Shortly after the Mackinac Center was founded in 1987, we became known among policy institutes for our focus on labor policy. It was unusual for any state (or national) think tank to prioritize unions, but we had a simple, compelling reason.
We would not solve Michigan’s problems until we addressed the elephant in the room: Union pressure and money could stop most of our ideas from becoming law.
A handful of state think tanks existed then, and only the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Washington, gave labor policy the same emphasis we did. We both understood that public sector unions were a bigger threat to our ideas than private sector unions. And public sector unions fell under state law, not federal law, giving us a natural advantage.
People laughed at us in 1992 when we first wrote that Michigan should become a right-to-work state. But we were laying down a marker: The state needed big changes.
Our first major study on labor policy sent shockwaves through Lansing in 1993. Insiders were stunned that anyone would dare confront the Michigan Education Association over its creation of a billion-dollar health insurance reseller to boost its political influence.
We were much smaller then. We had to be creative. We literally staked out MEA headquarters in East Lansing in 1994 to prove that the union hired private, nonunion contractors for the very same services it insisted must be performed in Michigan schools only by dues-paying MEA members. The union, badly embarrassed, could not prevent the Legislature from strengthening school boards’ hands in contract negotiations.
In 1996 we hired Robert P. Hunter to lead our first multiyear policy initiative. Bob had been Ronald Reagan’s first appointee to the National Labor Relations Board. He created a body of legal scholarship that we have built on for over two decades. In time, Gov. John Engler appointed him to the Michigan Civil Service Commission.
Unions have picketed and sued us. We’ve used the free publicity, beaten them in court, and notched policy wins that drew national attention. We have educated millions of workers on how to resign from their unions after states passed right-to-work laws and after the U. S. Supreme Court’s Janus decision. Unions collect some $600 million less each year because of that.
Perhaps our best-known labor policy win is Michigan’s passage of right-to-work in 2012. Democrats have pledged to repeal it and will soon control the Legislature and governor’s office. (The Janus ruling means government workers, including teachers, would not be affected.) They are about to discover that workers won’t want to lose what they’ve got — a state where a union can no longer get them fired for refusing to pay dues.
We don’t believe in permanent victories, just as we’ve never believed in permanent defeats. Every win must be defended sooner or later, and now is our time to defend one of our biggest wins. We’re on the balls of our feet, not the heels.
