A state appeals panel rejected a union challenge Tuesday to a law that took collective bargaining rights from some state employees, such as general counsels and chiefs of staff.
In a 21-page opinion, a 1st District Appellate Court panel said the law was legitimately aimed at making government more efficient and did not infringe on employees’ due process or equal protection rights.
Affirming an Illinois Labor Relations Board ruling, the appellate panel also said the law did not violate state constitutional prohibitions against arbitrary legislation or delegations of power from one branch to another.
Concerned by the rising number of high-level state employees in unions, lawmakers two years ago gave the governor powers to prohibit thousands of them from joining unions.
Section 6.1 of the Illinois Labor Relations Act authorized then-Gov. Patrick J. Quinn “to designate up to 3,580 [s]tate employment positions collectively within [s]tate agencies directly responsible to the [g]overnor” and exclude them “from the self-organization and collective bargaining provisions” of the law.
It also spelled out which positions were fair game, including agency chiefs of staff, general counsels and other directors and administrators. The law gave the employees 10 days to file objections to the governor’s decisions and gave the Labor Relations Board 60 days to approve them.
The stated goal of that policy, Justice John B. Simon noted in the decision, is that managers’ interests lie with the government rather than fellow employees with whom they might share bargaining interests.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees challenged the law on both procedural due process and substantive constitutional grounds.
The union argued that the 10-day time frame for objections to the governor’s decisions did not provide them with due process.
But Simon wrote that the union presented no evidence the time-limit was impractical, noting that AFSCME had already proved it was able to file objections within the time frame.
The group also argued there was no evidentiary hearing laid out in the law giving employees the chance to prove they weren’t in managerial positions.
However, the court said the statute required the labor relations board to “simply look at the employees’ job titles, which it did properly, and nothing in the statute entitled the individuals to an evidentiary hearing.”
Contrary to the union’s stance, Simon also wrote that the law was not an unconstitutional delegation of power by the legislature to the governor. There were sufficient restrictions on who the governor could prohibit from joining a union, including a specific number and specific positions.
“The [g]overnor was not given a blank check,” Simon wrote, noting that the policy decision was made by the General Assembly and had sufficient guidelines to “effectuate an important state interest.”
It also said the law hardly delegated any powers to the governor that the governor did not already have. The governor could already petition the Labor Relations Board to exclude specific employees from collective bargaining units.
The only difference under the new law, the court wrote, is that instead of the board looking into employees’ duties before they’re excluded from bargaining, the governor assumes that role. The board merely double-checks to see that the broad contours of the statute are followed.
“The positions delineated in Section 6.1 are occupied by employees who answer to the [g]overnor and should serve at his pleasure,” Simon wrote.
The justices similarly rejected the union’s arguments regarding arbitrary legislation and equal protection. They noted that in order to justify a law challenged on those grounds, the defendants had to show only that there was a “rational basis” for the legislation.
It was reasonable to give the governor broad powers to run his executive department, the court wrote, even if it means treating some employees differently from others.
“The [g]overnor is in the best position to know which employees’ positions entail policy-related and discretionary responsibilities and which do not,” Simon wrote.
“Rather than inefficiently micro-managing the process itself or requiring the [g]overnor and the [board] to go through the lengthy classification process for each employee, the General Assembly gave the [g]overnor an efficient tool to reassign employees whose positions he believed were incompatible with collective bargaining unit membership.”
Finally, the court brushed off AFSCME’s assertion that the move was motivated by animus.
Simon wrote that it wouldn’t have mattered even if lawmakers actually had bad-faith reasons for passing the law as long as they stated a rational reason for its existence.
Simon added that, even if some of the employees who were prohibited from joining bargaining units aren’t actually managers, they could still file a petition to be reclassified and get those rights back.
“It seems as though AFSCME is simply trying to have it both ways: for the individuals to keep their managerial status and the benefits that come with that; and also to keep their collective bargaining unit membership and the benefits that come from that,” Simon wrote.
He was joined in the opinion by Justices Daniel J. Pierce and P. Scott Neville Jr.
Gail E. Mrozowski, an associate at Cornfield & Feldman, argued the case for AFSCME. She could not be reached for comment.
Mike Newman, deputy director for AFSCME Council 31, said that the court’s reference to getting some employees reclassified wasn’t very clear.
“An employee cannot file a classification petition with the labor board. That’s not something the labor board gets into,” he said. “Theoretically, they could file something with the state civil service commission ... but it’s a lengthy and difficult process.”
Attorney General Lisa M. Madigan’s office argued the case for the state.
A Central Management Services spokeswoman said in a statement that the agency agrees with the decision, saying it "recognized the legitimacy of the General Assembly's goal of increasing efficiency" in state government.
The case is AFSCME v. State of Illinois, 2015 IL App (1st) 133454.