Right To Work: Outrage in Michigan "Dragged Into Battle"

Right To Work: Outrage In Michigan

By Rod Kackley

Chapter Two: Dragged Into Battle

(An excerpt)

He (Gov. Rick Snyder) dropped the bombshell December 6, 2012. With riot-ready state troopers surrounding the Capitol again as a barrier, this time to an organized crowd of civil servants and hard-hatted construction workers screaming their opposition, he promised to sign right-to-work legislation. Snyder told reporters at a press conference that followed, this it was not about “right-to-work.” He said, as did the Republicans standing by his side, this was all about “freedom in the workplace” or “freedom-to-work.”

That is just what he did. Snyder signed it. Less than one week later, without a public vetting of the bills in legislative committees, and to hear Democrats tell the story, without a real public debate, right-to-work became the law of the land in Michigan.

The rapid pace of right-to-work, or freedom-to-work legislation was breathtaking even when it is taken into account that Republicans controlled all three branches of Michigan’s government. Almost no one thought it would be introduced in the 2012 lame duck session. Even the Republicans who wrote the legislation hesitated to give me a timetable for passage when I spoke with them just a week before the Snyder change of heart that may have been the most unexpected flip-flop in modern Michigan political history.

The day before the right-to-work legislative landslide that led to Gov. Snyder pulling out a pen and signing the bill, a progressive advocacy organization known as Progress Michigan called for a Santa Claus protest at an iconic downtown Grand Rapids hotel, the Amway Grand Plaza.  

Progress Michigan was targeting one person: Dick DeVos. The son of Amway Corporation cofounder Rich DeVos, he was an outspoken conservative on the right wing of the Michigan GOP and  was a strong advocate of right-to-work legislation. He and his wife, Betsy, have always been willing to put their millions where their beliefs are and they did it with right-to-work, too.

DeVos contributed $2 million to the right-to-work effort. That cash, along with another $2 million donated by casino businessman Sheldon Adelson, who was the money behind Newt Gingrich’s unsuccessful 2012 GOP presidential campaign, was important.

But DeVos — a member of one of the richest families in the world — made even more of an impact on Republicans in Michigan by promising to help them if they felt a union backlash in the next election.
“The air cover helped Republicans do what they wanted to do,” Jase Bolger the speaker of the GOP-controlled Michigan House told the New York Times.

There was real anger.  There was real outrage on the blue collar side of the right-to-work debate. They had to have been completed shocked and totally in awe of the speed and power that Republicans showed in ramming right-to-work through the Legislature without a single public hearing and only five hours of debate.

From the GOP side of the aisle, a joyful noise was heard one week later as the right-to-work package was sealed and delivered to Gov. Snyder’s desk so that he could sign it into law.  David Smith, the president and chief executive officer of The Employers Association in Grand Rapids, Michigan described right-to-work as “a breath of fresh air.”

Right To Work: Outrage In Michigan, one of five ebook essays in the Restore The Roar: Manufacturing Renaissance series, is available for immediate download by clicking here.


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