January 2 - 8, 2023

the recent annual United Nations climate

conference, held this year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt gave some indication that the world has woken up to the realities of global warming. Firmly on the table now and in the future is a "loss and damage" fund in which countries that have most contributed to global warming will compensate countries that are dealing with its effects. Experts also discuss why the world will likely soon blow past the 1.5 degrees Centigrade warming that will exacerbate the situation. The doubling of the global population since 1975 is also a factor.

Voice of the streets – Op-ed Dr. Victor Devinatz discusses the impact of the Workers' Rights Amendment on Illinois workers and trade unions.

The Playground

THIS PAGE: A direct air capture project in Iceland stores captured carbon dioxide underground in basalt formations, where chemical reactions mineralize it (Climeworks photo). DISCLAIMER: The views, opinions, positions or strategies expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of StreetWise.

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT RECOMMENDATIONS

That Sure is Swell!

Abraham – 'Being Mickey' Abraham’s latest series is inundated with Mickey-like characters and references. Why Mickey? It is a recognizable char acter that has frequently made appearances in Abraham’s work since the early 2000s. The artist’s love of Pop Art and cartoons from the 1950s and 60s plays a large role in the types of characters he creates. In his college years, Pop Art woke him up. The style was different from normal landscapes and portraits. It was revolutionary in its sudden impact, and it broke Fine Art and commercial art boundaries, something that really resonated with the artist. The body of work in "Being Mickey" harkens back to that memory, but with a more refined approach as his own creative process has matured. The artist’s art-making process is through automatism, as defined by the Surrealist movement. It is rooted in pop culture and incorporates the characters that enter his mind within an environment that is sometimes surreal, sometimes uncomfortable. "Being Mickey" transports us into the artist’s mind, providing a glimpse into that subconscious process, and is a collaboration between Elephant Room Gallery and Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. This exhibit is free to attend. For more information or to schedule a viewing appointment, email art@ epiphanychi.com.

Women Composers!

Alsop Conducts Wolfe: Her Story Conductor Marin Alsop (pictured) leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in three pivotal works by 21st-century women composers. "This Midnight Hour," a single-movement orchestral composition by former Mead Composer-in-Residence Anna Clyne, evokes a visual journey for the listener. Mead Composer-in-Residence Jessie Montgomery’s "Rounds," commissioned for and performed by pianist Awadagin Pratt, is inspired by the constancy, rhythms and duality of life that impact all living things. Closing the program is "Her Story," a CSO co-commission by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe that captures the passion and perseverance of women who have led the fight for representation and gender equality. A 40-minute theatrical experience for orchestra and women’s vocal ensemble, the piece is the latest in a series of compositions by Wolfe that highlights monumental and turbulent moments in American history. Tickets start at $45.

Build Your Own Fort!

Filament Theatre’s ‘FORTS: Build Your Adventure’ and ‘FORTS: Adult Night’ Chicago’s Filament Theatre returns with its hit immersive play experience for families "FORTS: Build Your Own Adventure," in which Filament transforms into a play space for children and parents to build new worlds using cardboard boxes, sheets, clotheslines and more, on January 8. And back by popular demand, "FORTS: Adult Night," a BYOB version specifically for adults to reconnect with the imagination of their youth, returns Friday, January 6. "FORTS: Adult Night Experience" allows audiences to enjoy a world of play and creation as Filament Theatre transforms into a fort-building fantasy. BYOB Adult nights occur at 7 p.m. every Friday through January 20. Participants in FORTS: Adult Night must be 21+. Performances are BYOB. Tickets cost $10-15 at filamenttheatre.org/adultforts

To Love Life!

David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020 – LAST CHANCE

"David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020," is an exhibition of new work by one of England’s most versatile and inventive artists of the postwar era. In this latest project, Hockney rendered the richness of the season from the bucolic surroundings of rural Normandy on his iPad. Organized in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the exhibit is on view at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave., through January 9, and explores Hockney’s innovative approach to “painting” across 116 works, including two animated videos. This series of work coincided with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Hockney’s exploration offers a contrast to the isolation and loss many experienced during this same period. His paintings are a celebration of the joy of the natural world, which reminds us, as he does himself in one of his often-repeated phrases, to “love life.” Free with museum admission.

