Deteriorating Labor Climate
Although Michigan continues to shed jobs by the thousands and struggles to combat the perception of a negative labor climate, organized labor is intent on making matters worse by pursuing an aggressive agenda to hike labor costs. Increases in benefit levels for unemployment insurance and workers' compensation are high on labor's wish list for 2008. Big labor unions also wants to change state laws to make it even tougher for a business and its' employees to have a fair election on whether or not a union should represent them. Such actions, if successful, will put Michigan even further behind competing states and global venues for job retention and creation. The administration, acting in concert with union activists, is seeking to make it more difficult for business to use independent contractors by attempting to reclassify them as employees at every opportunity. Expansion of prevailing wage and project labor agreements is another goal of big labor. Such efforts seek to block non-union businesses from participating in development projects at a time when our state desperately needs jobs and growth.
NFIB will work to uphold employer rights to use independent contractors and halt more payroll taxes to fund benefit increases. In addition, NFIB will be fighting to halt the spread of prevailing wage and project labor sweetheart deals that benefit labor unions at the expense of taxpayers and small business.
