The Mackinac Center's efforts over more than two decades are featured prominently in a new article scheduled for release in the Dec. 31. 2012, issue of National Review about Michigan's journey to become a right-to-work state.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio and President Joseph G. Lehman provided this overview of the Center's role in this historic move in the Dec. 15, 2012, issue of The Wall Street Journal.
Mackinac Center Editor Lindsey Dodge explains in today’s Detroit News how expensive, needless regulations on taxi cabs in Detroit are “indicative of the destructive policies that have helped the city go under.”
(Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from the introductory remarks delivered by Clifford W. Taylor, former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Directors, at an 80th birthday celebration held in April 2007 for Judge Robert Bork, who passed away Wednesday.)
When Comedy Central mock pundit Stephen Colbert coined a word to connote a sense of verity for topics completely unverifiable, the term “truthiness” quickly entered the lexicon. Never mind those inconvenient and uncomfortable facts, Colbert comically winked, the faint whisper of truth is enough if it confirms a person’s ideological bias.
A proposed ethanol plant for Frontier Renewable Resources in the Upper Peninsula has survived a legal challenge filed by the Sierra Club and a Chippewa County resident. But the company building the plant may be one of the biggest green failures in the country.
The Oxford Foundation’s proposed revision of Michigan’s school funding system seeks to “unbundle” educational services, essentially making it easier for students and parents to choose from a wider selection of public school options.
The proposal has received harsh criticism from many school officials. But at least one line of criticism doesn’t stand up to the facts.
Note: Due to lengthy House and Senate sessions, some votes from this week will be included in the next Roll Call Report.
Senate Bill 116, Make Michigan a "right-to-work" state: Passed 58 to 52 in the House
To prohibit employers from enforcing a union contract provision that compels workers to join or financially support a union as a condition of employment. The bill also includes a $1 million appropriation to make it "referendum-proof." All Democrats voted "no" and all Republicans voted "yes" except for Reps. Forlini, Goike, Horn, McBroom, Somerville and Zorn. This vote sent the bill to the Governor to sign, which he did the same day.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio and Media Relations Manager Ted O'Neil explain in today's Detroit Free Press that right-to-work is as much about liberty as it is about economics.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio and President Joseph G. Lehman write in the Dec. 15 Wall Street Journal about the crucial role the Mackinac Center has played over the past 25 years in making Michigan a right-to-work state, and what it means for Michigan's future.
Michigan is now the 24th state to outlaw firing employees for not financially supporting unions, making it a right-to-work state.
While this concept is not new, bills making it possible moved quickly through the Legislature. School officials unfamiliar with the policy might be asking: “What now?”
Research Associate Jarrett Skorup was cited in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday in a story about Democratic legislators refusing to support a Republican plan to give corporate welfare to Detroit Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch for a new hockey arena. Skorup wrote about the issue here, and Michael LaFaive wrote that the deal should be put “on ice.”
In response to the legislature taking up a right-to-work bill, Maryanne Levine, the president of the Chippewa Valley School District local union drew a parallel to the actions of Adolf Hitler.
“We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers’ salaries and take away their right to strike," Levine quoted Hitler as saying. "Those were the words of Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933 … These are strong words, but that is exactly what they are doing and the path they seem to be taking (in Lansing)."
On Dec. 6, 2012, the Michigan Legislature effectively rewrote the three-decade-old law that designated Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan as a tax-exempt, nonprofit “insurer of last resort” (Senate Bills 1293 and 1294). Now that the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has made such insurers unnecessary, BCBSM has the opportunity to convert to a nonprofit mutual insurer that benefits from a streamlined rate review and approval process.
In the Detroit Free Press, Stephen Henderson expresses concern that right-to-work states are doing worse than forced unionism states in a number of social trends.
This past decade has not done well for decreasing poverty rates around the nation, and there’s likewise been an increasing rate of people that lack health insurance. The data is not entirely clear on whether these trends are in favor of right-to-work or forced unionism states, however.
Private-sector right-to-work, enrolled Senate Bill 116, now Public Act 349 of 2012:
Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No” in the House
Who Voted "Yes" and Who Voted "No” in the Senate
Public-sector right-to-work, enrolled House Bill 4003, now Public Act 348 of 2012:
Last spring, Michigan eliminated its helmet requirement for motorcycle riders who had additional insurance coverage and met other conditions.
Six months after the bill went into effect, MLive ran an investigative series claiming to show the "regrettable impact of the change."
State and national media relied heavily on Mackinac Center experts to explain the benefits to Michigan becoming the 24th right-to-work state Tuesday.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio appeared on Fox Business and was cited in The Boston Globe, and also discussed the issue on KXNT 100.5FM in Las Vegas.
When future histories about Michigan’s right-to-work law are authored, there will no-doubt be much ink spilled on the role played by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and others. The Center’s scholars have been talking and writing about right-to-work practically since we opened our doors 25 years ago.
Oh, how well I remember this piece in the Detroit Free Press from almost 20 years ago! Better yet, I remember the reaction to it: A scattering of lukewarm encouragement on the order of “good luck on that one” and “someday maybe, but not in my lifetime” and a whole lot of “no way, never” with some unrepeatable epithets tossed in to underscore the point.
Over at Michigan Radio, Rick Pluta makes an interesting observation: “The fact is union membership has typically dropped off in the other 23 states that have adopted ‘right-to-work’ laws.”
The fact that unionization is down is true. But adopting a RTW law, counterintuitively, does not seem to impact the rates of unionization. Unionization across the country is down, and there seem to be no difference in these trends between right-to-work and non-right-to-work states.
As Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, pointed out in this blog post, the Center has a long history of support for right-to-work policies that stretches back more than two decades. In researching that history, LaFaive found an interesting coincidence.
About 26,000 students in metro Detroit will miss school today because their teachers chose to travel to Lansing to protest right-to-work legislation, Michigan Capitol Confidential reports.
Many opponents of a Michigan right-to-work law cite figures generated by a union-funded entity called the “Economic Policy Institute.”
EPI President Lawrence Mishel is a "longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America," according to an article posted on that organization’s website (go to page 15).
