The motion prevailed.
Senator Albert’s statement is as follows:
This bill is part of an attempt to tilt school contract negotiations heavily in favor of labor unions. That certainly should not be done at the expense of kids or parents’ rights to know about what’s happening in their community’s schools. Current state law requires parents to be notified when students are assigned to teachers who have been rated ineffective in a subject area for two years in a row. The legislation before us today would weaken that protection by making the development, format, content, and procedures of the notification subject to collective bargaining. This amendment seeks to restore this language and keep this protection on behalf of our kids and their families. We cannot allow the rights of parents to know what is going on in schools to be weakened or bargained away in any circumstances.
Senator Daley’s statement is as follows:
I rise today to speak in favor of my amendment. My amendment would return to this bill the exemption from collective bargaining that has always been applied to intergovernmental agreements. I’ve heard from many local municipalities that fear this bill will have a drastic negative impact on their ability to function if this amendment is not adopted. Townships and counties rely on intergovernmental agreements to conduct their daily business and forcing them into collective bargaining would be a huge problem for all the taxpayers of Michigan. I was hoping that this was not an intentional decision from my colleagues across the aisle, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case. My amendment would fix this oversight and I encourage your support.
Senator Cherry’s statement is as follows:
The language stricken out in the bill that currently folks are not allowed to bargain over are procedures for obtaining a contract for the transfer or function of responsibilities under an agreement—meaning an interlocal agreement. What does that mean? What that means is folks who work in our schools or our public safety professionals are not allowed to bargain when their jobs are merged with other entities to make sure they’re still employed. By adopting this amendment, we would be preventing our police officers and our firefighters from being able to bargain to preserve their jobs when a merger occurs. Quite frankly, I think we should be allowing them to sit down at the table with their local units of government to make sure they maintain their jobs and their benefits, and when the new department is created they are allowed to be employed by that department and are able to maintain job security. While I do care about the efficiency of local government, I think we should be allowing those employees to sit down at a table and have a conversation about preserving their jobs.
The following bill was read a third time:
House Bill No. 4820, entitled
A bill to amend 1976 PA 451, entitled “The revised school code,” by amending section 1248 (MCL 380.1248), as added by 2011 PA 102.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: