Never mind. That's yesterday's news. Let's call that the bad guys' petition drive. 

There's a new petition being circulated, and it's a good one. It should be available for signing at your local union hall. This one would uphold your wage and benefit level, not reduce it. This one would encourage local hiring. This one would help keep funds in place for apprenticeship programs that have worked well for more than a century.

This good guys' petition seeks to establish the Construction Workers Fair Wage Act, which mostly mirrors the state's existing prevailing wage law. This petition is the backstop for three scenarios faced by the state's construction industry.

1. The finding of sufficient signatures to repeal the Michigan Prevailing Wage Act and subsequent approval by the state Board of Canvassers would send the Associated Builders and Contractors/Protecting Michigan Taxpayers-backed prevailing wage repeal petition to a highly conservative state Legislature for approval. 

2. A vote to repeal the law by the House and Senate would immediately kill the state's prevailing wage law, with no veto input from Gov. Snyder.

3. If a majority of state lawmakers in the House or Senate are successfully lobbied and decline to vote on the repeal question, or vote no, the issue would then go to a statewide ballot question on Nov. 6.

The building trades and their supporters among the state's contractors have maintained all along that with public surveys backing prevailing wage, the repeal issue is better left to be dropped, or decided at the polls. If scenarios 1 and 2 take place, then the ongoing petition drive to institute a new prevailing wage law could negate all that. If the counter petition effort led by Protect Michigan Jobs and the Michigan Building and Construction Trades is a success - and a success looks like the gathering of 252,000 valid signatures - then the question of establishing a new prevailing wage law goes up for a vote on the Nov. 6, 2018 statewide ballot. 

All that was pointed out at the "Let the People Decide" rally on the state Capitol steps on Jan. 10 "Get up and convince these people in this building that if nothing else, we have to let this go on the ballot for the people to vote," said Patrick Devlin, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council,  "We've already done surveys, the people of Michigan want prevailing wage to exist in this state." And if the lobbying doesn't work, the new petition drive has a 180-day window to get the necessary signatures to get the pro-prevailing wage issue on the ballot this year.  "I can't stress enough the importance that we have our own ballot initiative out there, we have to get those signatures," Devlin said. "We have to tell the people in this Capitol that we mean business."

State Rep. Brian Elder (D-Bay City) told attendees at the rally that the ongoing lobbying of House Republicans has already had the desired affect. "You've done an excellent job of putting the fear of God into our Republican friends," he said. "They don't want to vote on this. If they do, you keep track of who voted against you, and your families and your children, and you punish them" at the polls.