Defending the Michigan Right To Work Law

Restoring the Michigan Right to Work Law

Until 2013, hundreds of thousands of Michigan workers were forced to pay tribute to a union boss -- or be fired.

Now Michigan is returning to that injustice.

Forced unionism affects all Michiganders because Big Labor’s inefficiencies, featherbedding, wasteful work rules, and its union-label hate-the-boss mentality drive jobs and businesses out of Michigan.

In fact, over the “Lost Decade” of 2000-2009, forced unionism -- along with other harmful policy pushed by the union-label Granholm administration -- meant Michigan lost fully one sixth of its private-sector jobs. Now those same policies are returning.

In states that don’t have Right to Work laws, forced dues funnel money into Big Labor’s political machine to elect their handpicked politicians who are sure to vote to protect and expand Big Labor’s forced-dues empire.

For all these reasons, the Michigan Right to Work Committee supports all efforts to reinstate Michigan’s Right to Work Law, which was passed in 2013 and ended forced union dues in the Great Lakes State until it was repealed in 2023.

Banning Union-Only Project Labor Agreements

Today, Michigan law allows so-called “project labor agreements” which discriminate against the vast majority of workers in the building trades who choose not to join a union.

These agreements have been shown to raise costs, borne by taxpayers, by as much as 25% while doing nothing to ensure that projects are completed safely or on time.

The Michigan Right to Work Committee believes that government “project labor agreements” should be banned for both state and local government projects.

Stopping Expansion Monopoly Bargaining for Government Workers

Right now, Michigan law grants union officials monopoly bargaining power over public employees who may not want union boss “representation.”

Monopoly bargaining usurps those workers’ right to bargain on their own behalf and inevitably leads to poorer service at higher costs.

But now in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision, which ended forced union dues nationwide for government workers, government union bosses have been working overtime to expand their power over government workers.

This includes giving union bosses exclusive access to workers’ private contact information, forcing new hires to sit through high-pressure union “orientation meetings” where they are badgered until they sign up, restrictive “window period” schemes which stop workers from resigning union membership, and several other measures designed to make it effectively impossible to exercise their Janus rights.