State Agency Attempts to Mandate Union Membership on Small Business

Date: December 04, 2019

State Agency Says: No labor union, no license, no business.

During the administration of former Governor Jennifer Granholm, thousands of self-employed day care and home health care workers were forced to join a union if they accepted state payments for their services. After years of legal and legislative efforts by NFIB and other organizations, these forced union agreements were ended.

In a move reminiscent of these prior attempts to force workers to join a union, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulation (LARA) is working on new rules that would make union membership a requirement to obtain a license to grow or sell marihuana under Michigan’s new laws legalizing the drug.

Language included in the draft rules for Michigan marihuana licensing would mandate union agreements between the employer and employees of marihuana retailers and growers as a condition of obtaining the license required by the state to be in business. No labor union, no license, no business.

Regardless of one’s viewpoint on the issue of marihuana legalization and distribution, if a state agency can require the employees of a specific company in a specific industry to be union members in order to receive a license to conduct business in the state, they can impose the same requirement on any trade or business that requires a license from the state to operate. Like most states, Michigan licenses all sorts of businesses from preschools to tattoo parlors and everything in between. The precedent that could be established would affect thousands of small businesses. In addition, if this attempt to force employees into labor unions is successful, be ready for proposals to create licenses for almost any type of business endeavor in order to pursue the forced unionization of even more small businesses.

The move by the Whitmer administration is a copy-cat version of legislation recently passed in California that mandates that employers with 20 or more employees maintain a “labor peace agreement” as a condition of obtaining a state cannabis license. A “labor peace agreement” is a nice way of saying you must have a union to get a license. Unlike the California mandate, the Michigan rules include no exemption from the union mandate based on the size of the business. Since labor unions know they cannot get similar legislation passed in Michigan, they are depending on the Whitmer administration to get from the agency rules process what they cannot get in the legislature from accountable elected lawmakers. Just weeks ago, the Whitmer administration announced a similar effort to go around the legislature to implement new overtime requirements via the rules process.

NFIB will be working to see that these attempts to force unions on small business will not prevail.

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