Labor Board rejects Rauner delay on steps

AFSCME members won another important victory at the Labor Board. 

In a June 12 hearing in Springfield on the matter of step increases that Governor Rauner has illegally withheld from state employees since 2015, the state panel of the Illinois Labor Relations Board rejected the Rauner administration’s delay tactics, found that employees must be made whole, and sent the matter to a board compliance officer to determine a remedy.

The case—which began as a ULP charge filed by AFSCME against the Rauner Administration—returned to the Labor Board on remand from the Appellate Court, which ruled that Rauner violated the law in denying employees their step progression through the pay plan. The court directed the labor board to fashion a remedy.

The Rauner administration had asked the board to send the matter to an administrative law judge for another hearing. AFSCME made a strong and convincing argument that another ALJ hearing would be duplicative and would only delay making state workers whole for the steps they are owed.

The labor board sided with the union, rejecting Rauner’s delay tactic. At its next scheduled meeting in July, the board will formally refer the matter to a compliance officer, at which time AFSCME will immediately petition for a make-whole remedy. The compliance officer will then have 75 days to respond to the union’s petition.

AFSCME has made clear that the remedy should include putting all employees on the appropriate step at once, and making whole all employees for step increases they have been wrongly denied from July 2015 to the present.

"The labor board rightly rejected the Rauner administration’s delay tactics and made clear that the governor’s step freeze is wrong," AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Roberta Lynch said. “Our union will keep doing everything possible to make sure that employees are placed on the correct step and made whole for the increases they’ve been denied.”