Compiled by Sarah Linde & Dave Hamilton

Let Me Take You On An Icecapade!

McCormick Tribune Ice Rink

Skating at the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink in Millennium Park runs through March 5 (weather permitting). Admission is free, but online reservation tickets are required. Visit www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/millennium_park10.html to make your reservations. Snacks and hot drinks will be available from Momentum Coffee and Millennium Hall. Additionally, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events will present free lessons (reservations required) from 9-10 a.m. on most Saturdays and Sundays, teaching beginner and intermediate ice skating and hockey skills. Free lessons are made possible by the McDonald’s Active Lifestyles Endowment, managed by the Millennium Park Foundation.

Black Writers in Focus!

‘Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice’ Immerse yourself in “Dark Testament: A Century of Black Writers on Justice” and honor the significant contributions of Black writers to American literature and history. Explore racial injustice in America by examining the work of Black American writers from the end of the Civil War through the Civil Rights Movement. Featuring original artwork, augmented reality and other interactive elements to enliven and enrich the experience, Dark Testament brings the work of writers past and present to life in new and exciting ways. This exhibit, running through September 17, is included with museum admission: Adults $14, Seniors/Students/ Teachers $9, Children 12 and under free at the American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave.

What A Drag!

‘In The Family’

In the Family is a drag theater production written by Tirrany Reigns and directed by Ramona Mirage, produced in tandem with PrideArts. It follows a drag family facing the trials, tribulations, and hangovers that come from a major loss in the family and a raucous New Year’s Eve. Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. through January 15 at Pride Arts Center, 4139 N. Broadway. Tickets are $20 at pridearts.org.

Explore the Color Wheel!

Luftwerk: ‘Exact Dutch Yellow’ “Exact Dutch Yellow” is a new immersive exhibition by the Chicago-based collaborative Petra Bachmaier & Sean Gallero of Luftwerk Studio. Drawing upon the scientific history of color and color theory, the exhibition explores how we perceive the natural world today. The exhibit hall at The Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., will feature a series of immersive color and light installations using botanical colors in combination with color-changing light conditions that transform into abstracted, atmospheric experiences, using natural pigments, exploring the phenomenon of light and color in the sky, informed by a holistic perception of the natural world and an interconnected ecology. Through January 29, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily. FREE.

Artist's Collective!

‘Even So’

Curated by Chicago artist CZR PRZ and Epiphany Center for the Arts, “Even So” showcases six Chicago-based artists whose works defy easy categorization. Opening in the Guild Room and running through February 18, the exhibition features paintings and sculpture by Sara Hoffman, Murrz, Nate Otto, Diego Penuela, Czr Prz and Rawooh. These artists make work that thrives in the fertile ground between figuration and abstraction, precision and painterliness, illustration and mystery. W hat results are lively objects that suggest a wide array of cultural relationships and potential influences, ranging from mid-century color field painting to anime, street art and hip hop. This exhibit is free to attend at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. To schedule a viewing appointment, please visit art@epiphanychi.com

Russ: Let me on the mic, fellas. Look, my first wish is to attend more games with The Crew. I’m always working or taking care of things at home, so, this year—until I can get back to a game with the Crew—I’m going to a Blackhawks game with one of my customers.

Patrick: When was the last time you were at a game?

Russ: Shoot, the last time me and you went there, met up with a few others, and watched the White Sox get smashed in the last game of the season. That was my last game.

Donald: Well, I love the holiday season. The snow. The carolers. The same cartoon specials that come on every year. “Inside warmth” after the snow-love, decorating the tree, spending time with family—I enjoy it all. In regard to sports, it seems to be a hustle-bustle of activity going on during these months, which I dig. I dig watching the NBA teams play on Christmas Day, plus the general shift in sports us regular folks play—

John: Don, what sports are you playing? (Laughter.)

