You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Unions that represent faculty members, teaching assistants, lecturers and others at Michigan's public colleges and universities stand to lose funds (exactly how much isn't clear) under the state's new "right to work" law for public employees. The law says that employees can't be forced to pay anything to unions that represent them. Until now, employees who did not want to join the unions that won collective bargaining elections could opt not to, but they had to make "fair share" payments to cover work done by the unions. (Such payments typically exclude political activity by unions.) Such workers could now pay nothing, if they want.
Republicans who pushed the legislation said that they were trying to "free" workers from unions. David Hecker, president of the American Federation of Teachers in Michigan (the largest union in higher education in the state), said that the move was designed to weaken unions. He noted that unions still must represent workers who don't pay anything, so the measures will leave unions with smaller budgets than they had before. He said that the AFT has not done an estimate of how much the union budgets could shrink, but said that in other states with similar laws, "there has been a hit."
