A voter casts a ballot at Broadway Armory Park in Chicago on Nov. 3, 2020. (Youngrae Kim / Chicago Tribune)

Received wisdom from experienced campaign hands says most voters don’t really start paying attention to politics until after Labor Day. Unlike the conventional wisdom regarding yard signs and their effectiveness, this observation about voters’ attention is backed up by data-driven political science. That’s particularly true with regard to state and local issues.

On Nov. 8, voters will cast ballots for governor and state legislative races as well as determine which of the major political parties will take control of Congress. But in Illinois, the most important votes cast will be for or against the vaguely named Amendment 1.

You might also have seen it called the Workers’ Rights Amendment. That name is inaccurate and biased because the amendment would overwhelmingly harm private sector workers while granting the public sector powers to make limitless demands of the public treasury, i.e., taxpayers.

My research showed it would guarantee a $2,100 property tax hike for the average Illinois homeowner over the next four years — a lowball estimate based on historical growth rates and projections for real estate prices. The true number would be higher, but it’s hard to say how much because no other state grants such extreme powers to government union bosses.

A more accurate name might be “the taxpayer submission amendment” or “the amendment to cement special interest control,” but those names aren’t exactly neutral either, so “Amendment 1″ is the best nonbiased media can do.

The amendment has four provisions. Proponents want to focus on the constitutional ban on “right to work laws” — a right Illinois workers don’t have in the private sector because there’s no law on the books. Ironically, this provision is the only one that doesn’t apply to the public sector. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Janus vs. AFSCME decision guarantees government workers the right to work, which means they can get a job without being forced to join a union or pay part of their wages involuntarily.

The other three provisions would apply only to government workers, however, because the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause prevents states from stepping on the toes of the National Labor Relations Act — which governs private-sector union rules.

The first of these provisions guarantees “all employees” a “fundamental right” to collectively bargain, putting it on a par with rights such as freedom of speech and innocence until proved guilty. Since “employees” isn’t defined or limited, it could even allow politicians or prisoners to unionize.

As crazy as that idea might sound, unionization attempts have hit political campaigns in recent years, and Illinois has been singled out by activists as a state with labor laws perfectly suited to force the creation of a union for prisoners performing labor while incarcerated.

The second provision guarantees the right for government unions to bargain over traditional topics such as wages and working conditions, as well as expanding it to include mandatory topics of “safety” and “economic welfare.” This is a backdoor way for government unions to control public policy through their contracts.

In recent years, the Chicago Teachers Union has made contract demands and gone on strike over subjects that are properly in the control of the people’s elected representatives. For example, the union bosses wanted to dictate COVID-19 reopening policy and control how many support staff members city schools hired.

Section 15 of the Illinois Labor Relations Act already says government union contracts prevail over state law when there’s a conflict. Amendment 1 is a pathway for the state’s most powerful special interest group to cement in the state constitution forever their ability to override the democratic will of the people, through closed-room deals.

That’s because the final provision says none of these rights can be scaled back — “diminished or impaired” — by the legislature in any way.

That language matches the state pension clause, and in many ways, Amendment 1 would be the pension clause on steroids.

The state’s $313 billion pension crisis is the main culprit for sky-high taxes and government debt in Illinois. The average Illinois family already pays the one of the highest tax burdens in the U.S.

Amendment 1 would guarantee state and local taxes rise faster and higher than they have already. Analysis of a decade of data across all 50 states shows a strong statistical association between both: the power of government unions and a state’s average effective property tax rate, and the amount of debt owed to government unions and the overall amount of debt per taxpayer.

The last thing Illinois taxpayers need is special interest groups with more control of the treasury.

Voters soundly rejected the progressive income tax in the last general election, despite a full-force effort from the powers that be to force it through with tens of millions of dollars in misleading advertising.

Amendment 1 is a backdoor way to force taxpayers to pony up the cash “fair tax” proponents still believe they are owed from private sector workers. But Illinois taxpayers stood up to the special interests before, showing they’re harder to fool than many think.

They are paying attention now.

Adam Schuster is vice president of policy for the Illinois Policy Institute.

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