Snyder Snippets: Auto Manufacturers "regret" their move to Right-to-Work States

Just in case he's thinking of forgetting things he might have said, here are the statements made by Rick Snyder on Feb 8, 2012 in reference to Michigan workers and Right to Work (for less).

"We (Snyder and team) were meeting with some of the auto companies at the auto show (who) say that their companies regretted being in the southern part [of the country, where right-to-work laws are common] because they weren't getting the SKILLED WORKFORCE the same way that they would in MICHIGAN."

-- Stateline Online

See the complete INTERVIEW with Snyder in "Seven questions for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder" conducted by Melissa Maynard and Jim Malewitz, Stateline Feb 08, 2012

Important Snyder Snippets:

STATELINE: Do you think the research is clear on whether right-to-work would help improve Michigan's economy, political considerations about the fights over getting it passed aside?

SNYDER: No. Actually I think if you look at some of the labor agreements out there, there are some really competitive ones. And if you look at productivity overall, we actually had people when we were meeting with some of the auto companies at the auto show say that their companies regretted being in the southern part [of the country, where right-to-work laws are common] because they weren't getting the skilled workforce the same way that they would in Michigan and the flexibility. They were having people taken away for other lower wage situations versus having the right talent at the right place.

SNYDER: This is not something people should overreact to. In many respects when people say right-to-work, it's like one of those red flag kinds of issues where too many people just sort of have a visceral reaction and say "ok, here's my position and I'm not open to listening to anything else." That's not how good government should operate. I want to listen and hear it and work on it.

STATELINE: What about the state's labor relations with its own employees?

SNYDER: We had successful collective bargaining with our own employees at the state level. I want to give credit to [UAW President] Bob King. It was literally a case where the UAW took the lead and he had great people working for him, but Bob and I got on the phone and we actually met a couple of times to sort of hash through issues. WE GOT THINGS RESOLVED. In the end IT WAS GREAT that when we hit a loggerhead we just sat down and talked and got a good agreement done. (emphasis added)

For all of those of you with limited legislative experience or knowledge of Michigan's political history: Former Gov. John Engler often said, "Michigan's autoworkers are world-class!"

FULL TRANSCRIPT of Rick Snyder Interview with StateLine.

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Snyder's Re-Invention: A Right-to-Kill-Jobs State Called Michissippi (Michigan)

A civic crime has been committed. Extravagant power plays by Rick Snyder and the Union Bashing and Anti-public service reprisalists, now holding power, as in the manner of the TeaPublican SuperMajority; have crippled the state's economy and gutted the very systems that have to power to restore the economy.

Gone are good pay jobs with benefits. The loss is equivalent to the loss of a Michigan city the size of Bay City. Were Bay City swept away by a Joplin, MO type tornado it would be a humongous tragic disaster. It is an economic disaster. One would have to assume that these state workers (38,000) did nothing to support or service the state and that their dismissal is inconsequential. It is not. The loss of health coverage, money to meet the mortgage, food for the table, transportation and a myriad of other essentials, these public servants are in deep trouble. Each of the 30,000 also represent a multiplier effect. It isn't just one person out of a job, it's a direct blow to their domestic units.

Fanatic forces such as the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity and Richard D. McLellan's Mackinac Center major influence have acted quickly and early on in the Snyder tenure to set things in compliant order to further their own cronies' profit-centered agendas. Therefore Snyder has killed positive upward economic trends that were there coming from Granholm's years of pro-active leadership. Jennifer worked to create jobs, Snyder is a JOB KILLER!

Snyder is a jobs killer genius.

Michigan can't wait for things to work themselves out utilizing the results of politics centered on revenge and retribution so endemic to the Mackinac/AFP playbooks. These things don't work out on their own.

Snyder should take an honest look at his regressive, negativist, and anti-jobs Engler-holdover team: Stratified/Highly-paid payrollers with no vision for the positive. They are little more than Corporate favoring saboteurs-who care nothing for the Middle Class and public service and who's "expertise" amounts to taking the State down destructive dead-ends.

Snyder is too mired in his own narrow concept of corporate management details to provide the vision Michigan needs. Rick has actually taken the economy from Critical to Fatal.

The Nerd's relations with massive numbers of Michigan citizen sectors is totally disastrous.

Snyder isn't a political operator who can negotiate with the workers of this state in good faith nor can he build stronger ties to officials in state and county governments-whom he has put under great pressure to do the real dirty work of inflicting suffering and job loss on those who actually run the state and local units of government service day to day.

Snyder is disdainful of other politicians who do not see him as an omnipotent CEO but as a governor with limited constitutional power, and it's cost Rick key allies in the fight to restore the Michigan Economy.

It was a huge mistake on Snyder's part using scare tactics, exaggerating the state's revenue short fall and the condition of pension and health care funds to frighten residents into thinking that cutting a gigantic slice of the business taxes would be the best route to jobs. The loss of over $3 billion dollars of citizen buying power and discretionary spending will even blow back on the joyful business lobby so pleased with their Snyder Bail Out.

A temporary (emergency) rise in the state's income tax of about 1% would have tided the state over and provided the basis of recovery and done so without reducing the state to economic rubble with Snyder's infamous "Atomic Bombing" of state infrastructure and operations, the revenue starvation of local units by the complete cut-off of state provided Revenue Sharing-the give back of local tax dollars to operate local service and maintenance of infrastructure.

By killing roughly 38,000 jobs, encouraging municipal leadership to kill or axe nearly every city service the populace depends on, The Nerd comes off as petty and aloof and MORE PRONE TO "DICTATORSHIP" THAN LEADERSHIP. Top-down state control of every detail of local community life is not sustainable nor advisable.

Reshaping the state's weaken economy is a decades-long process, Michigan residents should have confidence that it's progressing. But that is not the case. THE GOAL IS JOBS, GOOD JOBS, JOBS THAT RESULT IN REAL PROGRESS AND STEADY OUTCOMES ARE THE TARGET.

Doing pro-active things, being collaborative and not combative with public service, would convey the message Michigan has a future. In the same light, killing jobs and therefore putting families off health care (multiply 38,000 by the average size of a state employee household for those dismissed, fired, state employees and realize this is a HUGE ECONOMIC HIT). State employees are summarily out of work in a jobless economy, many will be facing foreclosures, and bleak desperation.

SNYDER HAS JUST CREATED AN ECONOMIC DISASTER OF THE FIRST ORDER. Worse yet, killing state jobs, only to deliver those same jobs to for-profit operators handpicked by Snyder to substitute in lower quality and irresponsible and unnecessary middle management (not directly answerable to the community) is a tragic civic blunder.

All this mistakes one would naturally expect a Certified Nerd to make.


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