Michigan law gives teachers’ unions more bargaining power  

Modern-day teachers’ unions are major political actors with multimillion-dollar budgets and agendas often unrelated to reading, writing and arithmetic.  

While some states such as Florida are trying to curb the unions’ power, others are rolling back restrictions that kept them in check.  

In 2011, Michigan restricted unions’ ability to bargain on certain topics such as performance-based pay and layoff procedures. But last year, the state passed several bills reversing the restrictions.  

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy examined the contracts of 200 of Michigan’s largest school districts to determine how drastic the changes would be.  

“Schools districts have been prohibited from bargaining over many subjects for over a decade, but those subjects just got put back on the bargaining table,” said Steve Delie, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center. “It is critical that school boards be prepared to negotiate terms that maximize student outcomes and success while ensuring proper accountability.”  

Delie’s report explains the issue in more detail:  

“School administrators have long had the autonomy to make decisions about teacher discipline, layoff and recall, and performance evaluations. Automatically reviving previously prohibited language may require these administrators to significantly change the practices and procedures they have developed to provide their schools with the highest quality teachers available.”  

In short, school districts will be forced to make major changes, and unions will have a lot of say in what those changes are.  

However, not all schools followed the restrictions in the first place. Mackinac Center research from 2014 found 60% of districts retained some discussion of the topics prohibited in 2011.  

Even now, over 20% of the 200 surveyed districts illegally discuss merit pay in their contracts; 6% discuss classroom observations; 11% layoff procedures; and 23% teacher discipline. Other topics included hiring private contractors for non-instructional purposes (e.g. food service) and teacher placement.  

Now that these topics can be legally included in union bargaining, Michigan public education will once again be subject to the whims and agendas of union bosses.  

But that doesn’t mean school boards are powerless. Says Delie: 

“Districts should fight hard to preserve the authority to regularly observe and evaluate all teachers, as well as the ability to reward high-performing teachers and terminate teachers demonstrating poor performance. Nothing a school district does matters more for improving overall student achievement.”