West Central Illinois Labor Council’s new president sees challenges, changes ahead

Small changes can make big differences, and early in his tenure as president of the West Central Illinois Labor Council, Chase Carlton looks ahead at the organization doing more to help union locals get involved, show solidarity with other unions, and strengthen the labor movement.

“We need to do more,” says Carlton, a 35-year-old member of Local 34 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, “– find interesting ways to operate beyond the status quo.”

The Aurora native, who now lives in Minier with his wife and two daughters, was recruited to be an IBEW delegate a couple of years ago, he says.

“I’d never heard of it,” he says.

He had been involved in his local, serving on its Political Action Committee and its exam board, but was new to the idea of Central Labor Councils. Nationwide, these regional coordinating bodies bring together unions from different industries to take action on local and statewide issues. Organized by county or regions, labor councils organize, mobilize and give working families another voice in the political process.

Now working industrial maintenance for a contractor at BioUrja (the former ADM plant), Carlton is about to move to Cargill in Bloomington. And he’s about to move to discuss next steps for the area labor council at its Feb. 20 planning and budget meeting.

“I think we can improve, and I’d like to get consensus on ideas moving forward.

“We need to get the word out,” he continues, “for the council and for unions, get more interest. Labor’s been good to me, and we all need to tell our friends about unions. It helps families with better pay and benefits, particularly in construction.”

He get some experience seeing consensus-building this winter at an Illinois AFL-CIO statewide Committee on Political Education (COPE) meeting in Countryside, where representatives from most of the 22 labor councils in the state met to discuss political endorsements.

“We voted to support representatives for the state house, state senate, and federal congressional districts as well as state supreme and appellate court judges,” he says. “It was good to see how this process works and it ended up being a really neat thing to experience in person.”

Illinois’ 22 labor councils also have been invited to take part with four other states in a pilot program to modernize the U.S. labor movement through labor councils, he says.

“We’ll share everyone’s experiences, get some guidance, and hopefully get more people involved and do more,” he says.

The West Central Illinois Labor Council covers unions in eight counties: Fulton, Marshall, Mason, McDonough, Peoria, Stark, Tazewell and Woodford.