Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer plans to use this week's Mackinac Policy Conference to promote a new jobs plan that would shift Michigan's economic development policy from being business-friendly to friendlier for workers.

Whitmer, the establishment favorite to be the Democratic nominee for governor, places an emphasis on boosting wages through new education and job-training programs, while raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour over three years and repealing the Republican-authored Right-To-Work law that made union membership optional.

"It hasn't made (Michigan) a place where business is flocking," Whitmer said of the five-year-old Right-to-Work law. "That was the promise of Right-To-Work, was that all of sudden there would be this new environment and … we'd be more attractive to business investment and that would have a trickle-down approach of increasing people's incomes and lifestyles — and that's not happened."

The centerpiece of Whitmer's plan is a new $100 million MI Opportunity Scholarship to provide high school graduates with two years of free community college or the equivalent state financial aid for attending a four-year university or a post-high school job training program.

Whitmer's plan also places an emphasis on getting older adults into college or job training programs through the scholarship program.

"There are a lot of people beyond high school graduation who need to skill up," she said.

Whitmer's plan calls for a series of worker-focused policy changes ranging from mandatory paid family leave and a publicly administered retirement system for small businesses to requiring equal pay for women in state government jobs and private companies that perform services for the state.

She also wants to prohibit employers from firing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity by amending the state's civil rights law.

Whitmer is using this week's annual gathering of Michigan business, political and civic leaders at Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel to roll out a jobs plan focused on the talent gap in Michigan's workforce. The conference will focus heavily on whether Michigan's workforce is prepared for future jobs and economic challenges.

It also could be the opening salvo of Whitmer's general election strategy against the Republican nominee should she prevail in the Aug. 7 primary against former Detroit health department director Abdul El-Sayed and Ann Arbor businessman Shri Thanedar, who has narrowly led Whitmer in some recent polls after airing a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign.

In a state where the $50,803 median household is $9,000 below the national average, Whitmer has made raising household incomes the primary focus of her plan.

"It's not a real comeback until everyone feels it," Whitmer writes in the 13-page plan.

El-Sayed also has made boosting the median household income the main goal of his economic plan. Thanedar on Tuesday followed Whitmer in releasing his own plan to address the state's workforce needs to by raising taxes on corporations and high-income earners to fund universal childcare and preschool.

Lou Glazer, executive director of Michigan First Inc., an Ann Arbor-based economic research organization, reviewed Whitmer's jobs plan before it was released exclusively to Crain's ahead of the Mackinac Policy Conference, which begins Tuesday.

"It is a really good deal to have a plan whose goal is boosting income, not jobs," Glazer said of Whitmer's plan. "That's a huge shift in the sort of thinking about what state economic policy is designed to do. That's the more important thing than (having) 20 specific ideas — it's changing the mission."

Glazer points to the research by the Michigan Association of United Ways that shows that 1.5 million Michigan households — 40 percent — had incomes below the federal poverty level or didn't earn enough to make ends meet in 2015. Researchers have called this group of Michiganians "ALICE" — asset-limited, income-constrained but employed.

"At the moment, you've got an economy that's creating jobs. But household income? Not so much," Glazer said. "That's the economic problem in Michigan at the moment — it's not the availability of jobs, it's the availability of good-paying jobs."

Attorney General Bill Schuette, the Republican frontrunner, also has placed a major focus on boosting the size of workers' paychecks by reducing the state's 4.25 percent income tax to 3.9 percent — the level it was set at before the Great Recession wreaked havoc on the state's budget.

If Whitmer and Schuette prevail in their respective primaries, debate over raising Michigan's $9.25-per-hour minimum wage could take center stage in the general election this fall.

The head of the Michigan Restaurant Association, which has endorsed Schuette for governor, said raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour "will only serve to limit the opportunities of those that need the opportunity the most."

"And that it isn't ideological speculation," MRA President and CEO Justin Winslow said in an email to Crain's. "We now have tangible proof that Seattle's early adoption of a $15 minimum wage has led to smaller overall paychecks through fewer hours and fewer opportunities in entry-level jobs. In other words, the pain in Michigan would be felt much more acutely than any gain she's anticipating."

One Whitmer ally in the state's business community thinks her approach is more likely to attract new residents with education and training beyond a high school diploma than Schuette's tax relief proposal, which failed to gain traction in the Legislature this year.

"You can't just say I'm going to cut taxes and do less regulation to bring business in," said Larry Bell, president and founder Bell's Brewery Inc. "Employees are looking for companies that are progressive, not only pay well, but have benefit structures that can enhance their lives. That's what I see with the Whitmer candidacy that I don't see on the other side of the aisle."

Whitmer's plan isn't calling for any tax cuts — and she's not ruling out a tax hike on some businesses.

Her plan could add more financial pressure to the state's increasingly strained $10 billion general fund, which outgoing Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and the GOP-controlled Legislature have tapped for filling holes in the road funding budget.

Whitmer's campaign estimates the scholarship and reconnect plan would cost "less than" $100 million per year. She said the money would come from the General Fund; Whitmer has vowed to shift $700 million in funding for universities and community colleges from the School Aid Fund back to the state's general fund.

In an interview with Crain's, Whitmer did not rule out revisiting Snyder's 2011 tax reform that made thousands of S-Corps and limited liability corporations exempt from the 6 percent corporate income tax. The owners of those types of companies pay taxes on their business earnings through the lower personal income tax.

"When LLCs and S-Corps say we need more talent, I agree," Whitmer told Crain's. "But we've all got to have some skin in the game to make sure we're able to meet that talent. I'm not putting anything on or taking anything off the table at this moment."