Supporters of the
Employee Free Choice Act should take a long, hard look at Michigan before moving forward with the proposal – especially in this struggling economy.
That’s what The Detroit News suggested in a Sunday editorial about one of the most destructive features of the act: forced government contracts.
The News knows its stuff here. Michigan enacted a similar law in 1969, Public Act 312. It requires binding arbitration if cities can’t reach agreements with local police and firefighter unions.
The results? So bad, even one of Act 312’s original supporters backed away from it:
"The bill was supported in the Legislature by then-state Sen. Coleman Young, who ironically came to regret his own decision as mayor of Detroit. Young, who early in his career was a Democratic Party stalwart and labor activist, frequently complained about the additional costs imposed by the act on Detroit's budget.
“A commission on local government finances convened in 2006 by Gov. Jennifer Granholm surveyed public employee costs in arbitration states and concluded that, compared with nonarbitration states, they were 3 to 5 percent higher. Spread over the multimillion-dollar budgets of larger cities, this can lead to large differences in costs for the taxpayers.
“At one point, for example, Young estimated that the costs of running Detroit were $50 million higher 10 years after the law was enacted than they would have been without it.
“A 2007 panel on the state's fiscal crisis convened by the governor and headed by ex-GOP Gov. William Milliken and ex-Democratic Gov. James Blanchard also called for reform of the Act 312 process. …
“And yet it is this kind of process that many Democrats in Congress want to impose on struggling businesses through this labor legislation.
“Michigan's long and unhappy experience with compulsory arbitration, and the chagrin it has caused Democratic officeholders who actually have to make budgets work, ought to help federal lawmakers understand the folly of this bill.”
Editorial, “Bad Business,” The Detroit News, 07.19.09
Forced government contracts. Lost jobs in an economy that desperately needs them. Higher costs all around. What’s so free about the “free choice” act again?
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