Illinois House Shoots Down Right To Work Bill With Zero Yes Votes

By Jim Bochnowski in News on May 15, 2015 8:40PM

While Right to Work fever has swept over the Midwest for the last few years, hitting Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, Illinois has long been a holdout. However, with Governor Rauner in Springfield with his anti-union rhetoric, there have been fears that the Land of Lincoln could be the next right to work domino to fall.

Apparently the Illinois General Assembly is still having none of it. In a vote yesterday, the Illinois House of Representatives shot down a proposed right to work legislation in commanding fashion, garnering 0 yes votes, 72 no votes and 37 "present" votes.

To be clear, this particular bit of legislation did not come from Governor Rauner. The bill was written up by Democratic members in an effort to embarrass statewide Republicans, which caused many Republican members to simply walk away from the vote instead of taking an actual stand. Governor Rauner dismissed the move, stating:

"Difficult negotiations in government often involve political theater. That’s a little bit of what that is. I don’t take it that way. This is just part of a political process. We’re working together and we’ll get through it. . . . There’s a lot of pressure from special-interest groups who don’t want to change. We are in a long slow decline we need to grow pretty strongly . . . we are encouraging Republicans to stay strong together. We’re a super-minority."

Coming from a guy who has built most of his political career on railing against unions, complaining about "political theater" rings a little hollow. And with one vote, Democratic politicians have sent a very clear message that the Governor is not going to be able to implement his agenda without a fight.