“Take It From Michigan, Forced Arbitration Harms”
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 by adminRepublicans on the House Committee on Education and Labor point us to these words of warning from Michigan’s experience. An editorial from the Detroit News says the state’s pain from binding arbitration ought to be a warning against the Employee Free Choice Act’s binding arbitration provision:
“A commission on local government finances convened in 2006 by Gov. Jennifer Granholm surveyed public employee costs in arbitration states and concluded that, compared with nonarbitration states, they were 3 to 5 percent higher. Spread over the multimillion-dollar budgets of larger cities, this can lead to large differences in costs for the taxpayers.
“At one point, for example, Young estimated that the costs of running Detroit were $50 million higher 10 years after the law was enacted than they would have been without it.
“A 2007 panel on the state’s fiscal crisis convened by the governor and headed by ex-GOP Gov. William Milliken and ex-Democratic Gov. James Blanchard also called for reform of the Act 312 process. …
“And yet it is this kind of process that many Democrats in Congress want to impose on struggling businesses through this labor legislation.
“Michigan’s long and unhappy experience with compulsory arbitration, and the chagrin it has caused Democratic officeholders who actually have to make budgets work, ought to help federal lawmakers understand the folly of this bill.”
Selected items were highlighted by the committee staff.
Tags: Binding Arbitration, Michigan
