CBA Record March-April 2026

THE YOUNG LAWYERS SECTION

Understanding the Boundaries Together, these laws establish meaningful, but limited, protections. Employees are not immune from discipline, and employ ers are not stripped of managerial author ity. The challenge lies in understanding where the legal boundaries are drawn. In an era of expanding digital communication and heightened workplace scrutiny, careful

broad notions of privacy or free speech, but by specific statutory protections. The IRPWA safeguards employees from employer coercion in political activity and from intrusive demands for access to personal online accounts. The NLRA, through Section 7, protects employee rights to engage in concerted activity for mutual aid or protection.

attention to these statutes is essential for navigating employee rights in Illinois.

Abhishek Ramaswami is an Associate at Clingen, Callow & McLean, where he focuses on all aspects of employment law and business litigation, including workplace issues and restrictive covenants.

trying to create a future where workers could use their freedom to stop working as leverage to protect themselves from exploitation. As the amendment was being ratified, Abraham Lincoln said at a shoemaker’s strike: “I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to and wish it might prevail everywhere.” This vision of worker autonomy also influenced the development of the “free dom of contract” doctrine and the at-will employment rule, which prevents both employers and workers from holding each other liable in civil court for ending the employment relationship. According to judges at the time, if workers had a right to quit working whenever they wanted, that was enough to protect them from bad bosses. Workers got the proverbial memo. Increasing numbers of workers realized that exercising this “right to quit” together with their coworkers at the same time would put significant pressure on employ ers to stop exploiting them. This is the fun damental principle behind labor strikes. And while early court cases addressing labor strikes insisted that workers only had the right to withhold their own labor, some judges eventually admitted that this was an illogical distinction. For a true right to quit to exist, the government could not be allowed to enjoin workers who went on strike, just as it could not enjoin an individual worker from refusing to pick cotton. Congress codified this principle in the 1932 Norris-LaGuardia Act, which acknowledged that workers could not “protect [their] freedom of labor” without the freedom to strike.

The Right to Quit? Refusal to Work, the Constitution, and Illinois Public Sector Labor Law By AK Alilonu A fry cook rips their apron off during rush hour, walks out the door, and doesn’t come back. A high school history teacher rolls out of bed, texts the principal that he’s not coming in today, and goes back to sleep. An ER nurse walks up to the hospital as the shift begins and stands outside the doors with a picket sign. Each worker has a job, and none is performing it. For all, refusal invites the risk that their employers will suspend, demote, or even fire them. But what if they also had the government to fear? What if, instead of worrying about cover letters and job interviews, these workers also had to worry about fines or jail time? Is there a good reason why they shouldn’t? For some workers in our state, these questions are not hypothetical. Worker Autonomy The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and indentured servitude and pre vented state and local governments from punishing people merely for refusing to work. Proponents of the amendment were not only trying to correct a past wrong; they were

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