Donald: I play sports in my head all the time, and I’m still damn good. But, no, my holiday wish is that everyone— sports-related or not—enjoy this season. Allow the hustlebustle to ease and the holiday cheer to float around and into us.

Russ: Ok, here is my second wish: for those who don’t have cable TV to be able to watch some of these sporting events. If you don’t have cable TV, you won’t be able to watch Thursday Night Football, and I don’t think that’s right.

Patrick: So, mine is that the Bulls and the Lakers get it going solid. The Bulls started out somewhat well, in the sense that we could tell they had some talent on the team and could be better than last year. Something happened, though, to that positive feeling. Doesn’t

seem to be a connection there amongst the team.

John: You’re right. They have a few nice pieces, but the championship is not coming through Chicago.

Patrick: Not at all. Now, with the Lakers, they began horribly, it continued on that path… but, then, things changed a bit and the Lakers began winning. They have a tough December in store, so I’m monitoring the situation through the New Year.

Donald: The Lakers won’t do much of nothing. The Bulls either. But since this is your wish for the season, then I’ll send good vibes for those two teams to solidify…but only a lil’bit for the Lakers.

Patrick: Deal. So, John, what about you? What’s your holiday wish?

John: I’m going to piggyback

able to watch. We know it’s all about the money. These events are shows we would have been able to watch for free not that long ago; now, we have to have cable. And cable ain’t free by no stretch of the imagination.

Russ: I know, right?

Patrick: I know this is a SportsWise venture. However, my wish is just outside of that. I want for us—the city, the county, the state, the country, the friggin’ planet—to work toward a 100% no-homeless world. The wish is that we—at the very least—progress toward this ideal.

Russ: Simple enough.

John: I like it.

Any comments or suggestions? Email pedwards@streetwise.org

Rashanah Baldwin

Vendors Russell Adams, John Hagan and Donald Morris chat about the world of sports with Executive Assistant Patrick Edwards.

on Russ’s wish. Folks should be able to watch some of these sporting events they no longer are

COP27’s ‘loss and damage’ fund be a breakthrough – or another

by Adil Najam

Developing nations were justifiably jubilant at the close of COP27 as negotiators from wealthy countries around the world agreed for the first time to establish a dedicated “loss and damage” fund for vulnerable countries harmed by climate change.

It was an important and hard fought acknowledgment of the damage – and of who bears at least some responsibility for the cost.

But the fund might not materialize in the way that developing countries hope.

I study global environmental policy and have been following climate negotiations from their inception at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Here’s what’s in the agreement reached at COP27, the United Nations climate talks in Egypt in November 2022, and why it holds much promise but very few commitments.

3 Key Questions

All decisions at these U.N. climate conferences – always – are promissory notes. And the legacy of climate negotiations is one of promises not kept.

This promise, welcome as it is, is particularly vague and unconvincing, even by U.N. standards.

Essentially, the agreement only begins the process of establishing a fund. The implementable decision is to set up a “transitional committee,” which is tasked with making recommendations for the world to consider at the 2023 climate conference, COP28, in Dubai.

Importantly for wealthy countries, the text avoids terms like “liability” and “compensation.” Those had been red lines for the United States. The most important operational questions were also left to 2023. Three, in particular, are likely to hound the next COP.

1) Who will pay into this new fund?

Developed countries have made it very clear that the fund will be voluntary and should not be restricted only to developed country contributions. Given that the much-trumpeted US$100 billion a year that wealthy nations promised in 2015 to provide for developing nations has not yet materialized, believing that rich countries will be pouring their heart into this new venture seems to be yet another triumph of hope over experience.

for developing countries could empty climate promise

2) The fund will be new, but will it be additional?

It is not at all clear if money in the fund will be “new” money or simply aid already committed for other issues and shifted to the fund. In fact, the COP27 language could easily be read as favoring arrangements that “complement and include” existing sources rather than new and additional financing.

3) Who would receive support from the fund?

