AFL-CIO Pulls Out of Longtime "Agreed Bill" Process
The Illinois AFL-CIO Headquarters in Springfield.
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For some four decades, labor, business, and both Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate have worked through complicated issues like unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation through an “agreed bill” process, meaning no bill moves forward until everyone at the table is satisfied.
Many in Springfield call it one of the few things under the Statehouse dome that actually works.
In a letter Tuesday to Governor JB Pritzker, House Speaker Chris Welch, Senate President Don Harmon and, other Democratic leaders, the Illinois AFL-CIO pulled out of the long-running process. The AFL-CIO is one of the most influential organized labor groups inside the statehouse.
“Labor’s longstanding commitment to the agreed-bill process has often prevented improvements to workers’ benefits, even as business groups elsewhere ignore workers entirely,” wrote Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea and Secretary-Treasurer Pat Devaney. “The [Illinois] AFL-CIO cannot continue allowing business organizations to veto labor’s agenda to advance workers’ rights in Illinois while business interests and politicians in Washington, DC and other states refuse to engage workers as equal partners.”
The full letter can be viewed here. (Please don’t share the link. We’d like to keep it for subscribers only until it’s widely distributed.)
Drea and Devaney placed much of the blame for the decision on Republicans in other states and in Washington.
“We will no longer be bound by a process that restricts progress for Illinois workers until business organizations at the federal level and in Republican-controlled states demonstrate a genuine willingness to engage with labor as equal stakeholders in shaping a just economy for all,” they wrote.
“Wait, they’re blowing up forty years of progress because of Donald Trump,” rhetorically asked one longtime lobbyist last night. “This is about the only thing in Springfield that actually works. We’re about to see a partisan tsunami of labor legislation.”
A group of business interests that is part of the agreed bill process, known generally as the “Joint Employers” issued a statement Tuesday claiming the agreed bill process “is working.”
“During a time of increasing political polarization, policymakers should be looking for ways to maintain collaboration instead of further deepening divides,” the statement reads. “While we are disappointed organized labor has chosen to lean into the politics of division, we encourage the Governor’s office, legislative leaders and rank and file members to embrace compromise and communication and stand by the agreed bill process as a way for stakeholders to work through their differences and drive progress for all.”
Illinois AFL-CIO President Tim Drea joined us on the radio Wednesday.
