Sandy Levin weighs in on the controversy over public employee unions in a guest column he wrote (which is on his web site). Levin recalls the days in the 1960s when he was working in the state Senate and writing Michigan’s public employment legislation.
At that time, teachers made an average salary of $6,745 — about twice the poverty rate for a family of four. Approximately $500 a year was provided for health insurance.
Firefighters earned about $6,300 a year and regularly worked 24-hour, six-day stretches without time off.
Firefighters earned about $6,300 a year and regularly worked 24-hour, six-day stretches without time off.
The Levin bill became the nation’s first comprehensive law that awarded collective bargaining rights to nearly all public employees.
Here’s the opening of Levin’s piece:
“The king can do no wrong.
“I first heard that maxim when I was a young labor lawyer in Michigan in the early 1960s. I had called an official of a public institution on behalf of their employees who wanted to be represented and engaged in collective bargaining.
“’As a public entity,’” the official responded, “’we cannot bind ourselves.’”
“Public institutions regularly bind themselves through contracts to construct buildings, I noted, and asked, “’Why are conditions of work for employees different?’”
“Referring to English common law, he answered: “’Because the king can do no wrong.’”
“Public institutions regularly bind themselves through contracts to construct buildings, I noted, and asked, “’Why are conditions of work for employees different?’”
“Referring to English common law, he answered: “’Because the king can do no wrong.’”
“That saying has stuck with me ever since. From the days that I wrote, as chairman of the Michigan State Senate Labor Committee, the first comprehensive public employment labor relations bill in the nation, through the moment shortly after, when I sat face-to-face with Republican Gov. George Romney working out the final language for the legislation.
“And it sticks with me today — 46 years after Michigan’s Public Employment Relations Act passed with broad bipartisan support — as I watch the governor of Wisconsin try to eliminate his state workers’ collective bargaining rights.”
