Inside and outside of Oakland

Repealing Michigan Right-To-Work law as likely as palm trees on Lake Superior shoreline

    An effort to repeal Michigan's new right-to-work law has about as much chance of passing as:
  • Palm trees growing on the Lake Superior shoreline,
  • The satirical website The Onion publishing a straight news story,
  But the effort is underway anyway.

  Michigan state Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood introduced a bill this week to repeal Michigan's right-to-work status, just a matter of weeks after Republican Gov. Rick Snyder signed it into law in December in a lame-duck session of the Republican-controlled Legislature amid the protests of thousands outside the Capitol Building in Lansing.
  Hopgood, a Taylor Democrat, argues there were no hearings on the right-to-work legislation and that many Michigan residents opposed it.
  Right-to-work, by the way, means a person cant be required to join a union or pay dues or fees as a condition of employment.
  The legislation was hustled through before the two-year session ended at the end December while there was still a Republican Legislature and a Republican governor sympathetic to the change.
  That hasn't changed.
  While Democrats picked up a few state House seats from the November election, Republicans still control both the House and Senate, and Snyder isn't up for re-election for two more years.
  Michigan Democrats and unions have vowed to undo the right-to-work legislation and hold Republicans accountable for passing it in the 2014 election.
  The odds are against their effort being successful.
  But if there's one thing certain about politics, it's that nothing is certain or forever.


After all, the recent cold snap of subzero temperatures and windchills had the effect of the little Michigan town of Hell freezing over.


 So, anything is possible.
 


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