By Cole Lauterbach/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – Gov. Bruce Rauner has asked a judge to allow him to fire a number of public union employees he says were illegally hired by Gov. Pat Quinn.
Rauner is asking a judge to agree with his thought that union protection shouldn’t apply to politically placed employees who were transferred to positions within the Illinois Department of Transportation.
The governor’s actions stem from a court-appointed investigator’s conclusion last week that Quinn and other Democrats placed friends and family in high-paying state jobs that they weren’t always qualified for. House Speaker Michael Madigan, who was named in the report, would not comment on the story via his spokesman.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow and labor expert Dan DiSalvo said those workers are virtually guaranteed their jobs if the judge grants them union protection.
“You’d have to go through a bunch of steps to show that they weren’t doing their job well,” DiSalvo said. “That’s a time-consuming process that has to be legally documented. You essentially end up with a bunch of patronage appointees that you can’t get rid of.”
This also places the union in a precarious situation. They can either look at the clout-hired employees as having taken what would have otherwise been a union member’s job and support their removal or they can treat them as normal workers that have all the protections bestowed under their collective bargaining agreement, DiSalvo said.
“You could see how it could cut both ways,” he said.
In a statement, Rauner spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said the governor has been fighting to rid the state’s payrolls of these improper hires, ensuring that “rank-and-file state workers will be hired based on what they know, not who they know.”
Rauner said Monday that the cronyism hires need to stop.
“We want people who are very talented, very capable of providing high value for our taxpayers,” he said.
Rauner also was questioned about his hiring of a number of ex-employees of now Deputy Gov. Leslie Geissler Munger. Those employees were hired as non-union political employees called “Rutan-exempt,” which differ from the Quinn hires named in the report because they can be removed when a new administration takes office.
Rauner fired more than two dozen similarly hired IDOT workers who didn’t have union protection last year and eliminated the positions into which they were hired. Forty-two of the employees named in the report are still on the state’s payrolls.
