This guest post was written by Sue Browne, Regional Program Manager for the BlueGreen Alliance. On Tuesday at the Michigan AFL-CIO offices in Lansing, labor and environmental leaders called on Governor Snyder and state and local lawmakers to take the lead in crafting a flexible state plan to help Michigan meet its emissions reduction targets, as laid out in EPA’s […]

A couple of years ago, I met with Michigan State AFL-CIO President Karla Swift to talk about the current state of the labor movement. During that conversation, she asked me what advice I had, if any, with regard to improving the labor movement in Michigan. I told her two things: change the face of labor in terms of people’s perceptions […]

po·lit·i·cal – /pəˈlitikəl/ – adjective: of or relating to the government or the public affairs of a country Updated with video of Rachael Siemen asking her question. Yesterday at a forum at the Michigan House Office Building, the Mackinac Center brought in a representative from another notorious corporatist front group, The Heritage Foundation, to spew propaganda regarding the raising of […]

NOTE: Updated to clarify the restriction on unions using official school emails to conduct business. NOTE 2: This post has been updated HERE. The anti-union corporatist group the Mackinac Center is using public school email systems to encourage teachers to leave the Michigan Education Association, one of two major teachers unions in the state. I have confirmed that at least […]

It’s not going too far to say that American workers everywhere benefit on an ongoing basis from the hard work labor unions have done over the past several decades. I work at a non-union company that treats its employees very well. They compete for talent with other companies, including union shops, and this encourages them to do right by us, […]

“Here are some crumbs. Don’t eat them all at once.” Senate Republicans seem to be on a mission to outdo each other on making meaningless and insulting gestures toward lifting the working poor in our state out of poverty. First we had Rick Jones who proposed raising the minimum wage to a paltry $8.15 an hour and giving full-time waiters […]

This afternoon, the United Auto Workers formally endorsed Mark Schauer for Governor of Michigan. UAW President Bob King: Our members and their families are proud to stand with Mark Schauer because he supported loans to help the auto companies and their suppliers retool and develop new technologies to build the cars of the future in Michigan. Mark Schauer supports quality […]

Monday, April 28th, 2014 is Workers Memorial Day, a day to remember the men and women in our country who have given their lives for their jobs. Millions of people are impacted every year, either through job-related illness or death. On that day, the Michigan AFL-CIO is holding a silent vigil followed by a march to commemorate those who have […]

Republicans are terrified of the Raise the Wage proposal. They know that, if it gets on the 2014 ballot, Democrats will turn out in droves. They are counting on Democrats staying home during a midterm election so that they can retain the governship so the idea of heavy Dem turnout gives them the howling fantods. Republican Rick Jones, however, has […]

Republican House Jase Bolger is on what appears to be a one-man effort to extort money from Detroit labor unions. He recently laid down a new condition for state support of the so-called “grand bargain” in Detroit, a carefully-crafted and complex agreement that would protect the priceless art collection held by the Detroit Institute of Arts and dramatically minimize the […]

The following guest post is by Sue Browne, Regional Programs Manager for the BlueGreen Alliance in Michigan. Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog. It’s hard to believe that last year’s bad weather cost taxpayers like you and I around $277 million in damages across the state—a $67 million increase from the year before. Had our infrastructure been better […]