{"id":17160,"date":"2012-10-01T10:10:51","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T15:10:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17160"},"modified":"2012-10-01T10:10:51","modified_gmt":"2012-10-01T15:10:51","slug":"michigans-unions-battle-for-a-veto-right-over-state-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/01\/michigans-unions-battle-for-a-veto-right-over-state-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan&#8217;s unions battle for a veto right over state law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390443524904577651302336491614.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet\" target=\"_blank\">Shikha Dalmia<\/a> looks at a proposed constitutional amendment in Michigan which would give unions a huge veto power over state law:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Michigan Supreme Court recently approved the placement of a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the so-called Protect Our Jobs amendment would give public-employee unions a potent new tool to challenge any laws \u2014 past, present or future \u2014 that limit their benefits or collective-bargaining powers. It would also bar Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state in which mandatory union dues are not a condition of employment. The budget implications are dire. <\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The amendment says that no &#8220;existing or future laws shall abridge, impair or limit&#8221; the collective-bargaining rights of Michigan workers. That may sound innocuous, but according to Patrick Wright of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the amendment would hand a broad mandate to unions to challenge virtually any law they don&#8217;t like. <\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The ballot initiative states that it would &#8220;override state laws that regulate hours and conditions of employment to the extent that those laws conflict with collective bargaining agreements.&#8221; In other words, collective-bargaining agreements negotiated behind closed doors would trump the legislature \u2014 a breathtaking power grab that would turn unions into a super legislature.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the biggest upside for unions is that the proposal would prohibit Michigan from becoming a right-to-work state. Regaining its competitive position with respect to the 23 right-to-work states that have become attractive to manufacturers, even auto makers, would be unlikely. Rather, labor would get a field-tested strategy for scrapping those states&#8217; right-to-work laws with ballot referendums.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Wall Street Journal, Shikha Dalmia looks at a proposed constitutional amendment in Michigan which would give unions a huge veto power over state law: The Michigan Supreme Court recently approved the placement of a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot. If passed by voters, the so-called Protect Our Jobs amendment would give [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,9,13],"tags":[697,715,574,392],"class_list":["post-17160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-law","category-usa","tag-budget","tag-constitution","tag-michigan","tag-unions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4sM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17161,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17160\/revisions\/17161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}