Poker Run set for May 9 

All are invited to participate in a motorcycle poker run, set for Saturday, May 9 at the IBEW Local 252 JATC Training Center in Chelsea.

Proceeds will support breast cancer research at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. The cost is $20 per bike; an extra card costs $5.

Registration starts that day at 10 a.m., with the last bikes out at 11:30 a.m. A blessing of the bikes takes place at 10:30 a.m. The Training Center is located at 13400 Luick Dr. in Chelsea. Refreshments will be available following the run, and there will be a 50/50 raffle and additional prizes.

RSVPs would be appreciated. For more information or to RSVP, contact Mike Cobb, (517) 395-6197; Mike Crawford, (734) 891-5147, or Brandon Linnabury, (517) 206-3489. E-mails can be sent to union4life2@yahoo.com.

The IBEW Local 252 Training Center/Union 4 Life is looking to make this an annual event, a fundraiser in addition to a golf outing they hold during the summer.

Indiana wage repeal effort makes enemies 

INDIANAPOLIS (PAI)—Not content with discriminating against gays and lesbians, Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind., is supporting a Republican assault on construction workers’ wages, leading a top Indiana union official – a Republican – to quit a key state panel, effective April 30.

In a letter to Pence in early April, David Fagan, Financial Secretary for Operating Engineers Local 150, said he could not continue to serve on the Ports of Indiana Commission, which oversees the state’s three ports, because of Pence’s support for repeal of the state’s Common Construction (a.k.a. prevailing) Wage.  The repeal effort was adopted by a state Senate committee on April 7.

“Indiana is ranked 38th in per capita income, and the governor’s solution is to cut wages on good middle-class jobs,” said Fagan, a Portage, Ind., resident who chairs the Indiana Lunch Pail Republicans, a group of pro-worker members of the GOP. “What sense does that make?”

Michigan Republican lawmakers followed Indiana's lead in passing a right-to-work law in 2012, and have made prevailing wage repeal their top priority this year.

Former Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., appointed Fagan to the ports panel in 2007 and reappointed him in 2011.  But Daniels also signed a GOP-passed so-called “right-to-work” law initiated in the GOP-run legislature.  Local 150 challenged that law as a violation of the state constitution. It won in lower courts but lost in the state Supreme Court.  Fagan is a leading critic of the right-to-work law and actively lobbied against it.