Proposed Amendements Destroy the Process of Negotiations and Bargaining

12/17/2010

Statement by Gilbert A. Cornfield to the Special House Task Force

My name is Gilbert A. Cornfield. I am a partner in the law firm of Cornfield and Feldman in Chicago. Our firm has represented the Illinois Federation of Teachers and other public and private sector labor organizations in the State of Illinois for over fifty years. The founder of our firm was the co-general counsel of the Illinois Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. I assisted a committee established by the Federation to draft the proposed Illinois Public Labor Relations Act which was subsequently adopted by the General Assembly for public educational institutions as the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act. I was a principal drafter of the proposed legislation.

Section 1 of the  Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act declares that it is the public policy of our State to “[require] educational employers to negotiate and bargain with employee organizations representing educational employees and to enter into written agreements evidencing the result of such bargaining….” Although the proposed legislation under consideration by the Task Force does not amend this stated policy the proposed amendments to the Act effectively destroy the process of negotiations and bargaining.

Any form of meaningful negotiations requires a balancing of interests and resources between the parties at the bargaining table in order for the process to be effective. The proposed legislation, although describing the process as “negotiations” between an educational employer and the employees’ selected representative, would substitute the unilateral right of an educational employer to dictate the terms of a bargaining agreement and thereby impose all the conditions of employment who are subject to the agreement. Rather than enabling true negotiations to take place through the mandated processes of the Act as it has existed the proposed legislation would impose  lengthy, expensive and legalistic hurdles upon the parties culminating in the right of the employer to set the terms and conditions of employment. This misnamed process of “negotiations” in the proposed legislation follows a list of “prohibited subjects”  which are exempt from “negotiations”  and thus would limit the final bargaining agreement to the minimum wages rates and benefits for members of the represented unit of employees.

It is evident that the proposed legislation is intended to eliminate collective bargaining in public education and labor organizations as effective bargaining representatives of the employees. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act has been in effect for twenty-five years. The Act did not create collective bargaining for public educational employees in our State. Prior to the passage of the Act the majority of the State’s public educational institutions were parties to collective bargaining agreements with their employees. The purpose of the Act was to establish an administrative system to enable employee selection of representatives through a democratic process to engage in collective bargaining  and thereby minimizing litigation and work stoppages. There is no question that this basic purpose has been realized and accepted by the educational community. The proposed legislation would not only eliminate statutory support for collective bargaining but by effectively eliminating the right of employee representation over their hours, wages and conditions of employment would return employee relations to an era which existed more than fifty years ago before the concept of collective bargaining in the public sector existed. The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act has been a legislative model and has stood the test of time for a generation. The proposed legislation if adopted could only be characterized as advancing an anti collective bargaining and anti-labor agenda. Such action by the General Assembly would be a disavowal of our history and ethos as a State and citizenry.