Contracts in place before today will remain valid until they expire, but several unions created new contracts in the months following the bill’s passage to skirt the effects of the law for a few more years.

About 41 school districts and five universities, including the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, approved new contracts before the law took effect Thursday, according to USA Today. During its Tuesday work session, East Lansing City Council approved four union contracts with unions extending through June 2016.

House Republicans have proposed legislation to punish universities and municipalities that agreed to new contracts between Dec. 10, 2012­— the day Gov. Rick Snyder signed the right-to-work into law — and Thursday.

The city of East Lansing could face more than $450,000 in state funding cuts, although a provision in the contracts enables the city and the union to renegotiate in case the legislation passes.

“We’re going to continue to advocate to the legislature that this penalty is inappropriate and try and get it removed from the budget,” Triplett said in a previous interview.

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said at last week’s Steering Committee that MSU will honor all existing union contracts and currently has none open.

Dan Clark, president of the MSU Graduate Employees Union, said the GEU considered recontracting before Thursday, but MSU chose not to review the GEU’s contract, which expires May 2015.
Clark said the GEU still is negotiating with the universities and just recently re-acquired a quarterly-pay option.

“We have a lot of (teaching assistants) and (resident assistants) that are members that are going to maintain our membership,” he said. “(We are) going to spend a lot more time surveying the membership to get the best contract possible in two years.”

Penny Gardner, president of the Union of Nontenure-Track Faculty at MSU and an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures, said rumors of state House Republicans “bullying” and threatening to take away funding if universities negotiate union contracts prior to Thursday stopped her union from re-contracting.

“It makes me think, ‘Too bad all of us didn’t do it,’” she said. “What were they going to do? Cut funding to all universities?”

She said now her union will have to address each member each semester to see if they are willing to pay union dues, and even if they refuse, they still will receive the benefits the union collectively bargains for with the university.