Illinois' Workers’ Rights Amendment won’t cost; it will pay off, study shows

Taxes for everyday Illinoisans would not go up because the proposed Workers Rights Amendment is passed by voters Nov. 8. In fact, the financial burden on taxpayers would decline, according to a new study by researchers from the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Workers’ Rights Amendment would improve the state’s economy and boost incomes and better  working conditions for workers, according to the study, which adds that union workers are less likely to rely on public aid than their non-union counterparts, and they contribute 8% more to state income taxes.

“The data shows that the Workers’ Rights Amendment would protect Illinois’ competitive advantage for essential workers,” said Frank Manzo IV, executive director for the Illinois Economic Policy Institute (IEPI) and one of the report’s authors. “Construction workers, police officers, first responders, teachers, Registered Nurses all earn between 5% and 35% more in Illinois, and they’re also more likely to have health insurance and to own their homes in Illinois.”

Compared to states without the right to collectively bargain and share the costs of representation, such as Iowa and Kentucky, Illinois’ workers on average earn 15% higher incomes (more than $7,000 per year) and are 5% more likely to have health-insurance coverage, research shows. They also are more likely to own their homes, less likely to live in poverty, and 32% less likely to lose their lives due to preventable accidents on-the-job.

By passing the Workers’ Rights Amendment – preventing future efforts to weaken collective bargaining – voters “can protect an estimated $43 billion in earned income for workers, health-insurance coverage for nearly 300,000 workers, and prevent as many as 90 on-the-job fatalities each year,” Manzo said.

Paul Pater, a Registered Nurse with the Illinois Nurses Association, told Chicago public radio that the amendment would help both private- and public-sector workers “feel more secure, more safe” in their jobs. He said being part of a union helped him and his colleagues win higher wages and lead to “direct safety initiatives, things like ensuring we have enough respirators at work, enough safety equipment during COVID … to keep our people safe and keep our patients safe.”

The Workers’ Rights Amendment would give power to workers, not corporations, Pater continued.

It “just provides a boon to those workers who are concerned that they’re going to be fired for trying to organize a workplace, for standing up for themselves, for demanding better wages and safer working conditions,” he added.

In analyzing the Workers’ Rights Amendment’s potential impacts on Illinois, researchers compared economic and workforce outcomes between union and nonunion workers across the state, as well as between Illinois and the 27 states that have passed state laws to weaken unions.

“Our analysis reveals that unions not only deliver higher wages and better benefits for Illinois workers relative to their nonunion peers, but that they are substantially better for public budgets,” Manzo said.

The economic impacts of protecting workers’ rights are not limited to workers. On average, the economies of “free rider” states – where lawmakers prohibit labor agreements requiring those represented by unions to share in the costs of negotiating and enforcing contracts – grew 3% slower and their annual workforce productivity was 18% lower than states that support collective bargaining rights. The data also shows that collective bargaining is a good value for taxpayers because higher wages for workers translate to increased tax revenues and less reliance (and reduced government spending) on social safety-net programs.

Specifically, the study’s analysis of Illinois workers  without advanced degrees shows the benefits of union membership for those who vote for representation:

* Payroll taxes (union workers contribute $11,606; non-union workers $10,951)

* Percent below poverty (union 2.5%; non-union 5.9%)

* Percent on Medicaid (union 2.7%; non-union 6.2%)

* Percent on food stamps (union 2.4%; non-union 4.4%)

* Percent needing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) (union 6.7%; non-union 9.1%)

 

Ultimately, by preventing state politicians from ever enacting laws weakening workers’ rights, researchers predicted the Workers’ Rights Amendment could play an important role in protecting the state’s relatively higher wages, benefits, and safety standards.

Fewer people needing assistance from the state means less of a burden on public funds derived from taxes.

