Illinois union leaders feel they’re not getting an adequate return on their investment in our one-party state government.

The Illinois AFL-CIO has taken the unusual step of putting off — for now — endorsements of any Democratic candidates in the Nov. 3 general election. The move is a protest by union leaders over what they see as the lack of action by Springfield’s Democratic supermajority on organized labor’s “core legislative priorities.”

The umbrella group says complaints about the Dems’ performance are coming from public-sector and private-sector unions alike.

Lack of movement on unions’ desires to win unemployment benefits for striking workers after two weeks on the picket lines are sticking in labor’s craw. Also angering unions was Gov. JB Pritzker’s decision to impose a two-year suspension of state tax credits for new data centers after labor had stopped the General Assembly from voting on that very same policy.

“(Union) people were coming out of session saying, ‘Hey, this didn’t happen, that didn’t happen. What am I going to tell my members?’” Tim Drea, president of the Illinois AFL-CIO, told the Tribune.

Here’s a suggestion of what to tell union members who didn’t get everything they wanted from lawmakers this past spring.

Get in line.

A hefty chunk of Illinois’ budgetary woes, which at Pritzker’s urging have kept lawmakers in recent sessions from enacting many new programs and passing progressive new policies, are tied directly to the legislature’s past bending of the knee to unions.

Those lamentable prior actions, of course, include overly generous pension benefits for state workers and public school teachers. The ever-growing annual tab, running in the billions, to address the underfunding of those liabilities explains much of why the state has faced substantial budget deficits every year.

Additionally, union demands for prevailing wage standards and other policies that raise costs for private-sector employers have helped make the state less competitive for business. Small wonder that economic growth in Illinois has trailed the nation for years. That in turn exacerbates the budgetary pressures. Naturally occurring tax revenues derived from economic growth would help obviate the need for Springfield’s seemingly endless quests for novel fees and tax ideas.

Meanwhile, Springfield Democrats shouldn’t be quaking in their shoes at this temper tantrum from their cronies in organized labor. The political donations surely will be flowing again sooner or later. That’s the nature of one-party rule.

As for the rest of us, we’d advise taking solace that organized labor, which too often calls the shots in the Capitol, is disappointed in its lack of spring-session victories.

That simply means the legislature did relatively little harm.

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