By Steve Gunn
EAGnews.org

LANSING, Mich. – Michigan teachers unions are finally going to have to collect member dues on their own.

That was the intent of a state law passed in 2012 that prevented public school districts from automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks.

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But the unions, fearing that members won’t voluntarily pay their dues, sued the state, and found a friendly judge to issue a preliminary injunction against the law.

But on Thursday the U.S. 6^th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision and cleared the way for the law to be implemented, according to MLive.com.

“The act merely directs one kind of public employer to use its resources for its core mission rather than for the collection of union dues,” Judge Raymond Kethledge wrote in the majority opinion.

Now we will finally see how much “solidarity” the state’s teachers unions really have.

The unions will have to depend on members to send in their own dues payments on a timely basis, which has proven to be a problem in other states that have passed similar laws. The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest teachers union in that state, has experienced severe revenue problems since schools stopped collecting dues a few years ago.

Michigan has also adopted a right-to-work law which says that nobody can be forced to join a union or pay any sort of dues in order to secure or maintain employment.

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The two new laws will be a severe challenge for Michigan unions.

Until now, school employees accepted union membership because it was mandatory. And they paid union dues because they were taken from their paychecks before they received them. It was a very automatic system that required little thought or effort on the part of rank-and-file members.

But now they don’t have to join the union, and their dues payments are their own responsibility.

It will be interesting to check the membership numbers of the state’s largest teachers unions a year from now. Our guess is that many members will scramble for the exits.