Justice Robert P. Young Jr.
The Michigan Supreme Court handed unions a big defeat on Wednesday in the battle over the state's right-to-work law and state employees.
Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press reports that the Michigan Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, ruled that Michigan's Civil Service Commission never had the authority to impose union fees on state workers, even before the controversial right-to-work law was passed.
Unions had argued in the court that the right-to-work law did not apply to state workers.
The Freep also reported:
In another setback for state employee unions, the court also upheld Wednesday a 2011 law requiring employees in the state's defined benefit pension plan to either contribute 4% of their pay toward retirement costs or move to a 401(k)style plan, in which future retirement benefits are not defined. That ruling overturned a decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
In the right-to-work issue, the Freep reported that Justice Robert Young Jr. wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Stephen Markman, Brian Zahra and David Viviano, the Freep reports.. One Republican-nominated justice, Mary Beth Kelly, joined the two Democratic nominees — Justices Bridget McCormack and Richard Bernstein — and wrote a dissent.
The Freep reports:
Before the right-to-work law, union members had the option of opting out of paying union dues. But they were still subject to the agency fees that unions say support the cost of negotiating labor agreements that benefit all workers. Under right-to-work, workers can't be required to pay those fees, either.
