Michigan Divided Over Right to Work

Carlos Osorio/Associated Press

Michigan House Democrats and supporters in the office of Richard E. Hammel, the Democratic leader, denouncing bills that would ban compulsory union dues.

LANSING, Mich. — With Democratic furor escalating and party leaders warning that Michigan was about to be plunged into lasting political discord, the state's Republican-led Legislature was on the verge of approving new limits to unions here in the birthplace of the modern labor movement.

Republicans said they intended to cast final votes as early as Tuesday on legislation abruptly announced last week that would bar workers from being required to pay union fees as a condition of employment, even as thousands of union members planned to protest at the state Capitol and as President Obama, visiting a truck factory outside Detroit, denounced the notion.

"You know, these so-called right-to-work laws, they don't have to do with economics," Mr. Obama said. "They have everything to do with politics. What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money."

From a distance, there would seem no more unlikely a target for this fight than Michigan, where labor, hoping to demonstrate strength after a series of setbacks, asked voters last month to enshrine collective bargaining into the state Constitution.

But that ballot measure failed badly, and suddenly a reverse drive was under way that has brought the state to a moment startling in its symbolism. How the home of the United Automobile Workers finds itself close to becoming the 24th state to ban compulsory union fees — and only the second state to pass such legislation in a decade — is the latest chapter in a larger battle over the role of unions in the nation's midsection.

It is a reflection of mounting tension between labor leaders and Michigan Republicans who took control of the state two years ago, and the result of a change of position by Gov. Rick Snyder, a political novice who had long avoided the issue because, he had said, it was too divisive. It is also an effort being closely watched — and fueled, labor leaders say — by national conservative groups who see the outcome in Michigan as an emblem for similar measures in other states with far thinner union histories.

"Everybody has this image of Michigan as a labor state," said Bill Ballenger, the editor of Inside Michigan Politics. "But organized labor has been losing clout, and the Republicans saw an opportunity, and now the chickens are coming home to roost."

Since the wave of Republican wins in 2010 in statehouses in the Midwest, campaigns to limit unions have boiled over in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere. But in Michigan, where Republicans also won control, those efforts had seemed more muted, with some in the party, including Mr. Snyder, shying away from the broadest, most sweeping measures.

"When you're proposing to make changes of this magnitude in a culture that's steeped in a long legacy involving labor, it's going to take a long time to communicate with and educate people," said Mike Shirkey, a Republican state representative.

Supporters of such a limit on unions, which is already the law in many in Southern and Western states, say it grants workers freedom and attracts new businesses to the state. Detractors say it lowers workers' salaries and weakens unions. Indiana passed such a law this year, the first new state to do so since 2001.

Mr. Snyder, an accountant and venture capitalist in his first term as governor, prided himself on avoiding partisan labels and said over and over that a "right-to-work" measure was not on his agenda. "This is not Wisconsin," Mr. Snyder told a group of union members last year as a battle over limits to collective bargaining raged in Madison.

Still, labor leaders complained that Mr. Snyder and lawmakers were harming unions in other ways: trying to prevent school districts from deducting dues from paychecks, for instance, and allowing state-appointed managers to toss out union contracts in the most financially troubled cities. Labor leaders went on the offensive, proposing the unusual ballot measure to enshrine collective bargaining rights into the state Constitution, a move Mr. Snyder opposed.

As it has throughout the country, membership in unions has fallen here in recent decades — about 17.5 percent of Michigan residents are members — and the statewide ballot proposal failed by 14 percentage points on Nov. 6 even as Mr. Obama won the state.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Redford, Mich.

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