Illi­nois Gov. Bruce Rauner launched the first of his promised attacks on the state’s labor unions on Mon­day with an exec­u­tive order intend­ed to end the legal require­ment for Illi­nois state work­ers who are not mem­bers of unions to pay agency or ​“fair share” fees to cov­er the costs to the union of bar­gain­ing on their behalf. The action is a shot across the bow by a gov­er­nor who clear­ly intends to go to war with orga­nized labor in Illinois.

Cur­rent­ly, all union­ized state employ­ees must pay an agency fee. Accord­ing to the gov­er­nor, 6,500 work­ers are now pay­ing this fee — what he dubs an ​“unfair share” — to one of the sev­er­al unions rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant share of the state’s work­force, which num­bers almost 78,000. Until the courts rule on his exec­u­tive order, Rauner said the dues of the 6,500 will be held in escrow.

Anti-union strate­gists obvi­ous­ly hope that more work­ers will choose to forego pay­ing dues if they can, but some unions, includ­ing the largest pub­lic sec­tor union in the state, AFSCME Coun­cil 31 (Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­ty and Munic­i­pal Employ­ees), say they have already start­ed an esca­lat­ed plan of inter­nal orga­niz­ing to strength­en sup­port for the union and work­er solidarity.

“Bruce Rauner’s scheme to strip the rights of state work­ers and weak­en their unions by exec­u­tive order is a bla­tant­ly ille­gal abuse of pow­er,” AFSCME Coun­cil 31 direc­tor Rober­ta Lynch said. ​“Per­haps as a pri­vate equi­ty CEO Rauner was accus­tomed to ignor­ing legal and eth­i­cal stan­dards, but Illi­nois is still a democ­ra­cy and its laws have mean­ing. … Our union and all orga­nized labor will stand togeth­er with those who believe in democ­ra­cy to over­turn Bruce Rauner’s ille­gal action and restore the integri­ty of the rule of law.”

Rauner not only chose to make the attack on orga­nized labor one of his ear­li­est actions, but also chose to bypass the state leg­is­la­ture, where Democ­rats con­trol both hous­es and could have been expect­ed to reject this pub­lic sec­tor equiv­a­lent of the ​“right-to-work” laws for pri­vate sec­tor workers.

Rauner also announced in his State of the State address last week that he will encour­age local gov­ern­ments to pass such right-to-work laws, refer­ring to them as ​“employ­ee empow­er­ment zones,” which per­mit work­ers to refuse to pay any fee to unions that, by fed­er­al law, are required to rep­re­sent them if the union is the rec­og­nized bar­gain­ing agent in the workplace.

The gov­er­nor also appears anx­ious to head off any union moves to chal­lenge his exec­u­tive order in court by hir­ing a legal team, led by a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, Dan Webb, that will ask the Illi­nois Supreme Court to make a ​“declara­to­ry judg­ment” that his actions are constitutional.

Rauner’s case is built on the 5 – 4 rul­ing by the Supreme Court last year in the case of Har­ris v. Quinn that, in the case of home health employ­ees in Illi­nois, their union — a branch of the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU) — could not col­lect ​“fair share” pay­ments large­ly because they were not con­ven­tion­al employees.

Rauner argues that the same argu­ment should apply to all state workers.

“Forced union dues are a crit­i­cal cog in the cor­rupt bar­gain that is crush­ing tax­pay­ers,” he said in a state­ment. ​“Gov­ern­ment union bar­gain­ing and gov­ern­ment union polit­i­cal activ­i­ty are inex­orably linked. An employ­ee who is forced to pay unfair share dues is being forced to fun polit­i­cal activ­i­ty with which they dis­agree,” a vio­la­tion of First Amend­ment free speech rights.

Despite his ​“free speech” argu­ment, how­ev­er, quite disin­gen­u­ous, since his ulti­mate goal — as he made clear in his State of the State address — is to pro­hib­it pub­lic employ­ees from par­tic­i­pat­ing in an orga­nized fash­ion in pol­i­tics under any circumstance.

Legal observers expect that the Supreme Court will take up in its next term anoth­er case, Friedrichs v. Cal­i­for­nia Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, which attempts to pro­hib­it such agency fees for pub­lic employ­ees under all cir­cum­stances, thus over­turn­ing the land­mark Abood v. Board of Edu­ca­tion case in which the Supreme Court ruled that fair share pay­ments could be required.

While Rauner and sup­port­ers shroud their cam­paign in appeals to First Amend­ment rights of free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion and free­dom of speech, their ulti­mate goal is to under­mine all asso­ci­a­tions of work­ers at work and to lim­it their effec­tive right to free speech both at work and in the polit­i­cal sphere.

The major­i­ty of the Supreme Court that sup­port­ed the anti-fair share case in Har­ris v. Quinn seemed anx­ious to ban­ish fair share sup­port for pub­lic employ­ee unions, but appeared to be wait­ing for a more clear-cut case. Now Rauner may be in a race with Friedrichs v. Cal­i­for­nia Teach­ers Asso­ci­a­tion to be that defin­i­tive blow to pub­lic sec­tor unions — a blow from which unions can sur­vive, but most like­ly only with great effort.