A union president's letter shows one school employee union planned to handle automatic dues collection of its members by demanding full payment at the start of the year or requiring its members to give a checking or savings account number or credit card for automatic monthly withdrawals.

Debbie Bence, president of the Plymouth-Canton Cafeteria Association, sent a letter to her union members on June 4 stating that the dues had to be paid as a condition of employment.

Bence said the financial information would be kept confidential and kept at the Michigan Education Association headquarters. News reports state that uinon dues to the MEA are capped at $778 a year.

Bence and MEA Spokesman Doug Pratt haven’t returned messages seeking comment.

Public Act 53 became effective March 16 and prohibited union dues from being automatically deducted from payroll. However, one day after Bence’s letter was dated, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the law until the legal process plays out.

John Ellsworth, a teacher in the Grand Ledge Public Schools and former union president, said his union hasn’t required a checking or savings account number or credit card to pay dues. Ellsworth said he thinks that is just how one union planned to handle dues collection if PA 53 went into effect and was not initiated by the MEA.

“Teachers are much like the population at large — significantly uninvolved in politics,” Ellsworth said in an email. “Most teachers focus on students and teaching. Paying union dues for a minority is annoying, but for most it is just part of the package of being a teacher. I think if the MEA asks for access to accounts that a sizable number of teachers will refuse.”

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled that a payroll-deduction program for a union’s political action committee violated campaign finance laws. Then the Michigan Senate passed HB 4929 (later became PA 53) on a 20-18 vote that stopped payroll-deduction by a school district for union dues.

U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood issued a preliminary injunction June 5 stopping the bill from taking effect. The Michigan Employment Relations Committee appealed the preliminary injunction and it will be reviewed for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

“It is very much a live controversy,” said Patrick Wright, senior legal counsel for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

It’s distressing that the Michigan Senator chairing the U.S. Senate Agricultural committee doesn’t know that, despite rumors, Michigan’s agriculture does not represent the state’s second-largest industry.

In a recent press release on proposed assistance to agricultural industries, Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s office claimed: “Bio-based manufacturing is a key sector of Michigan's agriculture industry, which is Michigan's second largest industry, supporting nearly one out of every four jobs.”

But these statistics being used by the Democrat from Lansing are a hypothetical guess using an inflated definition of agriculture and a multiplier factor.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, there are 63,667 jobs in farming — or one out of 79 jobs. The industry produces 0.9 percent of the state’s earnings. These relatively small figures are nothing to thumb your nose at, but they’re far from the inflated figures used by the senator.

The source for the oft-repeated "second-largest industry" seems to come from an MSU report that uses a very loose definition of agriculture and multiplies the economic impacts from that loose definition.

For instance, cereal factories are included and as are food wholesalers and retailers like grocery stores and restaurants, regardless of their sales of Michigan-grown produce. These jobs are then multiplied for their ancillary effects, meaning that you could be working as a car salesman and still be "induced" by agriculture, even though you directly work in automotive retail.

This makes the multiplier unfair for comparisons. Every industry in the state is connected to each other and some industries are more connected than others. Dropping a dollar on any product produces an echo someplace else.

Regardless of its size, agriculture plays an important role in the state economy. But politicians should not seek to inflate the impacts of the industry when supporting selective favors.