higher turnover of its legislative staff through 2022 and the group said its average pay is less than what House Republican and Senate Democrat staffers, and legislative liaisons from the governor’s office, receive.
“Our good faith efforts to engage with the Speaker and his aides have been either rebuffed, redirected, or met with stubborn disregard. When we have been acknowledged at all, we have experienced runaround, muddied waters and other thinly-veiled tactics aimed at undercutting our ability to organize and bargain collectively,” the association said in a statement. “The Speaker, through his aides, has made it abundantly clear that he intends to delay indefinitely in hopes that we will give up and go away. We will not.”
Jon Maxson, a spokesman for Welch, on Friday declined to comment on the association’s statement or the speaker’s stance in regard to the group’s requests.
The statement was issued two days after Welch and Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat from Oak Park, attended a Labor Day celebration at McCormick Place that was sponsored by the Chicago Federation of Labor and featured first lady Jill Biden as a speaker.
jgorner@chicagotribune.com
