News & Events

Michigan House focuses on bills to weaken collective bargaining rights

07.02.2012

by Ken Fletcher
Associate Executive Director of Government Affairs

The Michigan House of Representatives has adjourned for most of the summer so that they can campaign for re-election. They will take most of the next two months off and then return for a brief period after Labor Day before adjourning again until after the November election.

I wish I could report to you that before leaving for the summer the Michigan House acted on issues of concern for the nursing profession. I would like to be able to report that they held hearings on HB 5432, the Safe Patient Care Act, which would require hospitals to maintain safe nurse-to-patient ratios at all times. I also wish that I could report that the House has enacted SB 642-643, the bills that would protect nurses who are physically attacked on the job. Those bills passed the Senate last year and have languished in the House Judiciary Committee.

Instead, I must report that the House of Representatives chose to focus its attention on bills that would continue to weaken collective bargaining rights for all workers in Michigan, especially public school employees. They were also working on another huge tax cut for corporations that would lead to police and firefighter layoffs all across our state.

The Nurses Agenda	The House Leadership Agenda
Safe Patient Care Legislation	More tax cuts for corporations
Workplace violence protections for nurses	Continued attacks on collective bargaining rights for workers
Collective bargaining rights for all workers	Restrict reproductive rights for women
A fair tax system that adequately funds schools and public safety	Make it harder for the poor, the elderly and students to vote

Another focus of the House majority has been legislation to make it harder for the poor, the elderly, and students to vote. Shouldn’t our government be working to make voting easier and more convenient for people like nurses who work 12-hour (or longer) shifts and find it difficult to make it to the polls on election day? They could have voted for no-reason absentee voting or early voting options that would increase participation in the electoral process instead of trying to decrease participation.

We also watched House leaders silence the voice of two female legislators who were speaking out against a package of bills that would severely restrict the reproductive rights for all women. Never in history has the leadership of the House of Representatives banned a legislator from speaking on issues of importance to their constituents like this. The backlash against this unprecedented effort to silence the voice of female legislators sparked international media coverage that once again puts Michigan in a bad light.

We need new priorities in Lansing. We need elected officials who represent the hard-working people of Michigan instead of the corporate special interests and highly paid corporate CEOs who are doing just fine on their own. We need elected officials who will work to create jobs and fight for good-quality schools and roads, instead of waging divisive battles that blame working people for all the problems that were caused by the Wall Street collapse of 2008.

Nurses are the ideal people to lead the charge to take back control of our government for working families. Nursing is the most respected and trusted profession in America. People care about what you think and listen when you have something to say. Let’s make our voices heard in 2012. Let’s get out there and elect people who’ll fight for the issues that nurses care deeply about.

But we can’t put all our trust in the politicians. We need to protect our collective bargaining rights in the Michigan Constitution so that the politicians will never be able to take them away. It’s the only way that we can preserve our middle-class way of life for future generations.

Past generations had to fight and die for the rights that many of us now take for granted. All that is asked of our generation is to preserve those rights for those who come after us. Let’s do our part in 2012.