Following a heated fight over public-employee union rights in Wisconsin, Michigan lawmakers have paved the way to impose "financial martial law" on cash-strapped cities and school districts. GOP Gov. Rick Snyder promptly signed the law, which give a state-appointed emergency financial manager authority to void union contracts and remove elected officials. Union leaders called the move an attack on collective bargaining rights. Will this inspire an explosion of protests like the ones in Madison? (Watch a local report about Michigan's law)
It should. This is "anti-democratic": Even if this would balance some budgets, says Brian Merchant at The Utopianist, "there's no getting around the fact that it would do so in a pretty bluntly anti-democratic manner." It eliminates workers' "rights to negotiate for their standard of living." It also "sets a dangerous" precedent by letting the state siphon power from "locally elected bodies, and the working class in general."
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