The soon to be sworn in Michigan Legislature will debut tomorrow and will likely consider legislation pertaining to the decade old Right-To- Work law.

A bill is expected to be introduced early in the session to undo the 2012 policy that bars labor contracts from requiring workers to become union members or pay the union a fee as a condition of their employment according to the Detroit News.  The legislation passed under Republican Governor Rick Snyder, and has had Democrat criticism since its inception.

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House Speaker elect, Joe Tate D-Detroit, has said the right to work law has “negatively impacted the state.”

“Obviously, labor has been [and]  is a part of the fabric of the state of Michigan,” he said. “Our workers here should be supported and treated with dignity as well in the work that they do.”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer, when still serving as a state senator, called the right to work bill “petty and vindictive politics at its most disgusting,” and had released a plan to overturn it once elected governor.

While many disagree about the merits of the law, a decline in union membership has fallen precipitously since 2012.  Then, 17.2 percent of Michigan’s total 4.85 million workers were covered by a union contract, but that number dropped to 15.4 percent in 2021 according to Bridge Michigan.  Michigan is also one of four states with the largest drop in union membership since 2012, three of which adopted Right-To-Work laws.

Some advocates of the law have also voiced their desire to fight to maintain it despite mostly Democratic objections.

“We will aggressively protect Michigan’s historic right-to-work law that allows private-sector union members to choose whether or not to join a union,” State Director of Americans for Prosperity-Michigan, Annie Patnaude said.

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Still, Tate plans to pursue policies benefiting Michigan workers, spokeswoman Amber McCann said Monday, but he “is not assigning a timeline for the passage of any specific bill.”