As climate disasters increase all over the world, we could tragically get into disasters competing with disasters – is my drought more urgent than your flood? – unless explicit principles of climate justice and the Polluter Pays Principle are clearly established.

Why now?

Acknowledgment that countries whose excessive emissions have been causing climate change have a responsibility to pay for damages imposed on poorer nations has been a perennial demand of developing countries in climate negotiations. In fact, a paragraph on “loss and damage” was also included in the 2015 Paris Agreement signed at COP21.

What COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, has done is to ensure that the idea of loss and damage will be a central feature of all future climate negotiations. That is big.

Seasoned observers left Sharm el-Sheikh wondering how developing countries were able to push the loss and damage agenda so successfully at COP27 when it has been so firmly resisted by large emitter countries like the United States for so long.

The logic of climate justice has always been impeccable: The countries that have contributed most to creating the problem are a near mirror opposite of those who face the most imminent risk of climatic loss and damage. So, what changed?

At least three things made COP27 the perfect time for this issue to ripen.

First, an unrelenting series of climate disasters have erased all doubts that we are now firmly in what I have been calling the “age of adaptation.” Climate impacts are no longer just a threat for tomorrow; they are a reality to be dealt with today.

Second, the devastating floods this summer that inundated a third of my home country of Pakistan provided the world with an immediate and extremely visual sense of what climate impacts can look like, particularly for the most vulnerable people. They affected 33 million people and are expected to cost over $16 billion.

The floods, in addition to a spate of other recent climate calamities, provided developing countries – which happened to be represented at COP27 by an energized Pakistan as the chair of the “G-77 plus China,” a coalition of more than 170 developing countries – with the motivation and the authority to push a loss and damage agenda more vigorously than ever before.

Finally, it is possible that COP-fatigue also played a role. Industrialized countries –particularly the U.S. and members of the European Union (which have traditionally blocked discussions of loss and damage) remain distracted by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and seemed to show less immediate resistance than in the past.

Importantly, for now, developing countries got what they wanted: a fund for loss and damage. And developed countries were able to avoid what they have always been unwilling to give: any concrete funding commitments or any acknowledgment of responsibility for reparations.

Both can go home and declare victory. But not for long.

After COP27, all signs past the 1.5 degrees here’s what we can do about it

by Peter Schlosser

The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen.

Part of the problem was evident at COP27, the United Nations climate conference in Egypt.

While nations’ climate negotiators were successfully fighting to “keep 1.5 alive” as the global goal in the official agreement, reached Nov. 20, 2022, some of their countries were negotiating new fossil fuel deals, driven in part by the global energy crisis. Any expansion of fossil fuels – the primary driver of climate change – makes keeping warming under 1.5 C (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial times, much harder.

Attempts at the climate talks to get all countries to agree to phase out coal, oil, natural gas and all fossil fuel subsidies failed. And countries have done little to strengthen their commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the past year.

Real as the jubilation is for developing countries, it is also tempered. And rightly so.

For developing countries, there is a real danger that this turns out to be another “placebo fund,” to use Oxford University researcher Benito Müller’s term – an agreed-to funding arrangement without any agreed-to funding commitments.

In 2001, for example, developing countries had been delighted when three funds were established: a climate fund to support least developed countries, a Special Climate Change Fund, and an Adaptation Fund. None ever reached the promised scale.

Writing prior to COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, Müller boldly declared that developing countries would never again “settle for more ‘placebo funds.’” I very much hope he has not been proven wrong at Sharm el-Sheikh.

Adil Najam is Professor of International Relations, Boston University. Courtesy of The Conversation.

All signs now point toward a scenario in which the world will overshoot the 1.5 C limit, likely by a large amount. The World Meteorological Organization estimates global temperatures have a 5050 chance of reaching 1.5C of warming, at least temporarily, in the next five years.

That doesn’t mean humanity can just give up.

Why 1.5 degrees?

