It seems the union schemes to get more dues never stop.
In Michigan, after AFSCME and the UAW snuck their way into Michigan’s home-based day cares to suck up $3.7 million in dues, the state house is moving to repeat its union coup by dumping self-employed home care contrators–those who provide help to the elderly and disabled–onto a union’s rolls.
The beneficiary this time? The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) stands to suck up $6 million in taxpayer money in the form of dues if Rep. Bert Johnson’s House Bill 6195 gets put into law.
The state House appears to be helping foster unionization among self-employed Michigan service providers. It’s moving a bill that would set up a “shell” state employer and seal into law the union dues collected from contractors who provide home help to the elderly and disabled as part of a state pilot project.
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The Quality Community Care Council, part of a Granholm administration pilot project in the health department, would become a new government agency.
Movement toward a permanent and more organized approach to home care is spurred by the growth in demand for such services from the state’s aging population. Home care providers make it possible for elderly and disabled residents to continue living in their own dwellings, as opposed to being lodged in nursing homes at greater cost. It doesn’t take a long memory, however, to recall how similar well-intentioned efforts to bolster home-based day care ended up benefitting two unions — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the United Auto Workers. They got thousands of new members, some now claiming in court that they had no say in the matter, from whose child care checks $3.7 million a year is extracted as union dues.
Unions obviously see taxpayer-supported home services as fertile territory. AFSCME reports it has succeeded with child care unionization efforts in eight other states, besides Michigan.
The National Federation of Independent Business-Michigan says Rep. Johnson’s House Bill 6195 would continue the flow of $6 million in taxpayer money each year from the state health department to the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) as dues for home care contractors. The suspicion among opponents such as the NFIB, which is raising the alarm, is that SEIU wants to firm-up the arrangement to make it harder for next year’s new governor and legislature to undo it.
As Democrats do everything they can to reward their union-boss backers, it is schemes like these that show just how low they’ll go to turn hard-working Americans over to the clutches of today’s union bosses.
Read more at The Detroit News.
