Michigan appeals court rules state worker pay cut unconstitutional

News

Michigan appeals court rules state worker pay cut unconstitutional

August 29, 2011 11:50:17 pm

[JURIST] The Michigan Court of Appeals [official website] has ruled unanimously [opinion, PDF] that a 3 percent cut to state workers’ pay to fund the retiree health care benefits violates the Michigan Constitution [text]. Specifically, the court ruled last Thursday that the legislature and former governor Jennifer Granholm lacked the authority to side-step the Civil Service Commission. Explaining the balance of power between the commission and the legislature, the court noted:

Although the commission has plenary authority over the rates of compensation, a system of checks and balances was established with the Legislature in the Michigan Constitution of 1963. Specifically, an increase in the rate of compensation authorized by the commission may be rejected or reduced by the Legislature “by a two-thirds vote of the members elected to and serving in each house” provided the vote occurs within 60 calendar days of the transmitted increase.”The [L]egislature may not reduce rates of compensation below those in effect at the time of the transmission of increases authorized by the commission.” The Civil Service Commission has the sole authority to fix rates of compensation. By enacting 2010 PA 185 … the Legislature acted to reduce the compensation of classified civil servants by three percent without an accompanying agreement with the unions or the CSC. The sole authority to fix rates of compensation of classified civil servants is vested with the CSC.

The state employees’ triumph at the court of appeals may be short-lived as the Michigan Supreme Court may not follow the appeals court’s reasoning and, ultimately, the retirement health care system remains fiscally unsustainable [Detroit Free Press report]. Current Governor Rick Snyder has not indicated whether it will appeal the ruling.

States facing monumental budget deficits have struggled to find the political consensus to reduce spending. In June, the Wisconsin Supreme Court [official website] upheld the Budget Repair Bill [JURIST report] overruling the Dane County Circuit Court finding [JURIST report] that legislators had violated the “open meetings” rule. Ruling 4-3, the court stated that the lower court Judge had “invaded the legislature’s constitutional powers.” The more controversial legislation in Wisconsin requires state employees to contribute a percentage of their salaries to their pension and health care premiums, and eliminates the ability of public employee union members to collectively negotiate anything but wage increase, which will be capped by the Consumer Price Index.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.