But how the law would affect graduate students here isn’t as clear, considering MSU’s union setup for graduate students employees only provides an optional, partial form of membership for graduate research assistants.

The debate surrounds whether employed students should have the right to organize like other employees. Some Republicans — who traditionally support less leverage for organized labor, while Democrats often are for it — argue that the learning environment associated with being a research or teaching assistant is not conducive to unions.

“When students are learning to teach from a professor, mixing in union activities is really not appropriate,” said Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, who voted in support of the bill Wednesday.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, was taken up by Republicans almost overnight. It passed through the Senate just a day after it passed through committee. Richardville’s office could not be reached for comment.

A dispute regarding the role of unions among graduate student employees at the University of Michigan sparked the broad ideological debate in Lansing as well.

U-M’s Board of Regents had decided students were open to collective bargaining, which was followed by attempts from Attorney General Bill Schuette and Republican lawmakers to block it.

Although some lawmakers are quick to support a legal ban, the language of MSU’s Graduate Student Employees Union, or GEU, contract makes it unclear to say how, or if, some student employees here would be affected.

Currently only teaching assistants — those who work in a classroom leading recitation sections — are covered by the union contract, and those who just do research are not.

Still, negotiations made for teaching assistants often are extended to research assistants as well for administrative ease, said David Davenport, the GEU board’s information officer. Although the union plays a diplomatic role, it lacks the legal hammer to protect research assistants, he said.

“We can go and help them talk to their supervisors, but they don’t have the same leverage,” Davenport said. “It’s really kind of ridiculous … they act like research assistants aren’t employees.”

Research assistants can choose whether or not to be a paying member of the union, although there is no way to be covered by the contract, Davenport said.

University spokesman Kent Cassella did not comment on the issue.

“This is someone’s bad idea about how to reduce the number of unions in the state,” State Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, said.

Meadows said he plans to vote against the bill when it comes to the House floor.

“This is a solution in search of a problem,” he said.