FILE - IL Gov. Bruce Rauner
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks with members of the Quad-City Times editorial board in Davenport on Friday, March 9, 2018.
Andy Abeyta | Quad-City Times
An Illinois appellate court will now decide if the Rauner administration and the state’s largest public sector employee union are at impasse more than two years after an impasse declaration was sought by the state.
The contract the state had with the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Council 31 union when Gov. Bruce Rauner took office in 2015 expired that summer.
Rauner’s negotiators requested an impasse declaration in early 2016 after 67 days of negotiations. The Illinois Labor Relations Board took a recommendation from an administrative law judge and said subcontracting was an insurmountable issue leading to impasse on all issues. The union appealed.
AFSCME lawyer Stephen Yokich told the 4th District Appellate Court in Springfield on Wednesday that the two sides were still negotiating on various issues.
“Drug and alcohol testing and health and safety and on layoffs and on outstanding economics … overtime and retiree benefits,” Yokich said.
But Rauner attorney Tom Bradley told the three-judge panel the subcontracting, or outsourcing, issue was important to the administration. He said dismissing that is like going to a used car lot needing a car with air conditioning, but the dealer says they don’t have any, but will make a deal on a good stereo.
“You’d walk off the lot,” Bradley said. “Because the lack of air conditioning is an insurmountable obstacle for you buying any of those cars. You’ve got to be cool in the summertime.”
“That’s what the labor board found here under that critical single-issue test,” Bradley said.
Yokich also said the Rauner negotiators changed the  terms in the middle.
“When you’re dealing with parties that have an ongoing relationship, they need to know what the standards are because if they don't know what the standards are, they can’t guide their conduct in that relationship,” Yokich said. “If the standards for impasse are going to change, we should know that before we bargain so we can take the appropriate steps to protect our position.”
Yokich also noted that there were several unfair labor practices the Rauner administration was cited for, like not handing over information the union requested.
Bradley said the state offered up some information for things like how they’d determine an optional merit pay program.
“(Union negotiators) said they would never agree under any circumstances to a merit pay plan,” Bradley said. “And the (administrative law judge) expressly found that whatever this dispute was on information over merit pay, it didn’t cause the impasse between the parties and therefore should not preclude this court from affirming the labor board’s finding that the parties are at impasse.”
In the labor dispute process, the Rauner administration was trying to expedite an outcome, Bradley said, to save taxpayers money.
“The state was losing $25 million a month because it couldn't implement it’s health insurance plan,” Bradley said. “We need to move this process along to save taxpayer money.”
Coming in at an overall $3 billion difference between the two sides, Bradley said the divide was too great and the court must make a decision now “whether it will continue to even be possible in Illinois for public sector employers to ever reach impasse with their collective bargaining partners.”
If the Rauner administration were to win the case, it could impose contract terms on the union.
It’s unclear if the case will be decided by the appellate court before the November election, where Rauner faces off with AFSCME-endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker.
Regardless of how the three-panel rules in the months ahead, the case is likely to go the Illinois Supreme Court.