Adam Schuster, former Vice President of Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, warns that Amendment 1, the so called Workers Rights Amendment, is a Trojan Horse. Schuster, now a private consultant, spoke to libertarians at the Libertarian Party of Illinois State Gala in Des Plaines, Illinois on Saturday afternoon. Cities 92.9 interviewed Schuster after his speech.
According to Schuster, “Amendment 1 is being sold as a worker’s rights amendment. But that is in fact a Trojan Horse for a constitutional amendment that would be horrible for private sector workers that would make our fiscal and economic problems even worse in the state and would really cement the power of governmental unions, who are Illinois’ most powerful special interest group today, to make limitless demands on taxpayers on the public treasury and even the ability to override the democratic vote of the people by nullifying or vetoing laws that were passed by people’s representatives.”
Schuster continued, “There is a lot of misinformation going on about amendment one and what it actually does and it is very confusing and hard for people to figure out what it is, but there are basically four provisions.”
Schuster listed the provisions as follows;
- “The first is a ban on right to work. That’s only going to apply to the public public sector. Illinois doesn’t have right to work right now so it effectively doesn’t change anything, but that’s the Trojan Horse part.”
- “It also goes on to make collective bargaining a fundamental right for governmental employees only …”
- “… as well as to say that that right can never be curtailed in any way, prevents it from being diminished or impaired by any future politicians, and …”
- “… it extends the subjects of bargaining to things that are properly the control of the people’s representatives. So it gives them the ability to nullify laws over public safety, over background checks for people that deal with children, over police discipline policy, over pension reforms and it would lead in many ways to a pension clause on steroids.”
“Like I said earlier it cements the power of the special interest group to make our government more expensive and less effective,” Schuster concluded.
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Julie Fox, Chair of the Fox Valley Libertarian Party, a chapter of the Illinois State Libertarian Party, prepared a document for her chapter to distribute regarding Amendment 1. Fox made the information available for others to share and the Libertarian Party of Chicago, another local chapter, used it in a brochure regarding the amendment.
Fox told us the following regarding the amendment; “It would give public sector unions more bargaining rights and those employees for those unions more bargaining rights than in any other state in the union. They already have extensive bargaining rights.”
Fox emphasized that “Amendment 1 comes with a diminishment clause which says that once you give these expanded rights greater than any other state, they can not be taken away without another constitutional amendment. So in fact we are creating the same nightmare that we have with pensions with amendment 1.
Fox warned that, “Not only would it extend bargaining rights but that it would allow them to extend to areas that are vague, such as economic welfare and safety at work. How do you even define it? It could be open for definition.”
“So public sector employees do not need additional rights. These rights could be a danger to everyone in our state,” Fox concluded.