An unprecedented screw job is looming in Michigan

This could give other states some bad ideas

Welcome to a Wednesday evening edition of Progress Report.

Tonight I’ve got an excerpt from my new piece on Michigan lawmakers’ developing effort to screw over low-wage workers in unprecedented fashion. Make sure to follow the link over to More Perfect Union (where I work full-time) for the rest of the story. And if you’re in Michigan, be sure to follow that up by sending the piece to your state legislators and the governor.

This story isn’t just about Michigan, though. Republicans have a tendency to pilot cruel and undemocratic bills in individual states, and when one manages to pass in one legislature, conservative contemporaries pounce like hyenas and start pursuing those policies in their states. We’ve seen it happen over and over again, including recent bursts of book bans, anti-DEI policies, trans care bans, and a new round of local preemption laws.

I’ll be back tomorrow night with a big news post for paid subscribers.

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The Michigan House of Representatives voted last week to block over a million low-wage workers from earning paid sick leave and receiving significant wage increases. The new Republican House majority, along with the help of more than half a dozen Democrats, passed bills that defy a state Supreme Court order set to go into effect in late February.

“I don't understand why anybody at this moment in time would be trying to lower people's wages,” Rep. Dan Morgan, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, told More Perfect Union on the day of the vote. “It is so clear that everyone feels like they need more money in their pockets, and for us to actually reach into their pockets and take that money back out is ridiculous to me.”

HB 4001 and 4002 would largely nullify a landmark decision by the Michigan high court, which reinstated popular proposals that looked poised to pass via ballot initiative in 2018. Michigan was under a Republican trifecta at the time, and instead of allowing the initiatives to reach voters, the legislature used a quirk in Michigan law to adopt them into law, then gutted them after that fall’s election.

Rep. Donovan McKinney, who represents a northern Detroit district with a median income of $14,000, decried the House vote.

“I believe no matter who you are in this country, no matter who you are in this state, you should be able to work one full-time job and make an honest living wage,” he said. A new poll shows that the policies are enormously popular with a bipartisan majority of Michiganders.

For the rest of the article, click over to More Perfect Union’s Substack…

The Michigan Legislature Is Trying to Roll Back a Higher Minimum Wage and Paid Leave

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