The Ambria for Alderman campaign will be knocking doors between now and November to talk to voters about this Amendment while gathering petition signatures to make sure Ambria is on the ballot in February 2023.
This referendum will protect working class communities like ours from threats to wages, benefits, and dignity at work. Working conditions are our living conditions. Dangerous and illegal business practices impact all of us and unions protect us against them every day.
The Ambria for Alderman campaign supports workers’ rights to organize for a better life, which is why we support the state-wide ballot referenda to recognize this right to organize with coworkers for better wages and working conditions.
(a) Employees shall have the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing for the purpose of negotiating wages, hours, and working conditions, and to protect their economic welfare and safety at work. No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment and work place safety, including any law or ordinance that prohibits the execution or application of agreements between employers and labor organizations that represent employees requiring membership in an organization as a condition of employment. (b) The provisions of this Section are controlling over those of Section 6 of Article VII.
— Section 25. Workers' Rights (the proposed amendment)
The Ambria for Alderman campaign supports workers’ rights to organize for a better life, which is why we support the state-wide ballot referenda to recognize this right to organize with coworkers for better wages and working conditions.
This amendment will help raise the floor on wages, benefits, and working conditions by cracking down on union busting and banning “right to work” in the state of Illinois. “Right-to-work” laws originated in the 1940s as a strategy to maintain Jim Crow in the South, and divide and destroy labor power. “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans such as ‘right to work,’” Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1964. “It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions for everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer, and there are no civil rights.”
Ambria became a CPS teacher in 2018 and was elected as the CTU Local 1 union delegate for her school building in 2020. She saw firsthand how working conditions impact teachers, teaching assistants, SECAs, custodians, nurses, bus drivers, lunchroom workers, security guards, and of course the children and families they all serve. She also saw that even with a strong union and a contract in hand, workers have to organize day in and day out to ensure that agreement is being followed. CTU Local 1 members organize for students with special needs to get the education they are legally owed by holding school administration accountable when Special Education teachers are pulled away to substitute teach. They organize to get school staff paid when CPS gives them a check that is short.
When workers organize, they improve their workplace and they improve the product of their labors. We must protect their right to do so. That right is under attack in Right to Work states - let’s make sure that doesn’t happen in Illinois.
Will you help us talk to voters about the amendment? See our full schedule here to RSVP > or fill out the form below!
The Ambria for Alderman campaign will be knocking doors between now and November to talk to voters about this Amendment while gathering petition signatures to make sure Ambria is on the ballot in February 2023. Join us for an upcoming canvass or phonebank to turnout volunteers to canvasses. In September, we will phonebank on Monday evenings and canvass on Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons. In October, we will add a weekly canvass on Sunday afternoons, and in November we will add some Tuesday weekly evening canvasses.
Check out the events page to see our full schedule and RSVP, or fill out this form and we will follow up with you!
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