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
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