LANSING - It all seemed like such a simple game plan back in January.

Michigan Republicans, who control the entire legislative process in our state capital, had seemed ready to increase Unemployment Insurance benefits for state jobless workers after benefit levels have remained stagnant for the last seven years. Michigan's unemployed workers now have the lowest maximum benefit level in the Great Lakes region.

Now, the process has turned into a full-scale rugby match, with Republicans backtracking on how much of an increase they're willing to provide, the flare-up of a personal conflict that caused a vehemently anti-union GOP lawmaker to lose his chairmanship of a key committee, and a major rally by organized labor earlier this month urging Republicans to do the right thing.

Despite all that jockeying, as we went to press, Michigan's jobless workers were still waiting for an increase in benefits, and the Michigan legislature was headed into a two-week spring recess.

"With all the baloney that's been going on over the waiting week, workers are going to have to wait two weeks while the Legislature is in recess before they get any relief," said Michigan AFL-CIO Legislative Director Tim Hughes.

On March 15, the Michigan House approved a measure to increase the maximum weekly jobless benefit by $75, to $375 per week. Unemployed workers who receive less than that maximum would get no increase in benefits. House Republicans had been pushing for a waiting week before benefits would be paid, but agreed to eliminate it. The measure was approved 92-11 by the House, and then it went before the Michigan Senate.

"I'll support this bill because we have to do something," said House Democratic Leader Buzz Thomas. "We had an opportunity for months to do better."

In the Senate version, jobless workers would have been required to get a check for their first week of unemployment at the end of the time they're unemployed, rather than at the beginning. The Senate proposal would also have tied benefits to the number of people a jobless worker had to support. In the end, the House and Senate couldn't come to a resolution, which means there is still no increase in benefits coming to Michigan's unemployed.

In January Republican House Speaker Rick Johnson established legislation that would have increased benefits to $415 per week, but it included a waiting week before benefits would be paid. The building trades and other unions argued that for workers who are jobless for three weeks or less, implementing a waiting week would actually result in a decrease in benefits.

Then, on March 5, House Employment Relations and Training Committee Chairman Robert Gosselin, whose legislative record is staunchly anti-union, pulled the rug from under Speaker Johnson's feet by pushing his committee to approve a $362 per week maximum unemployment benefits increase- including the waiting week. Ultimately, in what one political writer "a Republican-led debacle" and "a perfect train wreck," Gosselin was relieved of his chairmanship by Johnson, and the House came up with a plan that's semi-palatable to organized labor.

Making the benefit increase semi-palatable to Republicans and business interests in the state is a well-timed $290 million increase in federal dollars to Michigan to help the state's jobless.

"The use of the $290 million in federal aid to boost unemployment benefits would ensure that the Unemployment Trust Fund does indeed remain solvent," said State Rep. Julie Dennis. "It also would immediately help laid-off workers and their families who are struggling during this downturn in the economy."

Even though there is a whopping $2.9 billion in the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, the state's Chamber of Commerce is clearly pulling the strings on lawmakers in urging them to limit a benefit increase. Some lawmakers listened to big business interests when they cast their vote, others listened to the state's jobless

"We're going to remember in November," Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney told a March 13 gathering of some 5,000 working and unemployed rally attendees, who gathered at the state Capitol.