Letter from the GSRA Steering Committee: Update on GSRA Election & What’s the Mackinac Center?

This week, GEO and the GSRA steering committee filed a request for reconsideration of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission’s (MERC’s) refusal to grant us an election to form a union.In August, MERC said that since it lacked the technical ability to conclude that GSRAs are employees, it couldn’t confirm our legal right to vote to create a union, or order an election.

Many GSRAs were disappointed when MERC rejected our petition for an election, particularly because the petition was accompanied by a statement from the UM Board of Regents that we are employees, by membership cards from the majority of GSRAs–and by the agreement we’d reached with the UM administration as to the conduct of the election.

So this week, we asked MERC to reconsider its decision.

Our request included an affidavit of facts drawn from the University’s websites and a brief showing that MERC isn’t bound by the technical constraints it cited. We argue that GSRAs are employees by every legal test that matters: we pay taxes, we swear the oath required of public employees under the Michigan Constitution—we’re even eligible for leave time under the Family Medical Leave Act, a piece of federal legislation that applies only to employees!

UM’s administration will have the opportunity to respond to our request for reconsideration, and we’ve talked with many of you who are eager to hear what the administration—and, subsequently, MERC—have to say.

As you may have heard, GEO’s election petition is opposed by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right-wing think tank that advocates eliminating state funding for the University of Michigan.

We’ve gotten lots of questions recently about what the Mackinac Center for Public Policy is and why it’s interested in our union and our election.

Some GSRAs first encountered the organization when the director of its legal foundation, Patrick White, disrupted an Engineering department forum in July 2011—immediately before the Mackinac Center filed suit to try to block our petition for an election on behalf of a client who had previously been a Tea Party candidate for Washtenaw County Commission in 2010.The Mackinac Center is the largest state-level conservative policy organization in the United States. It is a major corporate-sponsored promoter of anti-union “right-to-work” legislation and the privatization of public education (including public higher education) in Michigan.

Tax records show that the Mackinac Center has been funded by sources including the Koch brothers, who also funded a drive to end public employees’ right to organize in Wisconsin. According to the Michigan Education Association research department, however, “the Mackinac Center refuses to disclose who pays for its operations. When asked by Detroit’s Metro Times in 1996, the Center’s President Lawrence Reed said: ‘Our funding sources are primarily foundations, with the rest coming from corporations and individuals,” but that “…revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion.’”

To summarize: the Mackinac Center doesn’t just oppose a union for GSRAs—it’s an organization that opposes employees forming unions, full stop. Though you’ll hear them trot out technical claims about whether or not we’re employees, they’d say or do just about anything to stop an organizing effort.

The Mackinac Center’s attempt to block our petition was dismissed, but their effort to intervene in our election continues. We anticipate that you’ll hear more from them—and from groups fronting for them—in coming weeks, and that it will be another few weeks before we have news about the timing of the election.

We know that University of Michigan research assistants are employees with the right to vote, and we believe that no one should stand in the way of that right. If you have questions or concerns about the election, or want to get more involved, contact us at gsracampaign@geo3550.org.

Yours truly,

Samantha Montgomery
President, GEO

Andrea Jokisaari
Chair, GSRA Steering Committee