GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign a repeal of the state’s “right-to-work” law soon. But while the battle over the law has been hotly contested, economic experts say it didn’t actually do much.
The law allowed employees in unionized jobs to opt out of membership and paying dues.
Paul Isely, the associate dean of Grand Valley State University’s Seidman College of Business, said in the decade since Michigan lawmakers passed it, little has changed.
“It’s really hard to tease out any measurable effect either on unions or on businesses of having it,” Isely said.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows union membership in Michigan was already falling before “right-to-work” was implemented, from 21% in 2002 to 16% when the law was first put in place in 2013.
“Unionization had been dropping in Michigan for several decades as the number of workers in the Big Three (automotive companies) started to drop,” Isely said. “That was culminated during the Great Recession around 2010 when we had the bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM.”
Union membership continued on a slight decline in the decade since “right-to-work” passed, according to the federal data.
“There’s been movements up and down,” Isely said. “Those movements up and down are just a function of how many people are employed or not employed at a given point in time, more than they are about the institutions that are unionized.”
Isely said “right-to-work” didn’t impact economic...
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