We know from the reconstruction of historical climate records that, over the past 12,000 years, life was able to thrive on Earth at a global annual average temperature of around 14 C (57 F). As one would expect from the behavior of a complex system, the temperatures varied, but they never warmed by more than about 1.5 C during this relatively stable climate regime.

Today, with the world 1.2 C warmer than pre-industrial times, people are already experiencing the effects of climate change in more locations,

Is it just a ‘placebo fund’?

Activists from developing nations pressed for a loss and damage fund during the COP27 U.N. climate conference, the first held in Africa (AP Photo/Peter Dejong).

signs point to world blowing degrees global warming limit –can still

Average temperature anomaly, Global Global average land-sea temperature anomaly relative to the 1961-1990 average temperature

more forms and at higher frequencies and amplitudes.

Climate model projections clearly show that warming beyond 1.5 C will dramatically increase the risk of extreme weather events, more frequent wildfires with higher intensity, sea level rise, and changes in flood and drought patterns with implications for food systems collapse, among other adverse impacts.

Steep reductions and negative emissions

Meeting the 1.5 goal at this point will require steep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, but that alone isn’t enough. It will also require “negative emissions” to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide that human activities have already put into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for decades to centuries, so just stopping emissions doesn’t stop its warming effect. Technology exists that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and lock it away. It’s still only operating at a very small scale, but corporate agreements like Microsoft’s 10-year commitment to pay for carbon removed could help scale it up.

A report in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determined that meeting the 1.5 C goal would require cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 50% globally by 2030 – plus significant negative emissions from both technology and natural sources by 2050 up to about half of present-day emissions.

Can we still hold warming to 1.5 C?

Upper Median Lower

Since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, countries have made some progress in their pledges to reduce emissions, but way too slowly to keep warming below 1.5 C. Carbon dioxide emissions are still rising, as are carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program highlights the shortfalls. The world is on track to produce 58 gigatons of carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 – more than twice where it should be for the path to 1.5 C. The result would be an average global temperature increase of 2.7 C (4.9 F) in this century -- nearly double the 1.5 C target.

Global emissions aren’t close to plateauing, and with the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, it is very likely that the world will reach the 1.5 C warming level within the next five to 10 years.

Peter Schlosser is Vice President and Vice Provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Courtesy of the Conversation.

Source: Hadley Centre (HadCRUT4)

Note: The red line represents the median average temperature change, and grey lines represent the upper and lower 95% confidence intervals. OurWorldInData.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions

8 billion people: Four ways climate and population growth combine public health, with global consequences

by Maureen Lichtveld

There are questions that worry me profoundly as a population- and environmental-health scientist.

Will we have enough food for a growing global population? How will we take care of more people in the next pandemic? What will heat do to millions with hypertension? Will countries wage water wars because of increasing droughts?

These risks all have three things in common: health, climate change and a growing population that the United Nations determined passed 8 billion people in November 2022 – double the population of just 48 years ago.

In my 40-year career, first working in the Amazon rainforest and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and then in academia, I have encountered many public health threats, but none so intransigent and pervasive as climate change.

Of the multitude of climate-related adverse health effects, the following four represent the greatest public health concerns for a growing population.

Infectious diseases

Researchers have found that over half of all human infectious diseases can be worsened by climate change.

Flooding, for example, can affect water quality and the habitats where dangerous bacteria and vectors like mosquitoes can breed and transmit infectious diseases to people.

Dengue, a painful mosquito-borne viral disease that sickens about 100 million people a year, becomes more common in warm, wet environments. Its R0, or basic reproduction number – a gauge of how quickly it spreads – increased by about 12% from the 1950s to the average in 2012-2021, according to the 2022 Lancet Countdown report. Malaria’s season expanded by 31% in highland areas of Latin America and nearly 14% in Africa’s highlands as temperatures rose over the same period.

Flooding can also spread waterborne organisms that cause hepatitis and diarrheal diseases, such as cholera, particularly when large numbers of people are displaced by disasters and living in areas with poor water quality for drinking or washing.

Droughts, too, can degrade drinking water quality. As a result, more rodent populations enter into human communities in search of food, increasing the potential to spread hantavirus.

