Governor Snyder Launches His Union-Busting Agenda
Remember last month, when newly minted Governor Rick Snyder said Michigan was not Wisconsin? He was responding to questions on whether he intended to support Wisconsin-style union-busting legislation here. “We are two very different states,” Snyder commented. “I believe we should go through the collective bargaining process in terms of our discussion as we ask for concessions,” he added, referring to his stated opinion that state employees were overpaid.
A lot of people settled back and bought that comment hook, line, and sinker. No attacks on unions here.
It’s March now. And a new bill, slipped into consideration and passed by the State Senate (and already pre-approved in a House version), says otherwise. Governor Snyder has already announced he will sign the final version.
In the Senate, the vote on the bill was deadlocked before Snyder’s Lieutenant Governor, Brian Calley, cast his vote to break the tie. Protestors lining the visitors’ gallery called out “shame on you!” after several days of protests on the Capitol steps.
The bill is a redo of the state’s emergency financial management bill and allows, like the original legislation, for the state to take over a school system, a city government, or other entity that is failing financially.
But the new beefed-up version lets the state then suspend or terminate any and all union contracts as a part of the takeover. All the governor has to do is target a particular public institution with unionized members as being “in financial emergency” and the union’s contracts can be eradicated and replaced with whatever terms the manager sees fit to provide.
Remember democracy? Kiss it goodbye. This new law would also allow the “emergency manager” assigned by the state to fire elected officials…seize and sell city or school assets…eliminate or privatize city or school services and programs. With no input from or vote by citizens. Its constitutionality has already been called into question.
The state can even use this bill to erase and redraw city boundaries or completely eliminate a school system if the manager wants to do so.
“This is a takeover by the right wing and it’s an assault on democracy like I’ve never seen,” stated Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan State AFL-CIO.
President of the Michigan Education Association Iris Salter said, during a protest against the new legislation, that the bill was “a way to say to labor ‘You don’t count.’ It’s a way to say to employees, ‘Get back.’ I believe it’s just like being in the slave days.”
Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, called the bill “a corporate coup d’etat.” She pointed out that since the “manager” could be a contracted management firm, Michigan could soon be facing “the privatization of whole towns by fiat.”
Another issue, raised by Representative John Conyers, is that the first unions to be busted will be in towns and school systems where there are high numbers of minority residents. They have been hit the hardest in the state’s years-long financial downturn, and tax bases in these communities are plummeting.
And this is just the beginning of planned legislation to weaken unions and conduct class warfare in Michigan under Governor Snyder’s approving eye. Up next: a bill to repeal Michigan’s wage law and one that will terminate binding arbitration for police and firefighters.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
At first, this left me undecided. I am not somebody who automatically agrees with the people support or help elect, and I don’t jump to firm conclusions, either way. I am definitely against the federal government being able to deem businesses unfit and to intervene with their fates, but feel like I am comfortable with Snyder’s plan here.
The difference we have here is that the schools ARE government run, so this is NOT the government stepping in and interfering. This is simply the government trying to fix something of its own that is broken but NEEDS to be fixed. No more band-aids… poor performance means time for real action!
Supporting Snyder’s plan for Michigan’s publicly funded schools is not an expansion or overstepping of government. This plan is the government becoming accountable for its past inability to run an important segment it is responsible for. Please consider this and realize that this is not comparable to the federal government’s attempt to expand and overstep its fundamental and legal boundaries.
Please support this plan to reinvent Michigan!!
I’m afraid that re-inventing Michigan into a third-world-style dictatorship is not my idea of a good plan, MSU.
You make the argument that schools are government-run. That’s true; but their authority comes from the people, the citizens. This plan allows for the peoples’ voted officials to be dismissed, so it essentially takes away our rights as citizens by taking away the inviolate protection of election results.
It allows legal contracts to be broken without negotiation and without citizen input. So it defies the judiciary system.
It allows a city’s assets to be seized, without the agreement of the citizens who technically own those assets, and sold, with the money from the sale used in any way that the person in power sees fit–and again, without the approval of the voters. So it “legalizes” theft and plundering.
It allows a private firm to transfer city services, which are run under citizen oversight, to departments or companies under their control, to generate additional profit for themselves. So it promotes profiteering.
Our Constitution protects us from these sorts of violations of our rights. But Governor Snyder, under the banner of “fixing Michigan,” seems to feel he can overturn the U.S. Constitution.
That’s your idea of a good plan? Handing over all of your rights as a citizen to a private, for-profit corporation, ruled by someone with absolute power? If so, I’d suggest you plan to live in some place like the Congo, Libya, or Kazakhstan after you graduate. You’d love it in one of those countries.
Governor Snyder, a state employee, thus he is overpaid, way overpaid.
Snyder needs to be impeached, who the hell does he think he is? IMHO he’s a communist. This idiot thinks we are all brain dead and he can do whatever he wants. IMPEACH HIM BEFORE IT’S TO LATE.
I believe Snyder is a capitalist, not a communist, Bill.
And although it technically would be possible to impeach the governor, it would have to be done by the (conservative Republican) State Senate presided over by the (conservative extremist) State Supreme Court Chief Justice.
I don’t hold out much hope that they would find him guilty of any impeachable offense.