If attack ads and disinformation cause voters to reject the proposed amendment, and Illinois’ labor market becomes like “free-rider” states that don’t support collective bargaining, the statewide consequences would be significant, the study shows:

* Inflation-adjusted annual incomes statewide would fall $43 billion
* About 281,000 workers would lose health insurance coverage
* The number of workers who own homes would drop 134,700
* More than 70,000 workers would fall below the poverty rate
* There would be almost 900 more on-the-job fatalities in the next decade

 

 “At a time when Americans don’t seem to agree on much, public polling has shown historic levels of bipartisan support for unions and the protection of collective bargaining rights,” Manzo said.

Indeed, the state legislature’s overwhelming bipartisan approval of the amendment (passing 80-30 in the House and 49-7 in the Senate) reflects that – and political and public support is bolstered by statistics.

“Our study shows that these opinions are not only well-founded, but they are also overwhelmingly supported by real-world economic data,” Manzo said. “Data shows that when states support collective bargaining, the economy does better and job quality is higher. Workers earn more,  are more likely to have health insurance, and are more likely to own their homes. It’s also better for public budgets, and [for] the economic imperatives of higher growth, fewer labor shortages, more productivity and better safety outcomes on the job site.”

Current events spark delight and dread

Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Led Zeppelin 110 years later sang, “Good times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share.”

Moments of “good news/bad news” aren’t rare, but the world is in a doozy.

Boomers like me remember the excitement of the “Space Race’ to the Moon and the anguish of race as a stain sparking the Civil Rights Movement, which became inspiring.

Times today are amazingly encouraging AND profoundly threatening.

By itself, the Senate’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was a bright light (even clouded by the refusal of just one Senate Republican to support the bill). It’s the nation’s biggest investment in addressing climate change, and invests $360 billion in affordable clean-energy sources.

“The bill will also put downward pressure on inflation,” comments Ben Jealous, president of People for the American Way. “It may take a little while to see all the effects, but saving families money on health care, prescriptions and energy – while reducing the deficit – is a firm push in the right direction for the economy.”

Elsewhere, Kansas’ voters last month cast ballots to protect women’s right to choose with 59% of the vote – in a state that went for Trump 56.1% in 2020 and 56.2% in 2016.

Back in Washington, President Biden has surprisingly delivered on an astounding number of achievements, from improvements to health care coverage to successfully appointing 75 judges as of last month, to a massive measure to combat climate change.

Also within that legislation are price caps on insulin, and empowering Medicare to negotiate lower rates for prescription drugs. Don’t overlook the $550 billion infrastructure program; creating semiconductor production in the “Chips Act”; passing a burn-pits act; finishing the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan; ushering through an anti-Asian hate-crimes bill, an anti-lynching bill and updates to the Violence against Women Act – as well as building on COVID relief.

In less than two years, Biden compares favorably with familiar initiatives by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan – two Democrats and two Republicans.

Plus, Biden’s done this with a sense of savvy and decency absent in recent years.

“He has restored transparency and integrity to the White House and Department of Justice, while expanding diversity throughout the executive branch,” comments Thomas Oakes, a retired University of Chicago financial analyst. “He significantly reduced the federal budget deficit, addressed gas price-gouging, required publicly traded corporations to pay a modest 1% excise tax on stock buybacks and assured corporations with over $1 billion in earnings will pay a minimum 15% income tax.”

That isn’t isn’t close to corporations’ 1950s effective tax rate of 52%, but at least once more big and profitable corporations will share the costs of society – a big step.

Yes, the 117^th Congress has sometimes functioned, even if some actions were “winning ugly,” as the Division-winning White Sox said in 1983.

None of the new laws is perfect, but incremental progress IS progress.

Unlike the Inflation Reduction Act and ongoing threats to democratic norms, there was occasional bipartisanship, too: in the infrastructure package, postal reforms, a gun-safety law and support for Ukraine.

Therein is the dreadful turn.