Extreme heat

Another serious health risk is rising temperatures.

Excessive heat can exacerbate existing health problems, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. And when heat stress becomes heat stroke, it can damage the heart, brain and kidneys and become lethal.

Today, about 30% of the global population is exposed to potentially deadly heat stress each year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that percentage will rise to at least 48% and as high as 76% by the end of this century.

In addition to lives lost, heat exposure was projected to have resulted in 470 billion potential work hours lost globally in 2021, with associated income losses totaling up to US$669 billion. As populations grow and heat rises, more people will be relying on air conditioning powered by fossil fuels, which further contributes to climate change.

Food and water security

Heat also affects food and water security for a growing population.

The Lancet review found that high temperatures in 2021 shortened the growing season by about 9.3 days on average for corn, or maize, and six days for wheat compared with the 1981-2020 average. Warming oceans, meanwhile, can kill shellfish and shift fisheries that coastal communities rely on. Heat waves in 2020 alone resulted in 98 million more people facing food insecurity compared with the 1981-2010 average.

Rising temperatures also affect fresh water supplies through evaporation and by shrinking mountain glaciers and snowpack that historically have kept water flowing through the summer months.

A farmer as drought

climate change combine to threaten consequences

Water scarcity and drought have the potential to displace almost 700 million people by 2030, according to U.N. estimates. Combined with population growth and growing energy needs, they can also fuel geopolitical conflicts as countries face food shortages and compete for water.

Poor air quality

Air pollution can be exacerbated by the drivers of climate change. Hot weather and the same fossil fuel gases warming the planet contribute to ground-level ozone, a key component of smog. That can aggravate allergies, asthma and other respiratory problems, as well as cardiovascular disease.

Wildfires fueled by hot, dry landscapes add to the air pollution health risk. Wildfire smoke is laden with tiny particles that can travel deep into the lungs, causing heart and respiratory problems.

What can we do about it?

Many groups and medical experts are working to counter this cascade of negative climate consequences on human health.

The U.S. National Academy of Medicine has embarked on an ambitious grand challenge in regard to climate change, human health, and equity to ramp up research. At many academic institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Public Health, where I am dean, climate and health are being embedded in research, teaching and service.

Addressing the health burden on low- and middle-income countries is pivotal. Often, the most vulnerable people in

these countries face the greatest harms from climate change without having the resources to protect their health and environment. Population growth can deepen these iniquities.

Adaptation assessments can help high-risk countries prepare for the effects of climate change. Development groups are also leading projects to expand the cultivation of crops that can thrive in dry conditions. The Pan American Health Organization, which focuses on the Caribbean, is an example of how countries are working to reduce communicable diseases and advance regional capacity to counter the impact of climate change.

Ultimately, reducing the health risks will require reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change.

Countries worldwide committed in 1992 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty years later, global emissions are only beginning to flatten, and communities around the world are increasingly suffering extreme heat waves and devastating floods and droughts.

The U.N. climate change talks, which in my view aren’t focusing enough on health, can help bring attention to key climate impacts that harm health. As U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted: While we celebrate our advances, “at the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another.”

Maureen Lichtveld is Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. Samantha Totoni, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, contributed to this article.

farmer in Zimbabwe switched to sorghum, a grain crop that can thrive in dry conditions, drought withered other crops in 2019 (Jekesai Njikizana/AFP via Getty Images).

