Tagged: right to work

There is an abundance of political action in this year’s lame duck session.

Bill Ballenger of “Inside Michigan Politics” and Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Cyndy about the recent legislature coming out of the Capitol.

According to Lessenberry there were several reasons for right-to-work being passed.

“The legislature will be marginally more Democratic next time. Some of the people who were voting are people who aren’t coming back. It was a campaign year and some of the stuff that might have gotten done earlier didn’t get done,” said Lessenberry.

“Legislators have been working on a lot of these bills for a year and a half,” said Ballenger.

Ballenger noted the role of partisan politics in the lame duck session.

It’s been quite a week in Michigan. Maybe you heard about it?

Our legislature introduced and passed so called “right to work” legislation in two days and Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed it within hours, dealing a harsh blow to the more than 12,000 union supporting protestors surrounding the building.

But – did you see what I did there? Did my bias jump off the page at you?

Michigan Gov. Snyder has made himself available to the media before, during, and after the 'right-to-work' drama in the state.

He's getting his message out that he believes "more and better jobs" will come to Michigan as a result.

Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson spoke with Gov. Snyder this morning about why right-to-work suddenly popped up on his agenda. He told the public it wasn't on his agenda for more than a year.

And then last Thursday happened.

Here's the edited 3-and-a-half minute interview:

Hobson pressed Snyder on his argument that "thousands of jobs" have come to Indiana.

Michigan Radio Lansing Bureau Chief Rick Pluta inside the Capitol

Reuters' Rick Carey and Bernie Woodall dug into the process by which right to work legislation was passed in the union stronghold of Michigan, and found that it was the result of dogged, behind-the-scenes work by some of Michigan's newest legislators.

That runs contrary to the idea in many published reports that the legislation took on a sudden life of its own, a kind of "seize the day" mentality, after the defeat of Proposal 2 in November.

From the story:

Don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the current lame duck session of the legislature is trying to do about as much as lawmakers normally do in about ten years. Now I am sure that’s an exaggeration, but it doesn’t feel like one.

Consider this. In a single day, the governor and the Republican majority pushed through the most momentous labor legislation in years, taking the once inconceivable step of outlawing the union shop and making Michigan a so-called right to work state.

They aren’t stopping there, however: The governor is going to have to make a decision on four bills, or parts of bills aimed at making it harder for women to get abortions in Michigan.

For the last two years, lots of people have believed that Rick Snyder may be a pro-business fiscal conservative, but that he was really a moderate on social issues. Well, now we are about to find out.