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You were entitled to a dispirited moment when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Legislature repealed Michigan’s right-to-work law in March. It’s a big setback.
But do not despair. There are four points to note about right-to-work repeal: It is one step back for freedom, not ten. We locked in durable gains that keep paying dividends. Michigan is still a battleground state. And we must reinstate right-to-work as soon as possible.
The repeal didn’t blow us back to Square One, which I’ll define as 1992, when the Mackinac Center first called for a right-to-work law. The idea was scorned, ridiculed, and mostly ignored. Conventional wisdom held that Michigan, the birthplace of United Auto Workers and America’s union stronghold, would never give workers the right not to pay a union.
Big policy ideas move stepwise through a political process:
We patiently advanced right-to-work through these steps until it became law in 2012. Repeal merely bumped right-to-work back one notch, from “policy” to “popular,” not all the way back to “unthinkable.” The Legislature passed the repeal with no Republican votes and no votes to spare in either house. Whitmer announced her signing with only a press release.
Voters, including 60% of union members, favor right-to-work by a 2-1 margin. Democrats didn’t change anyone’s mind or shift the Overton Window. They merely overturned a popular law.
Repeal doesn’t return unions to the world they enjoyed in 2012, because we kept pushing after right-to-work passed. We advised workers about their rights, and thousands left their unions. We redoubled our efforts in 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus that no public sector worker in any state can be compelled to support a union.
Michigan unions have lost 26%, or 143,000, of their members since right-to-work took effect. That’s about $90 million in annual dues. The two largest teachers unions are down 32%, as are the unions that once captured state workers.
Although unions will soon regain the power to drag private sector workers into their ranks, they can’t touch public sector workers, thanks to Janus and our educational and legal assistance. Nationally, Janus costs unions $700 million annually. Nothing about repeal changes that.
No policy defeat – or victory – is permanent. The repeal of right-to-work is akin to losing a big game in the middle of a long baseball season. In policy and politics, the season never ends, and tomorrow always offers another chance.
Michigan doesn’t fit neatly into “red” or “blue” categories. Outcomes are actively contested, conclusions are not foregone, and conditions change quickly. The repeal of right-to-work, ten years after enactment, just underscores Michigan’s status as a battleground state.
We can restore this right legislatively or at the ballot box. We can even write it into our constitution, as Tennesseans recently did with theirs. The stakes are high, but the prize is closer than it was before. The Mackinac Center, with your help, is already looking to our next big win.