For all the legitimate concern with climate change and alarm at the jeopardy Russia’s invasion of its sovereign neighbor has placed on the Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant in southeast Ukraine, the danger of nuclear war has increased to a point not seen for 60 years.

At June’s meeting in Vienna of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons group, delegates adopted a statement expressing concern about “threats to use nuclear weapons and increasingly strident nuclear rhetoric.” The state officials condemned “any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances,” and the use “as instruments of policy, linked to coercion, intimidation and heightening of tensions.”

Weeks later, an international study from Rutgers University warned that even a “limited” nuclear war would cause billions of deaths.

“Any use of nuclear weapons could be a catastrophe for the world,” said study author Alan Robock, a professor in Rutgers’ Department of Environmental Sciences. The study “shows you can’t use nuclear weapons. If you use them, you’re like a suicide bomber. You’re trying to attack somebody else but you’ll die of starvation.”

The United States and Russia together hold 90% of the world’s nuclear arms; nine other countries have the rest. A large exchange of nuclear weapons would kill three-fourths of the planet’s population through blasts, firestorms and radiation, as well as “nuclear winter” from sun-blocking soot in the atmosphere and resulting famine, shows the study, published Aug. 15 in the journal Nature Food. War using merely 3% of the world’s nukes would kill one-third of Earth’s inhabitants.

For example, in an India-Pakistan nuclear conflict attacking their cities with a couple hundred 100-kiloton nuclear weapons, some 127 million people there would die from explosions, fires and radiation, according to the study. About 37 million metric tons of soot would be spewed into the air, sending temperatures throughout the world dropping by more than 41 degrees Fahrenheit, something not seen since the Ice Age. Food production would collapse, and the ensuing famine would kill another 2 billion people worldwide.

“The general public needs to understand the enormity of the danger we face, the immediacy of the threat and the urgency of eliminating these weapons before they eliminate us,” comments Ira Helfand from the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

The idea that the Cold War never resorted to using nukes because both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. knew they’d both be destroyed– “Mutual Assured Destruction” was the concept – no longer applies, comments economist Thomas Paley, author of last year’s “Plenty of Nothing: The Downsizing of the American Dream.”

The reason nuclear war never happened, he says, is because nuclear weapons were linked to U.S.-U.S.S.R. conventional weapons parity in the area where they were in direct conflict, Europe.

“But now, the U.S. has overwhelming superiority in conventional weapons ,” Palley says.

Therefore, in fighting like that in Ukraine, “Russia could face an unacceptable conventional war defeat, at which stage it would turn to use of tactical nuclear weapons to head off that outcome,” he continues. “The stakes are too high for silence.”

 

It’s a woeful, wonderful time of terror and hope.

I miss the terrible, tumultuous ’60s.

Are we counting on good odds or engaging in COVID-iocy?

What’s worse than being sick and tired is being dead.

It’s OK to be curious or concerned about monkeypox, an emergency. But it’s far less contagious than COVID-19 (only about 12,000 monkeypox cases have been reported, and no deaths).

And COVID is still killing people.

Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventoin (CDC) reports COVID has infected 92.8 million in the United States and killed 1 million Americans since 2020. More than 80% of all COVID cases since then could occur this year, according to the New York Times; David Wallace-Wells.

This summer’s dominant BA.5 variant – in Illinois, almost two-thirds of COVID cases are BA.5, CDC says – has resulted in new infections up 20% in weeks, 40,000 hospitalized, and deaths rising. Within this very infectious mutation, even masked people in closed spaces for a long time are at risk.

“This post-vaccine phase of COVID is worse than many expectations,” said George Mason University professor Tyle Cowen. “More than 300 Americans, and sometimes as many as 400, are dying each day.”

Virus expert Eric Topol of Scripps Research told Politico that BA.5 is “the worst version of the virus.”

BA.5’s symptoms are like allergies or sinus viruses: a sore throat, runny nose, congestion, but it’s serious.

