Workers’ Rights Amendment: How it could play out now, later

Law and Public Issues

By Ann M. Lousin

Ann M. Lousin has been a professor at UIC John Marshall Law School since 1975. Before then, she was a research assistant at the 1969-1970 Illinois constitutional convention and parliamentarian of the Illinois House of Representatives. Her treatise “The Illinois State Constitution: A Reference Guide” was published in December 2009. She can be contacted at alousin@uic.edu.

Posted October 18, 2022 12:10 PM

In November, there is only one amendment to the Illinois Constitution on the ballot. It is the “Workers’ Rights Amendment,” which gives all public and private employees in Illinois the constitutional right to join unions and bargain collectively over issues of wages, hours and working conditions, as well as their “economic welfare.”Its main purpose is to prevent the General Assembly from enacting a “right to work” statute, which would allow people working in a union shop to refuse to join a union while receiving its …

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