commitment from quite a lot of
volunteers, you can have a lot of
money and still be very weak.”
Kat Brausch, Rackham student
and grievance committee co-chair
of GEO, warned that right-to-
work laws could result in unions
having too few members or funds
to continue, but clarified this is not
currently a concern for GEO.
“Right-to-work is intended to
set up a sort of financial death
spiral in a way because people do
not have to be members, fewer
people are paying dues,” Brausch
said. “The union has less money
to spend on both our sort of day-
to-day activities, our collective
bargaining, our general support
for our members and things like
that. And we have to put more of
our efforts into member organizing
to make sure that we get as many
members as possible.”
“But with less money, we have
less resources to put into member
organizing, which means that then
there were fewer people joining the
union and less money to put into
organizing,” Brausch added.
LSA professor Bob King is a
former president of United Auto
Workers, a prominent union in
the U.S. and Canada with more
than 980,000 members. King said
unions can retain members even
when subject to right-to-work laws.
“UAW is still able to have an
effective voice and effective power
to get good contracts,” King said.
“So good contracts are what keeps
high membership, I think. And
so overall, unions that have that
power in the industry or power
to the employer, they keep high
memberships. If they don’t have,
or if they have less power to deliver
the kind of contracts they want,
then I think it impacts membership
more.”
McCann said Shirkey’s support
for right-to-work legislation is
driven by the belief it would benefit
the Michigan economy.
“Michigan
has
absolutely
experienced an economic recovery
as a result of multiple factors,
but the Majority Leader would
argue that Michigan becoming
a ‘Freedom to Choose’ state did
factor into the decision-making for
companies looking to Michigan to
locate,” McCann wrote. “It was a
policy that (made) Michigan much
more economically competitive.
Furthermore, union membership
has not seen a significant loss
of members — proving Senator
Shirkey’s point that the union has
the ability to make the case for the
value of membership.”
There has long been a national
trend toward restricting unions
and strengthening right-to-work
legislation.
In 1977, the U.S. Supreme
Court held that public sector
union fair share fees were lawful
and could be used for collective
bargaining in Abood v. Detroit
Board of Education. The ruling was
overturned in 2018 with Janus v.
AFSCME, making right-to-work
the national norm.
The
decision
meant
public
employees do not have to pay union
fees to cover the costs of collective
bargaining,
undermining
the
laws in 22 states with “fair share”
provisions requiring non-members
to pay these fees.
Michigan’s
economy
has
improved since the passage of the
right-to-work bill, but pinpointing
the impacts of a single piece of
legislation is a difficult task.
Many academic studies have
sought to evaluate the results of
right-to-work laws, but numerous
factors contribute to economic
growth. While this legislation can
help foster a more business-friendly
environment, determining those
effects with certainty isn’t easily
done.
However, some studies indicate
adverse results in terms of union
membership and wage growth.
According to a study by Frank
Manzo, the policy director of
the
Illinois
Economic
Policy
Institute, and Robert Bruno, a
labor professor at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the
Janus decision could reduce union
membership among state and local
government employees by 726,000
people. Manzo and Bruno also
estimated wages for that group of
employees could fall by an average
of 3.6%.
A different article in the Labor
Studies Journal found that right-
to-work laws had no impact on
employment and negatively affected
other aspects of the economy.
While state law was on the
University’s side in the labor
dispute with the graduate students,
the union and their supporters were
frustrated with the school’s request
for an injunction against GEO — the
University’s own students.
In the aftermath of the strike,
GEO spokesperson Leah Bernardo-
Ciddio said the union felt like its
hand had been forced.
“We are all feeling a little bit upset
and frustrated and devastated that
we were backed into a legal corner,
and we had to choose between
our demands and the future of our
union,” Bernardo-Ciddio said.
The graduate students aren’t the
first on campus to resort to a strike —
or the threat of one — when seeking
concessions from the University. In
the spring of 2018, after a months-
long bargaining campaign, LEO
members came close to initiating
a work stoppage, which also
would have violated state law.
LEO called off the work stoppage
when the union determined that
the University’s bargaining team
had started to “move in the right
direction” at a last-ditch bargaining
session.
Robinson said unions have to use
the options available to them when
making demands on behalf of their
members.
“The way I look at it is, over the
years, there’s a series of promises
that the University has made and
not kept,” Robinson said. “Every
now and then LEO should feel free
to make a promise and to not keep
a promise.”
