Mary Williams Walsh: All You Need

On November 8, voters in Illinois approved a constitutional amendment affirming workers’ “fundamental right” to collectively bargain over wages, hours, working conditions, “and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work.”

“No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes” these rights, the state constitution now says.

What’s wrong with that?

Philip K. Howard is glad you asked. In January, the lawyer, author, and good-government activist published a book, Not Accountable, which describes what he calls “the stranglehold” of public employees’ unions on state and local government and how it might be broken. (Howard is not concerned with unions in the private sector.)

“This is clearly unconstitutional,” he said when I asked him about Illinois’s new amendment. “It means that collective bargaining agreements pre-empt state laws.”

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