LANSING - Every now and then, Republican lawmakers like to pound home the point that they're calling all the shots in the state legislative process. Last week, they struck another blow at Michigan's jobless workers.

In the last several weeks, Republicans have recognized the growing unemployment in the state, and apparently were moving in the direction of raising the maximum unemployment benefit from $300 per week to $415 per week.

Then, on March 5, things changed. A new proposal was placed on the table, which would lower the new maximum benefit to $362 per week. And, Republicans continued to insist that newly unemployed workers must submit to a waiting week before their benefits kick in.

State Rep. Julie Dennis (D-Muskegon), the ranking Democrat on the Employment Relations, Training and Safety Committee, walked in and delivered the news about the downward benefit adjustment to delegates on March 5 at the Michigan Building Trades Council Legislative Conference, which was taking place at a hotel ballroom near the Capitol Building.

"This is not a good bill, this is economic terrorism on the unemployed," Dennis told the delegates. She said Republicans are touting this election-year legislation as good for the state's jobless - but even with the $415 per week increase, half of the state's new jobless would actually experience a reduction in benefits compared to the current plan.

And, under the $362 per week increase, Dennis said 70-75 percent of newly jobless in the state would see reduced benefits compared to the current plan.

Democratic legislators would probably support any reasonable increase in unemployment benefits, if there were no strings attached. But all Republican proposals to date have insisted on implementing a waiting week before workers' start collecting benefits.

As we've mentioned in prior articles, implementing a waiting week creates a reduction in benefits for the short-term unemployed. Under the existing plan, a worker who is unemployed for three weeks would receive $300 a week, for a total of $900 in benefits. Even if the benefit is increased to $415 per week, a worker unemployed for three weeks would only receive a total of $830.

The bad guy in all this appears to be Rep. Robert Gosslyn (R-Troy), who chairs the Employment Relations, Training and Safety Committee, the panel which currently controls the bill in the House.

"I'm open to suggestion," he said in a published report, "but an immediate increase above the rate of inflation (or $362) is bad public policy."

Gosslyn's committee approved the $362 benefit maximum, but in the full House of Representatives, leaders were unable to come to terms on the amount of an increase. Labor and Democratic leaders attacked the lower benefit maximum because it was not enough and because it would penalize short-term unemployed workers. Under the Republican plan, lower-wage workers, such as some building trades apprentices, would be ineligible for any benefits.

Michigan's current $300 benefit maximum for unemployment compensation is the lowest among states in the Upper Midwest region. That amount hasn't changed since 1995. This comes at a time when Michigan employers have enjoyed UI tax breaks for the last several years - allowing the state's Unemployment Insurance benefit fund to balloon to $2.9 billion.