(Bridge illustration/A.J. Jones) Michigan’s largest teachers union is struggling to keep a toehold as change-minded foes with growing momentum seek to topple the MEA — one of the state’s traditional political giants. The 152,000-member union’s finances are deteriorating. Its growth strategy is uncertain. And it faces an unrelenting political offensive by opponents who see the […]
Labor belabored: MEA losing members, losing fights. Will it lose its grip?
Posted inBusiness Watch
Long-simmering GOP-MEA ‘war’ intensifies going into 2014
The Michigan Education Association and Michigan Republican Party are on speaking terms – sort of. SIGN OF TIMES: An MEA-financed billboard from last year’s elections reflect the heated rhetoric that has come to mark the union’s relationship with the Republican Party. (courtesy photo) Last year, the two sides regularly exchanged plenty of words – words […]
Posted inTalent & Education
As Right to Work takes root, MEA faces rough lessons from Wisconsin
LABOR LOSS: Protesters packed the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 in opposition to restrictions on public-sector union organizing. Since the restrictions were implemented, the number of public-sector union worker has dropped 21 percent. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) In the hectic days of last December, as the Michigan Legislature prepared to pass a Right-to-Work […]
Posted inTalent & Education
MEA faces breakaways, poaching of locals
Just months after Right to Work was enacted in Michigan, Michigan Education Association local units are looking to depart the mothership. MEA NO MORE: Teachers in the Roscommon schools decided in 2012 to leave the Michigan Education Association and form their own independent bargaining unit. (courtesy photo) MEA leaders say local units have left – and […]
Posted inLand O Links
Land O Links: So you want a new arena?
SUPPORTING THE TEAM: The Detroit Red Wings are owned by a firm that reported $4.2 billion in revenue in 2010. That same firm, however, has convinced Michigan lawmakers to use tax dollars to aid a project to build a new arena for the hockey franchise in downtown Detroit. (Bridge archive photo) *What is a new […]
Posted inPhil's Column
A few words of (hopefully) wisdom for Michigan’s graduates
Phil Power is founder and chairman of the Center for Michigan. It’s graduation season – and last Friday, I had the honor of giving a commencement address to those earning economics degrees at the University of Michigan. There’s an old joke that plagiarism is when you steal from one author; research is when you use […]
Posted inGuest Commentary
Guest commentary: Why do EAA critics want children trapped in failing schools?
By John William Covington/Education Achievement Authority Rep. Ellen Lipton’s comments about the Education Achievement Authority are an example of the way so much of the educational establishment and their political allies are trying to kill an innovative approach to educating young people who have been abjectly failed by the old, outdated system of public schooling. The […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
Under the postcard-perfect U.P., a reality only natives see
WHAT DO YOU SEE?: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is a land of grand vistas, but also a land of blood, of joblessness, of heartache, writes Ron Riekki. (Bridge photo/Nancy Derringer) I’ve lived in Mount Pleasant, Oshtemo, Forest Park, Rogers Park, and worked in Chicago, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Oak Park and Mackinac Island. I’m probably forgetting some places. […]
Posted inBrunch with Bridge
A country’s anger pierces even the silence of the forest
We live in the Manistee National Forest where, each year, as spring first creeps and then roars to life all around us, I think about death. It isn’t religion’s observance of Passover’s Seder or Easter’s resurrection that does this. It’s the land. ANGER WAFTS IN: The national anger and frustration over the behavior of elected […]
Posted inMichigan Government
No answer to the call button: Nursing shortage looms in Michigan
In 2007, warning of a nurse shortage in Michigan and long admission waiting lists for nursing schools, then- Gov. Jennifer Granholm proclaimed: “Something’s wrong with this picture and we are going to fix it.” ON CALL?: Michigan soon may confront a shortage of nursing professionals, say industry leaders. (courtesy photo/used under Creative Commons license) Well, […]