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.


Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the story of how the people of Grand Rapids, Michigan -- led by two of the richest families in the world -- are changing the way the world sees their community, and the way they see the world.

To order your autographed hardcover or softcover edition, click here.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community is also available wherever books are sold online including Abbott Press, as well as on the shelves of Barnes & Noble-Woodland Mall, Schuler Books & Music-28th Street and West Coast Coffee on Monroe Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Right To Work: Outrage In Michigan, Chapter One By Rod Kackley

Right To Work: Outrage in Michigan

By Rod Kackley

Chapter One: Shock and Awe

Two dozen Michigan State Police squad cars filled with troopers in riot gear screeched to a stop in front of the state Capitol, one day in late November. They were ready to block what they were told would be hundreds of marauding, soon-to-riot teachers and other public sector employees who seemed ready to storm the Palace of Republicanism—the GOP-controlled Governor’s Office and both houses of the Legislature, in Lansing Michigan.


Troopers braced themselves like helmeted, baton carrying, Tasers at the ready, hockey referees who would be  blocking the biggest fight on the ice they had ever seen.


After years of gently simmering on the political stove in Michigan, with spices and seasonings tossed in occasionally from the right and the left, one cook turning down the heat after the other moved the knob higher for a moment, the stew that is Right to Work legislation had come to full boil in Michigan.


What this really came down to is the state of Michigan  divided by an us versus them, management versus labor mentality. This is what had been simmering for years, put on the back burner by union and corporate officials during the decade from Hell that was the 1990s in Michigan. This is what boiled over in December.


This was also Michigan’s history. It is one of labor strife from the shores of Lake Michigan on the West to Lake St. Clair on the East . As 2012 entered its final month, the labor battle was on.


The first days of December were filled with smell of pepper spray, the din of acrimonious shouts and the pain of fists landing on faces as the two sides of the right-to-work (or Freedom To Work as supporters dubbed it) turned vocal and then physical.


One anti-right-to-work protestor hauled back and threw a roundhouse left into the face of a Fox News employee. There has never been any love lost between those two sides of the political spectrum. The Fox employee took the punch well. He even offered to drop an assault charge if the guy with the hard left would agree to meet him in the cage for an MMA-style battle “like a real man,” to raise money for charity.


Emotions were raging at such a roiling, boiling, state of Wisconsin-like vitriolic level because chefs on both sides had turned the heat up as high as it would go. The GOP, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Big Labor and  Democrats are pointing fingers at each other, looking each other in the eye saying, “He started it.” Guess what? They were all correct. 


Democrats and Big Labor put two ballot propositions before voters in November. They were both very pro-union. They were also proposals that Republicans and Michigan Chamber of Commerce President Rich Studley said labor union leaders and Democrats had promised to keep off the ballot.


The promise was broken. The gloves came off. 

Right To Work: Outrage in Michigan is available for immediate download by clicking here.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community tells the story of how the people of Grand Rapids, Michigan changed the way the world sees their community and the way they see the world. If they can do it, your community can do it too.

Autographed editions are available by click Add To Cart on www.rodkackley.com, as well as on the shelves of Barnes & Noble-Woodland Mall, Schuler Books & Music-28th Street and West Coast Coffee-Monroe Center, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community is also available wherever books are sold online including Abbott Press.