This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 27th,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. It's been a year since Illinois adopted

Amendment 1. That amendment handed massive new authority to

public sector unions so much so that the collective bargaining agreements that

govern unionized employment in the state are in some ways more powerful than state laws.

Malay Smith directs labor policy at the Illinois Policy Institute.

We discuss the high hopes for public sector unions in other states

looking to follow the Illinois example.

You're going to have to walk us through the mechanics here because this is the kind of thing

that if you describe it to somebody it sounds like a couple of different issues

nationally sounds like certificate of need and it sounds like civil asset forfeiture and by that

I mean the first time you explain it to somebody they say that's not really how it works

And then you explain it a little bit further and then they do any any amount of independent research and they find out yes this is actually terrible

it's unconscionable and how could we allow this to happen that is the case with amendment

one in Illinois which has empowered unions to do what?

Amendment 1 is really the holy grail of union power.

What it has enabled government unions in Illinois to do is demand anything in negotiations.

So the amendment provides a fundamental right to negotiate over anything in collective bargaining for government unions.

And it's not defined in the amendment.

In fact, in an NPR debate during the election season one of their proponents

admitted that you just can't know what will be in these contracts if amendment

one were to pass and alas it did pass so anything could be in a government union

...