In 2004, then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration entered into an interlocal agreement with the Tri-County Aging Consortium, creating a council that a year later recognized SEIU Healthcare Michigan as the bargaining representative for caregivers who are employed by people on Medicaid.
Critics of the "dues skim," including the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, did not consider the workers to be public employees and said many were unaware of what was going on. Republicans in 2012 passed a law that ended the unionization and collection of $34 million in dues over six years. Voters that same year rejected a ballot initiative that would have invalidated parts of the law and reinstituted bargaining by home help workers.
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The bills going to Whitmer will let the Legislature designate individuals as public employees solely for the purpose of collective bargaining. They also will allow people who receive direct or indirect government subsidies in their private employment to be public employees.
"If there's anyone who respects democracy, it's clearly not the Michigan Democrats," Rep. Bill G. Schuette, R-Midland, told reporters while pointing to the defeat of the 2012 constitutional amendment. "This is really a solution in search of a problem in that they've created this entity to collectively bargain with themselves. This is all just a scheme to get more money into the pockets of SEIU and to the labor unions."
"These two bills would take necessary resources from our most vulnerable citizens and their family member providers and divert a windfall to the SEIU, for the union to use as it sees fit, including spending on partisan politics," Patrick Wright, vice president for legal affairs at the Mackinac Center in Midland, told the House Appropriations Committee, which also heard testimony from women who said they became home help aides to care for their children. "This is atrocious public policy and lawmakers should reject it."
But Sen. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores, the sponsor of one of the bills, said the low-paid workers "are not getting the pay that they deserve" for a demanding job.
"It's time we treat them like the essential workers that they are and give them the tools they need to secure higher wages, health insurance and other benefits," he said during the hearing.
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Hertel said two U.S. Supreme Court rulings, one in 2014 and the other in 2018, mean home help workers will not be automatically put in a union or be forced to pay dues or agency fees. They will opt in by signing a union card, he said.
"I believe that every employees, regardless of where you work, you should have the ability to form a union," he said after the full House passed the measures on party-line 56-53 votes. "It's really a core value that I hold, and I think it protects employees and workers across our state."
The legislation, which the Senate approved 20-18, will create the Home Help Caregiver Council, which will provide a mandatory orientation program for new caregivers. A union representative will be able to attend and make a 30-minute presentation.
The council will maintain a list of all home help workers and give it to a union upon request. It also will keep a registry of qualified caregivers; collect pay, retention, turnover and job satisfaction data; act as a communications hub for the workforce; provide training, education and other supports to workers.
"All of these workers, while caregiving full-time, came together to demand their rights be restored," SEIU President April Verrett said. "They have showed everyone across the labor movement what organizing truly means."
This story first appeared in Crain's Detroit Business.
