The voters of Wisconsin and California spoke loud and clear.
They are tired of the special privileges and lavish benefits given
to government unions and paid for by taxpayers. Apparently unions
in Michigan did not get the message.
Last Wednesday, supporters of the so-called “Protect Our Jobs”
Constitutional Amendment (POJA) submitted 684,286 petition
signatures to the Michigan Department of State — more than double
the amount needed to put the measure on the ballot in November.
If passed, the Amendment would enshrine collective bargaining in
the Michigan Constitution.
POJA would effectively destroy any chance for Michigan to give
workers the right to say no to a union and still keep their job —
the main benefit of a right-to-work law. The proposal is already
being billed as an anti-right-to-work measure, but the major impact
would be the reversal of reforms to government union privileges.
These reforms have helped Michigan turn the
corner after a decade of economic malaise.
Supporters of the amendment say it is needed to help the middle
class. In reality it will only help the roughly three percent of
the Michigan population who are government union members, but will
be paid for by everyone else.
The Amendment would make unions a super-legislature leaving them
more powerful than the people’s elected representatives. It would
remove the governor and the Legislatures’ (aka the voters’) ability
to place any limits on government unions’ power except for strike
clauses. POJA would mean Michigan could not continue, and would
never achieve, the type of reforms that have saved Michigan
taxpayers billions of dollars and turned states like Wisconsin
around.
UAW member and President of Union Conservatives, Terry
Bowman, calls POJA “an extreme measure that is unprecedented in
labor history.”
He cautions “by submitting signatures to forever change
Michigan’s constitution, union bosses have said that they are
better equipped than the duly elected legislature to handle the
economic future of the state of Michigan. …. They obviously believe
that a union boss like Jimmy Hoffa or Bob King should have more
control over the state’s economy than the Michigan legislature and
Governor.”
POJA would immediately do away with the many of the
public-sector reforms achieved over the last two years which have
put Michigan’s fiscal house in order.
CNBC reported that
according to Richard K. Studley, president and chief executive of
the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, the ballot measure “would repeal
more than 80 ‘cost-saving reform measures’ that the Legislature has
approved…”
Studley also called the measure a “jobs killer” and a power grab
because it would “impose unionization on every employer and every
employee in the state of Michigan.”
Some of the reforms POJA could repeal include:
- Protecting workers from having to give money to union political
causes without going through a burdensome and confusing opt out
process.
- Pension reforms which have already helped Michigan taxpayers
avoid $4.3 billion in
pension underfunding since 1996.
- Public school reforms including privatization of
non-instructional services and the ability to remove poorly
performing teachers.
POJA would also make future reforms, such as those seen in
Wisconsin and Indiana, almost impossible for the Legislature to
enact, putting the state at a further competitive disadvantage.
Taxpayers in Michigan
already give government employees much better benefits than
those in the private sector. Government employee insurance benefits
are $7,149 better than those in the private sector and retirement
benefits are $11,725 more per year.
The effort is reportedly spearheaded by the likes of the UAW,
which represents numerous government employees, the Michigan
Education Association, other unions and Democratic operatives.
These unions, and the politicians they support, stand to gain
and secure in perpetuity unprecedented power and resources —
mostly at the expense of taxpayers — if POJA is ratified. With
union membership dropping and other states in the Midwest making
substantial reforms, big labor is desperate to reverse its
fortunes.
Unions and their political enablers will try to sell POJA as a
benefit to the middle class. In truth, the middle class will be
saddled with the exorbitant costs of protecting government union
jobs.