“Although it may feel like COVID is now like annual flu, data show it is still causing more hospitalizations and deaths than the flu,” commented Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki:

Last month, the CDC reported 27,406 new cases in Illinois and increases in hospitalizations (to 13.1/100,000) and deaths (to 1.1/100,000). In west-central Illinois, community levels are high in Knox, Mason and Warren counties; medium for Fulton, McLean, Peoria and Tazewell; and low for Stark and Woodford.

Besides repiratory distress, COVID’s long-term effects can damage organs including the heart and brain, and the immune system.

“We are still learning a lot about the long-term effects of COVID,” says Peoria City/County Health Department Administrator Monica Hendrickson. “We have learned so much globally about impacts to the circulatory system (increased risk of blot clots) to COVID fog, and overall fatigue.”

 

EFFECTIVE TOOLS EXIST

Scientific advances have helped, Hendrickson says.

“We have learned a lot and developed multiple tools to assist in responding and treating COVID,” she says. “– rapid testing, vaccinations, boosters, and treatment – both medications such as Paxlovid but also care models needed in hospital settings. We continue to move closer to endemic phases, but I would just caution to remain optimistic. We are dealing with a virus and it doesn’t play fair.”

Yet there’s little sense of public urgency.

Another mask mandate or closed stores are doubtful, and the CDC eased guidelines on social-distancing, testing, contact-tracing and quarantines. Both K-12 schools and colleges are relaxing precautions. In Illinois, the state made available the University of Illinois’ saliva-based SHIELD testing, which 258 districts used last year. But fewer than 180 are participating now – none in central Illinois, SHIELD spokesman Steven Russell told the Community Word.

CDC recommendations haven’t always helped.

“Many people find the CDC recommendations confusing,” Hendrickson says. “CDC is providing guidance that is changing as more data and understanding is gained, the landscape over the course of the pandemic changes with new and improved interventions, vaccines and medications, and the CDC is balancing the impacts of the virus against creating secondary health issues and burdens.

“We all have different levels of risk and different willingness to accept risk.”

(In fact, last month CDC director Rochelle Walensky called for the agency to be revamped after an external review found it failed to respond quickly and clearly to COVID, and she faulted the agency for acting too much like an academic institution focusing on producing “data for publication” instead of “data for action… For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” she said.)

Health officials expect a major surge this fall, and the Biden administration hopes to offer updated boosters within weeks. But “if eligible, people should NOT wait to get a booster,” Hendrickson says. “With the variants being highly transmissible, you want to minimize the risk of severity – meaning likelihood of hospitalization. Vaccines continue to demonstrate their ability to prevent extremely severe illness.”

 

FATIGUE OR SURRENDER?

Now in Year 3 of the pandemic, denial of the danger persists despite the obvious: No one’s immune: COVID has sickened President Biden, Gov. Pritzker, and even Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top federal infectious-disease expert.

“You can’t deny reality,” Fauci said.

Ongoing vaccine hesitation, suspicion or doubt contributed to just 69.5% of Illinoisans being fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.

Health officials are boxed in, buffeted by business, politics and an impatient public feeling “COVID fatigue” at safety measures

“We have seen this for some time and [it] tends to cycle,” Hendrickson says. “Much of the ebb and flow relates to community mitigations, levels of virus, variants, access to vaccine/medication and on personal experience with COVID.”

The future is cloudy.

“Coronaviruses have always been circulating through the globe in some variation,” she continues. “But with this new virus and its variants, it is starting to mimic how we see, respond, and think to that of influenza.”

Officials such as epidemiologist Céline Gounder of the Kaiser Family Foundation say that by year’s end the country could see annual COVID fatalities reach between 100,000 and 250,000 deaths, making COVID the deadliest infectious disease.

“It’s important to realize that the virus is not going away and will remain a risk for the foreseeable future,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. “Getting infected is not inevitable, but ultimately it does come down to a trade-off: How much are you willing to give up to lower your risks of infection and for how long?”