McHenry County has unionized employees in four unions:
- Service Employees International Union (Valley Hi Nursing Home)
- Fraternal Order of Police (Sheriff’s Department)
- Local 150 of the Operating Engineers (Highway Department)
- Metropolitan Alliance of Police (MAP – Circuit Clerk’s Office)
580 employees paid a total of $288,732.09 in the most recent year.
$18 per pay period is what is deducted from union members in the Circuit Clerk’s Office.
Every two weeks, members of the Fraternal Order of Police pay $19.85 to the FOP.
SEIU members pay different amounts, depending on their salaries.
Local 150 members pay a membership fee and an administrative fee.
| Description | Total |
| FOP Labor Unit | 148,239.80 |
| Local 150 Dues – DOT Admin | 27,570.61 |
| Local 150 Dues – DOT Memb | 6,920.76 |
| Local 150 Dues – Facilities Admin | 12,771.54 |
| Local 150 Dues – Facilities Memb | 3,130.82 |
| MAP 515 Circuit Clerk Dues | 18,894.00 |
| SEIU Dues | 11,814.87 |
| SEIU Percent | 59,389.64 |
The number of employees in each union follows:
| # Employees | ||
| FOP | 290 | |
| Local 150 | 40 | |
| MAP | 47 | |
| SEIU | 215 |
The union contracts can be found on the McHenry County website here.
51 employee salso that have joined AFSME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) in Court Services and the County Clerk’s Office.
However neither department has a signed contract yet so no union dues are being collected.
It’s all tax money!
No, it isn’t tax money. It’s the employees’ money and they get to choose to pay dues or not out of their income.
When you buy a Ford vehicle, is the dues money that a Ford employee pays to the UAW your money? Or the employees’?
There is logic to support that this is tax money.
Buying a vehicle, or other goods and services, is voluntary.
By contrast, public education provision is a mandated obligation of all US taxpayers.
The dollar amounts of public employee total compensation packages are difficult to limit when the law provides no protection from school board members’ personal financial conflicts of interest.
Any amounts which reduce the public employees’ take-home pay are usually demanded back from taxpayers in pay and benefit increases, claiming ‘right to a living wage’.
The big difference is that this group of humans has the legal ability to force a different group of humans to provide those ‘rights’, under penalty of property seizure.
**There is logic to support that this is tax money.**
No, there really isn’t. The money belongs to the employee in the exact same way that it belongs to the Ford employee.
The difference you are missing is that there is No legal mandate to buy a truck, an artificially high priced truck, or a no-truck-purchase penalty of home seizure.
You’re making an arbitrary distinction using unrelated issues.
You can make whatever argument you want about whether or not unionization is appropriate for public employees. You and I would likely disagree – oh well. But that’s a different argument than whether or not union dues are tax dollars or the employee’s dollars.
The payment to the employees at ford are derived from the proceeds of discretionary purchases of a produxt in a competitive market.
The payments to the public employees at a school or government are derived entirely from tax dollars.
The amounts of public tax revenue are coerced and are a function of political corruption.
The tax dollars dollars would not exist to belong to the employees without coercion and anti-competitive monopoly protection.
**The tax dollars dollars would not exist to belong to the employees without coercion and anti-competitive monopoly protection.**
Even if this is true… that doesn’t change the point that once the money becomes salary/wages, its the employee’s money and not taxpayer’s money.
Do you think it is taxpayer’s dollars when a police office buys a car? What about groceries?
Alabama’s arguments are the strangest type of “logic” I have ever seen.
yes the money is literally an asset under ownership of the employee at that point.
Great – so susan has admitted that it is employee’s money, not tax money. We’re making progress.
I just find it absurd that y’all call union dues tax money but not grocery money. Its nonsensical.
The employees may choose to use what the BLS national average expenditure tables call ‘grocery money’
(that proportion of household income which is typically allocated to food)
on other expenditures such as Union Dues to support multimillion dollar present value annuity accounts for Union Administrators.
That is the employees’ choice.
They should not be coerced to spend money on dues which in, for example, Woodstock Il, is money which all other Americans nearly everywhere in America get to spend on pets, retirement savings, higher education savings, or health care.
Those stats are readily available online (mean and median household spending on Property Taxes: as a percentage of household income).
Woodstock median income households must spend 300% of national average on property taxes alone.
This necessarily cuts into income ‘needed’ for other life necessities.
I am overwhelmed by the savage indifference to the predatory actions of Illinois public employees’ masters (Unions, and Unions minions).
Nobody focuses on the taxpayers who are chewed to death over the years it takes them to realize what is happening.
Absurd, nonsensical…that is what I would consider focusing on the point that the tax money paying certain employees is then ‘their money’.
**Nobody focuses on the taxpayers**
*eyeroll*
First, union members are tax payers too. Second, your rant has little to do with the subject at hand, especially post-Janus.
Again – argue all you want about why public unions are bad. But using dues (paid for by union members, not tax dollars) as a proxy for that argument is silly.
1st term debate class tactics, strawman, ad hominem, etc., shame shame shame.
how about instead trying to work together toward a solution to a common problem rending our community and destroying actual humans?
individual people can work together and find solutions.
how about it. want to try?
Susan – you and I are going to fundamentally disagree on the role of unions. You blame the unions for most/all of the property tax problems in McHenry County, and I think that this is a completely inaccurate analysis of the problem.
When you the BIG BAD UNION as the primary problem, it will be difficult for us to find common ground and find solutions.
Again resorting to strawman
When you are ready to objectively analyze a problem rather than advocate for your persinal interests, lets talk.
Cool – you do the same.
The laws in Illinois are an even bigger problem than the unions.
If teachers weren’t allowed to strike, the school districts would have a much stronger hand in contract negotiations and we wouldn’t have some of the highest paid teachers in the country.
If arbitrators were allowed to consider ability to pay, we wouldn’t have some of the highest paid police and firefighters in the nation.
Illinois is broke, and we really shouldn’t be a salary leader for public employees until our fiscal house is in order.
Wow, union members pay dues. Mindbending, I tell ya.
**Wow, union members pay dues. Mindbending, I tell ya.**
LOL. BREAKING NEWS!