According to Robinson, striking
is justified in certain circumstances.
“My view has been, it’s the law,
but we used to have apartheid laws,
we used to have laws against Black
and white people using the same
water fountains,” Robinson said.
“There’s laws that you should obey
because they’re morally sound and
everybody benefits from them and
everyone should follow them, and
there’s laws that really ought to
be broken because they are unjust
laws.”
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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
2 — Wednesday, October 21, 2020
BECCA MAHON/Daily
Ann Arbor public schools are working together to adapt a learning environment which meets new safety standards.
ADVERTISING
WMG-contact@umich.edu
In an attempt to find a
compromise between a COVID-
19
safe
environment
and
in-person schooling, Washtenaw
County
Health
Department
and Washtenaw Intermediate
School District released a call to
action on Oct. 12, emphasizing
the
importance
of
a
joint
community effort to bring kids
back to schools safely.
“We
wanted
to
raise
awareness,”
Naomi
Norman,
the interim superintendent of
Washtenaw Intermediate School
District, said. “Our ability to
go back to school successfully
face-to-face
was
dependent
not only on our schools having
really strong safety protocols,
but that as a larger community,
as families and all the people
who touch our families, we all
have to be working together on
having healthy practices so that
we can minimize the spread of
COVID-19.”
Ann Arbor Public Schools is
one of the few school districts in
Washtenaw County doing virtual
learning. The call to action letter
says all school communities
have the responsibility to look
after one another.
“Even when you feel like
you’re in your own bubble or in
your own space, you are part
of a larger Washington County
community and we have to
count on everyone,” Norman
said. “Every one of us matters to
this effort.”
The letter said teachers and
staff are missing their students
and that there is mutual effort
needed from both the school
districts and the communities as
a whole to bring students back.
The call to action lists important
safety
guidelines
to
help
minimize the spread of COVID-
19, such as hand washing, getting
a flu vaccine, wearing face masks
and practicing social distancing.
Currently, 30 district officials,
including the nine public school
superintendents, have signed
the joint call-to-action letter.
Huron High School history
teacher Jeff DeMoss is one of the
many teachers who are striving
to create a virtual community.
He said Zoom is not conducive to
a positive and healthy classroom
environment.
“Creating a community for
me relies a lot upon people
practicing some vulnerability
and being willing to share things
about their identity, about their
political
or
social
beliefs,”
DeMoss said. “When it’s on a
screen, and people are just in
their room frequently with their
cameras off, students don’t feel
safe to share.”
AAPS has put effort into
creating
support
systems
for
students
and
teachers.
DeMoss
said
teachers
went
through weeks of professional
development
to
establish
the
new
virtual
education
proceedings.
He
also
said
students have been creating
community through different
clubs and organizations.
Huron High School senior
Aakarsh Verma said adjusting to
online school has been difficult
but has created a sense of
camaraderie among students.
“Overcoming a lot of those
technical
difficulties
that
are bound to arise when you
transition to an entirely virtual
platform for learning,” Verma
said. “We’ve been patient with
our teachers and we’ve been
helping them where we can and
that has established a sort of
community through the shared
learning curve that has brought
us together.”
DeMoss
said
he
was
concerned that virtual learning
affects students’ mental health.
“They are isolated,” DeMoss
said. “But those connections are
not able to fully be there, the
same as if we were in-person.”
The mental and social health
of students are one of the main
concerns of virtual schooling,
but many school districts are
facing difficult decisions on
whether or not these social
and
mental
concerns
hold
precedence over the concern
of a COVID-19 outbreak in a
school.
When contacted for comment,
Andrew Cluley, AAPS director
of communications, directed
The Michigan Daily to the
AAPS COVID dashboard where
AAPS highlights the metrics the
district is looking for to bring
students back. These metrics
include 14 days of a downward
trend in positive cases across
the country, 7-20 new positive
cases per million and less than
3% risk rate determined by the
MI Safe Smart Map.
The call to action says there
needs to be a joint effort from
the community and the school
districts to ensure a safe school
environment.
“I hope to see them (schools)
following COVID guidelines,”
Verma said. “These are not
normal times — we’re in the
middle of a global pandemic.
And we can’t act like we aren’t.”
Contributor Shannon Stocking
can be reached at sstockin@
umich.edu
SHANNON STOCKING
For The Daily
AAPS, local health department
call for schools to reopen safely
Washtenaw County agency, school district sign letter asking to bring kids back
STRIKE
From Page 1