Dues-skim union has no bargaining power for home care providers

One of America’s largest unions is targeting Michigan home health care providers for dues under a 2024 law that reclassified their employment status. But the union is making promises it can’t keep, according to a legal expert.

Caregivers from around the state are reporting to Michigan Capitol Confidential that representatives of the Service Employees International Union have appeared at their homes and sent union solicitations in the mail.

Most home caregivers are serving loved ones at home, and they receive stipends from the Michigan Department of Health and& Human Services. Under the law signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last year, these people are now classified as public employees, reopening the door for a scheme to skim dues from caregivers that was outlawed under the Snyder administration.

Union solicitations obtained by CapCon make grand promises that the two-million-member union will get caregivers health coverage, paid time off, sick days, reliable respite care, and better training to help “provide safe, consistent and high-quality care.”

The union lacks the legal authority to deliver those benefits, however. Home health care workers are typically compensated through federal and state funding, and their employer is the patient they care for.

“The SEIU is promising more than it can deliver,” Steve Delie, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center, told CapCon in an email. The union can ask the Legislature to increase the amount of the stipend caregivers receive, he said, but that’s lobbying, not bargaining.

“Home health care funding is subject to legislative appropriation,” Delie said, ”meaning the state health department can’t raise wages based on negotiations with the SEIU alone.”

Lawmakers have roughly doubled the pay of home caregivers since 2012, Delie added. That’s the year lawmakers ended the dues-skim arrangement that allowed the union to take money from caregivers' checks.

Under the new law, Public Act 144 of 2024, the health department must establish the Home Help Caregiver Council. This council will maintain and regularly update a list of caregivers’ names, home addresses, telephone numbers and personal email addresses. Some of the caregivers who reached out to CapCon were upset at the likelihood that the union got their contact information from those public records.

The law also requires caregivers to attend an orientation session.

Service Employees International Union representatives are now collecting signatures from home help caregivers in an effort to make the union the sole representative of the state's broad and diverse community of home care providers. If organizers fail to collect signatures from a majority of caregivers, they may still force an election that will decide the matter.

“Workers who oppose unionization should know that not voting is not counted as a vote against the union," Delie said. ”Any abstentions will actually lower the threshold the SEIU needs to meet in order to be elected,” he said. Caregivers who don’t want the massive Washington, D.C.-based union to speak for them must vote “no” in any election if they wish to have the greatest impact, Delie said.

Under a home caregivers’ union arrangement that existed quietly from 2005 to 2012, some $34 million in dues was deducted from the checks of caregivers, often without their knowledge or consent. The practice was abolished after the Mackinac Center drew wide attention to it.

The iteration of the old law is unconstitutional, Patrick Wright, vice president for legal affairs at the Mackinac Center, said during public testimony last fall.

The Service Employees International Union has not responded to a request for comment.