SALON

Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012 11:40 PM UTC

Michigan’s right-to-work bill cribs ALEC

The bill passed today takes language verbatim from ALEC's model legislation

By

Topics: Michigan, Labor, Unions, Right-to-work, Rick Snyder, ALEC,

Michigan's right-to-work bill cribs ALECProtesters gather for a rally in the State Capitol rotunda in Lansing, Mich., Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. The crowd is protesting right-to-work legislation passed last week. Michigan could become the 24th state with a right-to-work law next week. Rules required a five-day wait before the House and Senate vote on each other's bills; lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene Tuesday and Gov. Snyder has pledged to sign the bills into law. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Credit: AP)

The Republican-backed right-to-work bill given final approval Tuesday in Michigan contains language cribbed verbatim from a model anti-union bill created by ALEC, according to a watchdog group.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, of course, is the corporate-backed, conservative-leaning organization that has become a bugaboo for liberals by pushing legislation to do everything from roll back environmental regulation to weaken gun control laws, as brought to the fore this year by the murder of Trayvon Martin. ALEC, like lots of groups that work in state capitols, creates “model legislation” that friendly lawmakers can introduce in whole or as a basis for their own bills.

Both Michigan’s HB 4003, which affects public sector unions, and HB 4054, which affects private sector unions, appears to pull language directly from ALEC’s model right-to-work bill. The Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group which has been working for years to expose ALEC’s activities, created these chart comparing the language:

Lots of organizations from across the political spectrum produce model legislation, but ALEC has drawn scrutiny for its lack of transparency and because it is directly funded by many of the country’s largest corporations, some of whom may have a direct interest in seeing union power diminished.

Last year, a Florida Republican lawmaker even accidently forgot to remove ALEC’s mission statement from a bill she introduced in the state legislature that was copied verbatim from ALEC’s model bill.

Continue Reading Close

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 7 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations