Scott Stantis 
GUEST VIEW
Feb 3, 2015
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner declares war on unions. This is on the heels of issuing medical marijuana licenses. It all makes sense now….
Click to enlarge. Context to the cartoon is below.
Bruce Rauner State of the State Address expected to stir union angst
Editor’s note:
When Gov. Bruce Rauner delivers his State of the State Address on Feb. 4, listeners will be taking special note of just how far the new governor will go toward agitating public employee union leaders with whom he’ll soon be negotiating.
Over the past two weeks, Rauner has offered previews of his State of the State message to audiences in college classrooms and, in Champaign, to business leaders.
He described Illinois as being in “massive deterioration mode” when he addressed students at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
A few days later, he spoke at Richland Community College in Decatur, where he broached the topic of establishing “right-to-work zones” in Illinois. In these locally defined districts, union membership would not be mandatory for workers in union workplaces and union dues would not be deducted automatically from paychecks. Right-to-work is the scourge of unions, which argue that workers enjoying the benefits of union-negotiated pay and benefits should pay for their representation.
In Champaign two days later, he explained that he was not out to make Illinois a right-to-work state. He merely hopes that that the state would allow local governments, “through referenda,” to make union membership voluntary.
But he also devoted a significant portion of his presentation to the Champaign County Chamber of Commerce to criticizing the bureaucracy in state government and in education. The bureaucracy is created and sustained by “union bosses,” Raner said.
“The government bureaucracy has been controlling the political process… and running the government for the bureaucracy’s own benefit. Not for the benefit of the taxpayers and not for the benefit of where the money should go,” Rauner said. “We are gonna deal with this and it ain’t gonna be pretty and it ain’t gonna be easy. Because the groups in there that make their money from that, the bureaucracy, they are strong… And they don’t like what I’m saying.
“It’s OK. The government union bosses are doing their job… We’ve got to respect that, but somebody’s got to do the job for taxpayers”
Unions already were on edge from Rauner’s various presentations when he issued a memo on Feb. 2 that put an even finer point on Rauner’s view of unions — and the state employee salaries and benefits they negotiated — ahead of his first major speech since his inauguration.
“These levels are unsustainable and unfair to working families, small businesses and other taxpayers in Illinois. They limit our ability to grow our economy and to fund much needed social services. We do not intend to propose government salary reductions, but it is critical that we make structural reforms that prevent any future imbalances and unfair practices. It is also abundantly clear that we must make major reforms to eliminate conflicts of interest and to achieve dramatic economic growth in order to properly fund the operations of our state government,” Rauner told the 177 members of the Illinois General Assembly in a memo that accompanied the slide below.
But Rauner’s tough talk on unions can only go so far. His budget (which he’ll unveil on Feb. 18 in his Budget Address) must be approved by a General Assembly in which Democrats in both chambers hold veto-proof super-majorities and can thwart any Rauner effort that requires legislative approval.
How Rauner delivers his message in his first State of the State Address and how he works it behind the scenes with the Democratic leaders of the Legislature — Senate President John Cullerton and House Speaker Michael Madigan — will determine whether his points become more than just Power Point slides.
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Scott Stantis is the editorial cartoonist of the Chicago Tribune. His work is syndicated in more than 125 newspapers and other publications. Arriving in Chicago as the Rod Blagojevich scandal developed, Stantis has drawn extensively about corruption and other issues related to Illinois state government and Chicago and Cook County government. A collection of his best Illinois cartoons from 2013 is here. We’ve also gathered his cartoons on the 2014 election in this collection.