Unions aren’t mourning right-to-work in Michigan. They’re organizing.

A wave of shock and anger washed over Michigan’s working families when Gov. Rick Snyder suddenly rammed a right-to-work-for-less bill through the Legislature in December. That soon gave way to resolve to overturn the anti-worker law and to punish the politicians who voted for it.

“We will fight this in the courts, in the legislature and at the ballot box,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “This is not the end; it’s just the beginning.”

The passage of the law in Michigan has long been the goal of CEOs and billionaires who want more of workers’ income for themselves. These laws weaken workers’ rights, lower wages and make workplaces more dangerous. 

It’s part of a much bigger offensive against working people, according to General Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall. “This is part of a well-funded, coordinated attack on workers nationwide,” Hall said. “They are trying to throw middle class jobs and pensions out like yesterday’s trash.”

Sneak Attack

Michigan’s billionaires wanted payback after their candidate, Mitt Romney, lost the state and the campaign for president. It was now or never. Enough anti-worker lawmakers had lost or retired in November that right-to-work-for-less probably wouldn’t pass in 2013. But there was still enough support to pass it in the 2012 lame-duck session.

Unions knew the attack was coming. They tried to prevent it by putting a constitutional amendment on the November ballot. Millions, though, were spent to defeat it.

On Thursday, Dec. 6, Snyder announced he was reversing his position. Two bills were railroaded through the Legislature over the angry protests of union supporters outside the chamber. One bill applied to private-sector workers, the other to public sector workers, excluding police and firefighters. They passed in 11 hours, with no committee hearings, no public input and, during part of the proceedings, behind locked Statehouse doors despite a court order that they be opened.

Open Meetings Law Violated?

Unions and supporters quickly mobilized, organizing what would turn out to be the largest Capitol protest in history. It was scheduled for the day the bill would pass.

Two lawsuits had already been filed challenging the laws’ legality. Detroit activist Robert Davis and the Michigan Education Association claimed Michigan’s Open Meetings Act was violated because both chambers took action on the bills while the Capitol was locked down. Other legal challenges are likely.

The bills include $1 million in appropriations, which means they cannot be repealed by referendum. But they can be overturned by a citizens’ initiative, which will require signatures equal to eight percent of the vote total for governor in 2010 in order to get on the ballot.

Anti-worker extremists want to pass more right-to-work-for-less laws in a bid to turn the Midwest into Mexico for Canada. Other conservative governors have saidr such laws are not on their agenda, but that’s what Snyder said. And an effort to collect enough signatures to put right-to-work-for-less on the November ballot is already underway in Ohio.

Hoffa predicted right-to-work-for-less would tear Michigan apart. A historic day of action in Lansing proved him right, as did the rallies and marches and flash mobs that broke out all over the state. Hundreds of Michigan Teamsters marched to the Capitol behind Hoffa on Dec. 11, the day the bills passed. They were joined by brothers and sisters from Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Pennsylvania. In the days before and after the passage of right-to-work-for-less, Teamsters joined silent protests in Grand Rapids, hand-billed in Marquette, marched in Detroit and rallied in Troy.

Teamsters at all times remained peaceful, knowing that any disruption or violence would be used by billionaire-funded networks to smear union members.

A History of Racism and Dishonesty

Those smear tactics go back to the roots of the right-to-work movement in the early 1940s. It started with a racist lobbyist from Texas named Vance Muse, who lobbied against women’s right to vote, the eight-hour-workday and child labor laws. Muse, along with extremist millionaires from the North, also started a network of anti-worker front groups, which the Koch brothers ultimately took over. One of those groups was the Christian American Association in Houston, which spearheaded anti-labor bills in state Legislatures while distributing anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic literature.

Union membership was increasing fast in Texas after the Wagner Act passed in 1935. That stopped in 1947, when a well-funded campaign led by the Christian American Association persuaded the legislature to enact right-to-work-for-less. The racists and business leaders who engineered the anti-union law in Texas set a precedent. They relied on smear tactics and misleading propaganda, beginning with the name “right to work.” “Right to work” confers no right and provides no work.

ALEC, which brings together corporations and state lawmakers, drafted a model right-to-work-for-less bill 32 years ago. That’s the bill Michigan lawmakers passed in December. There are now 24 right-to-work-for-less states. Indiana passed the legislation in January 2012, after Gov. Mitch Daniels had spent years, like Snyder, pledging that he wouldn’t push it because it’s “too divisive.”

Proponents of right-to-work are never honest about its impact. They claim it will bring business to states, but that has been disproven over and over. The truth about right-to-work is that it is a minor if nonexistent factor in attracting business, according to the Economic Policy Institute. EPI reports no relationship between right-to-work laws and a state’s unemployment rate, per capita income or job growth.

Right-to-work does, however, lower wages for both union and nonunion workers by an average of $1,500 less per year. It threatens employment benefits and workplace safety while increasing poverty and undermining education.

That’s pretty much what Hoffa told the thousands of union supporters at the Dec. 7 Day of Action in Lansing. He had a direct message for Gov. Rick Snyder: “We found out that Snyder is for sale. Michigan’s not for sale! Governor, we’re going to win this fight.”

 

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