This isn’t over, not by a long shot
Protesters fill the Michigan Capitol building last December to protest Right to Work legislation
On the heels of a lawsuit filed recently in the Ingham County District Court challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s new Right to Work law, a coalition of unions has filed a similar lawsuit in federal court. The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit and assigned to Judge Stephen Murphy, claims that the law violates the rights of private sector union members who are covered under federal law rather than the laws of the state of Michigan:
The Michigan AFL-CIO, the Building and Trades Council, the Teamsters, SEIU, United Farm Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers say the law that affects private-sector employees is a violation of the U.S. Constitution because those unions are covered by federal law and governed by the National Labor Relations Board, not state law.“In their haste to enact right-to-work, the Legislature overreached,” said Andrew Nickelhoff, general counsel for the Michigan AFL-CIO. “This lawsuit only deals with the act that affects private-sector employees, because they’re covered under federal labor law.”
The lawsuit names the Michigan Employment Relations Commission; Steve Arwood, the director of the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs; Attorney General Bill Schuette and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy as defendants. Worthy was added to represent all 83 county prosecutors in Michigan because they would be in a position to prosecute any criminal actions surrounding right-to-work activities in union shops.
Whether or not the move by Governor Snyder and his Republican colleagues will bring more jobs to the state is debatable. However, what is clear is that the main beneficiaries, at least for the foreseeable future, will be the lawyers who litigate these lawsuits. Flippancy aside, if the state legislature is forced to vote again, it’s unlikely that Republicans have enough votes to pass it a second time. And that is why the lawsuits are so very important.
Stay tuned, Michiganders. This is all far from being over with.
[Photo credit: Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog]
