Rauner supporter Eden Martin calls for cutting state employee pay

R. Eden Martin made his career as a corporate lawyer, but his pastime in retirement has been target-shooting, with the bull’s-eye squarely on the back of public employees and our unions. In a new column in the Chicago Sun-Times, the longtime president of the Commercial Club of Chicago and its pension-slashing cheerleaders the Civic Committee urges voters to back billionaire Bruce Rauner for governor on the grounds that Rauner will cut the pay of state employees.

Martin projects Gov. Rauner saying:

“When the current collective-bargaining agreement expires, I’m going to ask our employees to take a reduction in wages. They won’t like it, but we have no alternative. … Some employees will retire or find work elsewhere. Maybe we won’t replace them. … Or we’ll outsource to some company or firm that will do the work at market rates. The unions probably won’t agree, but that will be my bargaining position. If we can’t reach an agreement, then we’ll be at impasse. Some may strike. … It won’t be pretty. Triage never is.”

In fact, Rauner has already said something similar. In March of last year, he said, “I may have to take a strike and shut down the government for a few weeks [in order to] redo everybody’s contract. … I’ll do it proudly because it’s the right thing to do.” (See video below.)

This March, Rauner told the Tribune that public-sector wages are “unreasonably high compared to counterparts in the private sector, and he vows to push for a cut in pay for public employees.”

In a response to Martin, AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer says the corporate lawyer is putting “ideology ahead of facts”:

“Martin omits any mention in his column of the essential services state employees provide, ignores years of budget cuts that have left Illinois with the nation’s smallest state work force per capita, falsely claims that state employees are paid more than private-sector workers and urges the next governor to violate Illinois labor law by refusing to bargain with our union.”

On pay, Bayer notes that "a recent study by the University of Illinois found that salaries paid to state employees are 13.5 percent lower than comparable private-sector workers”:

"Cutting the pay of middle-class workers will hurt the Illinois economy, not help it. The same U of I study found that public employment contributes $105 billion to the state’s GDP, and is responsible for sustaining 1.1 million jobs statewide, including 300,000 in the private sector."

So why are Bruce Rauner and his campaign donor Eden Martin attacking public service workers and pushing to destroy jobs and reduce middle-class wages? Among other reasons, because they don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes. As AFSCME Council 31 director Bayer wrote in the Sun-Times:

Contrary to Martin’s claim that “we have no alternative,” a much better option is reining in the more than $2 billion in tax breaks that Illinois gives to corporations each year. We should reject Martin’s baseless attacks on public servants who work hard to serve their communities and struggle to stay in the middle class. Instead, we should reform state and local taxes to end the handouts and ensure that rich corporate lawyers like Eden Martin, billionaires like Bruce Rauner, and the big businesses they represent start paying their fair share.

Video: Bruce Rauner says, "Shut down the government [to] redo everybody's contract."