Politics truly does matter—a lot

I hear it more and more these days: A pox on both their houses. Many folks say they’re fed up with politicians, too many of whom promise one thing and do another.

There’s no doubt that politicians of both parties have let us down at one time or another. But honestly, we can’t paint them all with the same brush. Though few and far between, there have been Republican elected officials who stood up for working families. In fact, it was Republican Gov. Jim Thompson who signed into law legislation guaranteeing collective bargaining rights for public employees. 

Unfortunately, we’ve now entered an era where Donald Trump exercises near-total control over Republican politicians—and the results have been truly alarming. After countless campaign promises to fix the economy, President Trump has ended up slashing funding for public services, busting federal unions, and handing out tax breaks to billionaires. And all that while doing very little to improve the financial security of working Americans. 

The rest of us still have to worry about the cost of putting gas in our cars, buying our groceries, educating our children, making our rent or mortgage payments—the list goes on. Because AFSCME members have a union, most of us are able to count on annual raises that come close to keeping up with inflation. But the great majority of Americans don’t have a union (even though polls show they wish they did). And some of them have gone years without any pay increase at all. 

Certainly, Democrats don’t always get it right. Many of us can remember when then-Gov. Pat Quinn withheld a negotiated pay increase from AFSCME members (which we eventually got back!).

And now we find another Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, who worked constructively with AFSCME members to negotiate our current state collective bargaining agreement, suddenly acting to drastically downsize one of southern Illinois’ only care centers for individuals with disabilities and laying off some 250 AFSCME members (which we’re determined to stop!).

In between those two Democrats, though, we had Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and it was plain for all to see that there is a difference—a very big one. Rauner worked tirelessly to wipe out public sector unions entirely—beginning with ours. He stalled at the bargaining table, trying to force us out on strike while he plotted to bring in strikebreakers (in the end, we took him out!).

AFSCME has a long and solid record: When Republicans stand with us, they can win our support. When Democrats abandon us, we’ll leave them too.
But in today’s political landscape, there’s really no equivalency. And this was driven home to me most powerfully during our recent PEOPLE Conference to determine endorsements for the Nov. 3 general election. 

The actions we take in legislative races are based most fundamentally on voting records—how politicians actually voted on issues of importance to AFSCME members.  

Here’s what we found: 83% of Democrats in the Illinois House of Representatives have a 100% AFSCME voting record and 70% in the Senate. Republicans? Only a handful of them in the statehouse had at least a 64% voting record—and our union endorsed a number of those. 

In the U.S. Congress, Republicans never got higher than a 13% AFSCME voting record—and several had 0%.  They have become monolithic in their votes that hurt working people.

Just as important as voting records is who we can count on when the chips are down. And we saw that recently too. 

When members of AFSCME Local 1110 were on strike at Illinois State University earlier this year, Sens. Elgie Sims and Dave Koehler, along with Rep. Sharon Chung (Democrats all), showed up big time. They didn’t just talk the talk, they walked the walk—in one instance, very literally: Sen. Koehler and Rep. Chung actually walked with Local 1110 leader Chuck Carver right into the office of the university president to present petitions of support for the strikers with some 7,000 signatures. And Sen. Sims, a graduate of ISU, personally pressed the university president and trustees. 

So, yes I know, it’s particularly galling when elected officials who call themselves our “friends” let us down—and it’s particularly important to remember that our only true “friends” are those who steadily stand with us. 

That’s why the delegates to the PEOPLE Conference declined to make any endorsement in the governor’s race but instead pointed out the numerous instances in which Republican Darren Bailey has stood against the interests of AFSCME members.

In the end, this much is clear: The current administration in Washington, D.C.  has been the true “friend” of the billionaire class—not working people.

Every day they are doing far more damage to our families and our futures than we can fully grasp. Every day they remain in power, the prospects for our jobs and our communities get bleaker. 

So we’ve got a clear choice before us now: We can continue to gripe about both parties and become stuck in place. Or we can take action together to stand up for ourselves and to fight to shift some of that power our way, to make our state and our country fairer, to make our union stronger, and to make our prospects far, far better.