It wasn’t crab cakes and calamari delivered via room service to his tony penthouse paid for by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) “secretive nonprofit foundation,” but Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s so-called emergency manager overseeing the city’s bankruptcy, turned down an offer of a free lunch.

Maybe he doesn’t have the taste for a down-home chili dog, but it’s more likely he didn’t have the stomach or backbone to dine with the retired city workers who invited him to lunch Monday. The retirees who, Orr has said, face “significant cuts” to pensions.

The Michigan judge who ruled last week that Detroit’s bankruptcy filing violated the state constitution's ban against tampering with public employees’ pensions, adjourned a hearing on the case this morning until July 29. Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said:

As you all know, my decision last week was because there’s been a violation of constitution. I don’t believe the constitution should be made of Swiss cheese.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) authorized a bankruptcy filing yesterday for the city of Detroit based on recommendations from financial manager Kevyn Orr, making it the largest city in the United States to ever take that step. AFSCME members and other public-sector workers were not consulted for input before the filing. 

On June 15, hundreds of working families from Indiana, Michigan and Ohio will come together for the Middle Class Survival Rally in Monroe, Mich. The goal of the rally is to educate people about the ongoing attacks on working families in the United States.

Fast food workers at more than 60 restaurants in Detroit walked off the job Friday. This may be the largest fast food strike in American history, involving more than 400 workers from McDonald's, Long John Silver's, Burger King, Popeyes and KFC. Some locations were forced to shut down. At issue is workers' right to form a union and an increase in base pay to a minimum of $15 per hour.

This is a cross-post from Working America's Main Street blog. 

Lawmakers in Michigan are still pushing a bill that would keep cities and towns from making their own decisions about paid sick days laws. We call them “preemption bills”— restaurant lobbyists and their allies call it the “kill shot” to paid sick days.

More than 700 children and their families hunted for eggs and chatted with the Easter Bunny at the Monroe/Lenawee County AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and the United Way of Monroe County's sixth annual community Easter egg hunt at Munson Park last Saturday. 

Last year, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) pulled a classic political flip-flop when he proclaimed that "right to work" for less legislation wasn’t on his agenda. But late last year, he spearheaded the drive to ram the anti-work bill through a lame-duck legislative session that shut out the public.

This morning, as the law went into effect, nearly 100 Michigan union and community activists demonstrated outside the Detroit Athletic Club where Snyder was the main speaker at its annual "Pancakes & Politics” breakfast, in an action organized by the coalition We Are Michigan.

In rallies across the country, working families made their voices heard this week and let Congress know that they want comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million aspiring Americans.

By a better than 2-to-1 margin, the teachers, counselors and social workers at César Chávez Academy, the largest charter school in Detroit, voted Thursday to join the Michigan Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff (Michigan ACTS), an affiliate of AFT Michigan.