| So, there was this thing last year called an election. One of the things people voted on was labor's pre-emptive strike against Right to Work called Proposal 2. It was too broad for most people's tastes, etching into the state's framing document rights for organizing that lots of people who otherwise support the labor movement thought went too far. So, they defeated the thing. Shortly before the election until the passage of Right to Work, most sane humans said that the results of the election shouldn't be interpreted as a referendum on Right to Work, only that most Michiganders thought that the right to organize didn't belong in the state constitution. The mistake, they said, would be to pass Right to Work in lame duck. Benevolent overlord Rick Michigan and the state Legislature listened carefully, thought things through, and then rammed through Right to Work in lame duck with very little opportunity for the public to have input. Rumpled newspaperman Jack Spencer, who recently saw a connivance in the city clerk of Lansing making it easier for people to cast absentee ballots, got ahold of something Bob King in which the labor leader said that Proposal 2 was an attempt to forestall Right to Work, and yet again sees dastardly deeds afoot. King's comments about right-to-work in the Metro Times are important because the unions now are saying that there was no debate about the issue and that the law arose and was signed quickly. In fact, right-to-work bills have been introduced in the Michigan Legislature for years and the issue has been widely debated in union halls, at universities, with business groups and in communities across Michigan.
It's a lovely combination of Pravda and Orwell. The bill was passed practically before it was introduced, and received no public hearings. Yet, because people have been aware of Right to Work for a long time, saying so to rumpled newspaperman Jack Spencer is cause enough to not cast aspersions on the process in which it was finally passed. |
