U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowski holds up a workers' rights amendment sheet as she speaks at the Laborers International Union of North America Training Center in Chicago on Aug. 25, 2022.
“The courts are going to put color to this thing, and they’re going to tell us” how to answer questions like those, said Marc Poulos, executive director of the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting and one of the drafters of the amendment. “We would argue that those explicitly excluded categories of employees under the National Labor Relations Act would now be covered and have a fundamental right under the state constitution if, in fact, you could deem yourself an employee under state law,” Poulos said, noting that there are several methods for determining whether someone qualifies as an employee or independent contractor.
One potential way to clarify that issue could be to pass a state law defining certain contract workers as employees for purposes of organizing and bargaining. The effort was led by the conservative Liberty Justice Center and Illinois Policy Institute, both based in Chicago, which sought to bring a lawsuit on behalf of taxpayers who opposed the use of public funds to place an allegedly unconstitutional amendment on the ballot.
The Liberty Justice Center — best known for its victory in the U.S. Supreme Court Janus case that struck down so-called fair-share fees collected from public employees who opt out of union membership — is “still considering” how to go about taking on the amendment once it goes into effect, said Jacob Huebert, the organization’s president.“We’ll have to wait and see what happens here,” he said. “We’re going to have to think about the different options for challenging this.
world's smallest violin for the opponents of the amendment
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