Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio will participate in the Spring 2013 Griffin Policy Forum at Central Michigan University at 7 p.m. on April 8 in the Park Library Auditorium.

The topic will be “The Future of Labor Unions in Michigan.” Also scheduled to participate are former Lt. Gov. John Cherry, AFT-Michigan President David Hecker and Michigan Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Rich Studley. John Lindstrom, publisher of Gongwer News Service, will moderate. Admission is free and the public is invited to a reception in the Park Library Baber Room from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

CMU’s Griffin Endowed Chair in American Government, named for Robert Griffin, a former U.S. representative and senator from Michigan and former justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, organizes two policy forums each year.

Hecker in January presented an award to Linda Moore, president of the Taylor Federation of Teachers, for “outstanding organizing.” Some 7,500 students in the Taylor School District were denied their education on Dec. 11, 2012, when the district was forced to close due to a large number of teachers taking the day off in order to travel to Lansing to join protesters of Michigan’s right-to-work legislation.

The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has filed suit against the Taylor Federation of Teachers and the Taylor School District on behalf of three teachers over a 10-year agreement that circumvents right-to-work and locks teachers into financially supporting the union for the next decade.

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