The Supreme Court said its decision isn’t really based on the right-to-work law anyway, saying the ruling is based on the Civil Service Commission’s powers as described in the constitution.
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DETROIT (AP) Thousands of Michigan state employees cant be forced to pay labor unions for negotiating contracts and providing other services, the state Supreme Court said Wednesday.
Justices Stephen Markman, David Viviano and Brian Zahra joined Young in the majority opinion.
Before the right-to-work law, union members had the option of opting out of paying union dues.
The reason this could have national implications is that Michigan was trying to use the same dodge that many other union controlled states have employed in the face of rising Right to Work movements.
She said the commission acted within its constitutional powers.
“Having chosen this method of regulating conditions of employment, what the commission cannot do is foist the administrative costs of that choice onto anyone else”, he wrote.
Attorneys for Christie argued in lower courts that the yearly increases are not part of the basic pension benefit that workers are entitled to receive.
The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to a 2011 law that suspended retirees’ cost-of-living adjustments as part of an overhaul of the pension system for public workers. “The majority correctly noted that state employees unions have illegally been receiving agency fees from state employees for decades”.
That same law was at the center of a separate legal battle between public worker unions and the Christie administration over cuts to annual pension contributions. Officials at the UAW, which represents some 17,000 state employees, couldn’t be reached for comment July 29.
McCormack, for instance, said the court should take a second look if the commission objects to the law in the future.
“The authority of the Civil Service Commission isn’t with out limits” Young wrote.
Further, the majority of justices did not agree with plaintiffs’ arguments that SERA retirement benefits are “rates of compensation” or “conditions of employment” and therefore are within the “exclusive and plenary authority” of the commission and not subject to change by the Legislature.
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Gov. Rick Snyder informed through Wednesday’s decision, certifying the state employees to enjoy the same rights and securities as private sector workers across Michigan. He added: “I respect that the freedom-to-work laws inspired passionate debate on both sides, and appreciate that the state’s highest court has now brought this issue to a close”. State employee unions and the State Office of the Employer initiated their primary negotiations on a new shared bargaining arrangements last week.
