To Bruce Rauner, Who Would Run for Illinois Governor: (A Response by Mr. Keith Kelleher, President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana)
“No
one should be surprised that Bruce Rauner set foot in the Illinois governor's
race recently by trampling all over the state's working families. Despite the
billionaire venture capitalist's efforts to portray himself as a regular guy,
he took a special pot shot at our union, which represents low-wage health care
and child-care workers throughout Illinois. It was a glaring illustration of
how little Rauner understands the plight of the state's poor and working class.
Our
members earn low wages — sometimes poverty wages — and they don't belong to the
state pension systems that Rauner decries. In return for this meager living,
they provide vital health care to hospital patients, nursing-home residents,
seniors and people with disabilities, and help educate low-income children
through child care and early-learning programs.
These
are precisely the people who have been shortchanged by Illinois' chronic budget
morass, and yet Rauner somehow claims they have too much power in Springfield.
While there is no doubt that the union has been instrumental in improving our
members' wages, working conditions and the quality of care for thousands of
seniors and people with disabilities, these workers remain poor and cannot
equal the power of Rauner's billions.
Rauner's
anti-union vitriol is little more than a rich man's distaste for the
less-fortunate."
(By
permission of Keith Kellher, president, SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana.)
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