The Workers’ Rights Amendment’s Meaning for Illinois’ Workers and Trade Unions op-ed

by Dr. Victor G. Devinatz

In the 2022 national midterm elections, a “Red Wave,” in which the U.S. House of Representatives was predicted to be decisively won by the Republicans, never materialized. Although the Republicans achieved a razor-thin House majority, the U.S. Senate remained in Democratic hands. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker easily defeated Darren Bailey, with the Democrats retaining super majorities in the General Assembly. But also, on the Illinois ballot was Amendment 1, Right to Collective Bargaining Measure, more popularly known as the Workers’ Rights Amendment (WRA). Obtaining 58.4% approval of those voting on the amendment, the WRA, to be implemented, required that either 60% of voters back the amendment or a simple majority of all persons voting in the election had to support the WRA; it passed by meeting the latter criterion. In a nutshell, the WRA protects the rights of private and public sector workers to unionize and to collectively bargain on issues impacting their economic well-being and safety. Additionally, with this amendment, Illinois became the first U.S. state to prohibit right-to-work (RTW) laws for private sector employees. RTW legislation permits employees to neither join unions nor to tender dues or fees to them even though they have collective bargaining coverage. The 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME essentially implemented a RTW law for all U.S. public sector employees, which takes precedence over state-level measures. That said, the benefits that workers and unions ultimately derive from the WRA will depend on the workers’ own initiative in the coming years.

Although WRA opponents argued that the amendment’s implementation would lead to immense political power for public sector union leaders, the amendment was a purely defensive action by the state’s unions to prevent the further erosion of an already weakened trade union movement. After Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner’s election in 2014, he attempted unsuccessfully to form local “right to work zones” after realizing that he could not get a state RTW law through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. Moreover, Act 10’s passage in 2011 under Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker severely restricted public sector union collective bargaining rights, leading to a dramatic public union membership decline. To prevent similar things from occurring in Illinois, the state’s unions were motivated to codify collective bargaining rights in the Illinois constitution.

Unsurprisingly, several business and conservative forces, such as The Heritage Foundation, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI), The Wall Street Journal, Crain’s Chicago Business, and the Chicago Tribune, vigorously opposed the constitutional amendment. The IPI contended that implementing this amendment would guarantee a total property tax increase of at least $2,149 from 2023 to 2026, regardless of which party won in November. This alleged tax increase, ac-

cording to the IPI, would result from the amendment granting Illinois public sector unions unparalleled collective bargaining powers compared with public unions in other U.S. states. Moreover, the IPI argued that the WRA includes several provisions that would result in public sector union leaders essentially controlling Illinois by permitting them to demand essentially anything they desired in contract negotiations through giving them a permanent right to strike to achieve their demands.

According to the most recent Gallup survey, 71% of Americans approve of unions, the highest rate since 1965, which might be one reason for the recent union organizing successes at Amazon, Starbucks, and other companies. That said, the WRA’s passage did not merely result from the public’s increased goodwill towards labor organizations. Rather, a coordinated campaign conducted by Vote Yes for Workers’ Rights, an alliance of unions and progressive organizations directed by the Illinois AFL-CIO and the Chicago Federation of Labor, knocked on doors, operated phone banks, sent direct mailings to voters’ homes, and ran television advertisements across Illinois.

So, what kind of protections does the WRA offer to employees? While the amendment prevents the passage of a RTW law in Illinois, it also might lead to including additional topics in contract negotiations. Although the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) affords collective bargaining coverage to most U.S. private sector employees, the WRA could provide unionization and collective bargaining rights to private sector employees excluded by the NLRA, such as independent contractors, supervisory employees as well as agricultural and domestic workers. Additionally, if the U.S. Congress ever abolished the NLRA, Illinois private sector employees would retain their collective bargaining rights under the WRA. The WRA will not, however, result in the elimination of many private sector employers’ vigorous opposition to unionization.

Nevertheless, the WRA’s success ultimately depends on rankand-file worker activity. Although the NLRA granted private sector employees legal rights, it was not until the sit-down strike wave from 1936 to 1938, organized by the employees themselves, that employers recognized unions. As in the late 1930s, it must be the employees themselves, not the union leaders, who lead unionization drives and organize collective actions in pushing the WRA to its democratic limits in enforcing workers’ unionization and collective bargaining rights.

Dr. Victor G. Devinatz is Distinguished Professor of Management, specializing in labor relations, and was the Hobart and Marian Gardner Hinderliter Endowed Professor (2014-2015) at Illinois State University. He can be contacted at vgdevin@ilstu.edu.

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