- Michigan unionists packed the rotunda of the state Capitol in Lansing yesterday but the House passed a right to work bill. Protests continue today. Photo: AFT Michigan.
By Alix Gould-Werth
December 7, 2012
Michigan unionists rallied and lobbied in the state capital yesterday to prevent right-to-work legislation. A bill has passed the House and Senate, and fear is that the governor will sign the bill during the lame-duck session. Republicans will lose five seats once the new legislature is seated in January, making defeat of right to work much more likely then.
Capitol police evicted some protesters yesterday, with arrests and Mace, and closed the building.
Here a member of one Michigan union explains how a state that was considered a union bastion came to this point.
Earlier this year I stood on a street corner, holding a clipboard for Proposal 2 and hoping that Michigan would be a trailblazer: the first state to make union rights constitutional rights. Today, I’m filling my tank for the drive to the state Capitol in Lansing, with the apprehension that Michigan will become the 24th state to end unionization as we know it.
The Republican-dominated legislature is poised to adopt “right-to-work” legislation. Yesterday hundreds of workers convened in the Capitol rotunda, chanting “hey hey, ho ho, right to work has got to go.” How did we get here?
Protest at Scott Waler fund-raiser in Troy, Michigan July 14, 2012.
Perhaps it began one state over, in Wisconsin. Michigan’s Governor Rick Snyder learned from the mistakes of his neighbor across the lake, Scott Walker. When Walker attacked unions in Wisconsin with a bludgeon, provoking intense opposition last year, Snyder was watching. He saw the powerful reaction of union-loyal Midwesterners faced with a clear threat.
So instead, Snyder and his allies in the legislature pursued a strategy of a thousand cuts. Instead of introducing a bill that would affect all unions, the Michigan legislators did it piecemeal: taking away teachers’ automatic dues deductions, defining university research assistants as non-workers, and other measures that wouldn’t rile everyone at once.
Campaign for Proposal 2: What is wrong with this picture?
Michigan labor went on offense, to pass a constitutional amendment that would have nullified all those laws-of-a-thousand-cuts and insulated us against new legislative threats, including “right to work.” We collected thousands of signatures for Proposal 2, made thousands of phone calls, and knocked on thousands of doors. In the week before the election we were neck and neck in the polls. And then Proposal 2 was defeated—57 to 42 percent.
There are many theories why we lost Proposal 2. Perhaps there were too many proposals on the ballot, perhaps it was the misleading ads financed by corporate interests, maybe we weren’t explicit enough about the threats to labor and the protections enshrined in the proposal.
Regardless, one month later, Governor Snyder, who previously had called right to work “divisive” and said it wasn’t a priority, now says he’ll sign this legislation if it crosses his desk during the lame duck session. The Chamber of Commerce is pushing it. Right-wing activist Dick DeVos of the Amway fortune started airing statewide TV ads Tuesday. The Republicans control both houses of the legislature and have the votes.
So where does this leave us? What’s on the table is the disappearance of union jobs from Michigan and the standard of living they have given workers, union and non-union alike. Last year Michigan was the state with the fifth highest percentage of unionized workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Back from Lansing, Liz DeLisle Rodrigues, communications chair of the Graduate Employees Organization, Teachers Local 3550, reported on the broad spectrum of workers who were there—teachers, electricians, construction workers, service workers, nurses, and more. Rodrigues observed simply: “Working people are getting the word out and banding together to fight.”
See you at the Capitol.
Alix Gould-Werth is a member of the Graduate Employees Organization, Teachers Local 3550, at the University of Michigan.
Protest at Scott Walker fund-raiser in Troy: demonstrators raise issue of public assistance cut-offs Apri 17, 2012.
VOD: The photo above illustrates a major problem within the labor movement and the Democratic party in Michigan and nationally. When tens of thousands of families, largely women and children, were cut off public assistance by the Snyder administration last year, there was no GENERAL STRIKE to support them by labor; there was no BOYCOTT of Michigan called by Rev. Jesse Jackson of Rainbow PUSH (who gave a horrified “No” response to VOD’s question about such a boycott during a Michigan Welfare Rights Organization march), or the Democrats.
ALL OF US ARE NOW EXPERIENCING WHAT WAS DONE TO THE LEAST OF US THEN. The labor movement’s slogan used to be: An injury to one is an injury to all. Apparently not any more. Aside from AFSCME, the UAW and the rest of the labor movement took a “hands-off” approach to the campaign to defeat Public Act 4, on information and belief because it was an attack primarily on Michigan’s majority-Black cities. But PA 4 was defeated regardless. Now, however, the battle to effectuate the repeal has returned to the courts.
An interesting article in today’s Detroit News at http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20121208/POLITICS02/212080346/How-right-work-got-table?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE makes one wonder whether labor leaders took that “hands off” approach to Prop 1 as a compromise with Snyder. Well, the end result illustrates just what compromises with the racist corporate elite, particularly at the expense of Black and Latino folks, get for poor and working people.
Collective bargaining was not won through a constitutional amendment. It was won through massive sit-down strikes across the country that virtually paralyzed the nation in the 1930’s. Until labor returns to those tactics, it will be more of the same.
