Michigan House approves bills to resurrect dues skim for home health care providers

Michigan home health care providers could see smaller paychecks after the state House approved bills aimed at resurrecting the dues skim practice voters rejected by wide margins twelve years ago. 

The House voted Wednesday on Senate Bills 790 and 791, which would push home health care workers into the Service Workers International Union. The state Senate passed the bills in June, and Gov. Whitmer is expected to sign them, bringing back a scheme to allow unions to target the federally subsidized paychecks of people who care for their disabled loved ones at home. 

Under the new bills, the SEIU will have access to home health care provider’s paychecks and contact information. Because the bills classify home health care workers — most of whom are family members taking care of disabled loved ones — as public employees, providers will have the option to leave the union under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision. But the bills include a range of hard-sell tactics — including a mandatory SEIU pitch session providers must attend — that make it tough to opt out. 

The SEIU took $34 million from home health care helpers under the old dues skim law before lawmakers ended the practice in 2012, amid wide concern over the deceptive means the union used to extract dues from home health care workers — many of whom were unaware of the SEIU’s activities. The SEIU responded by attempting to add dues skim to the state constitution in 2012’s Ballot Proposal 4, but voters rejected the proposal in a 56-44% vote.

Home health care workers left the union in droves once they were given the choice. SEIU Healthcare Michigan membership dropped 90%, from 55,000 to 5,000.

Taking money from home health care workers to give it to a union that has no power to bargain over wages or benefits is immoral, said Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Waucedah Township.

“It was a scandal of immense proportions, foisted on everyday citizens who needed every dollar they could get in order to take care of their loved ones,” McBroom said in a floor speech.

Tammy Martin, a mother who cares for her adult son at home, said that she doesn’t want to join the union and can’t leave her son long enough to attend the union presentation mandated by the bill.

"I have zero desire to join the union,” Martin told CapCon in a phone interview. “I don't have the ability just to leave and drive somewhere. I cannot even go to my own doctor's appointments because my son requires 24-hour care, and I do not have anyone to help him."

This is not a typical collective bargaining situation, such as one between the United Auto Workers and Ford Motor Company, Patrick Wright, vice president for legal affairs at the Mackinac Center told a legislative committee.

“This is an unnecessary taking of money from people who are caring for our sick and disabled family members just to give it to the union,” Wright said.

He added that it is unconstitutional to make home care workers public employees.

Wright told the committee the arrangement would be akin to making Medicare and Medicaid recipients public employees. The SEIU, which will benefit from the legislation, has a track record of making it hard for people to leave the union, Wright said.

The legislation passed on a vote of 56-53. All House Democrats voted for it. All present Republicans voted against. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer applauded the vote.

“Thanks to my partners in the Michigan Legislature, we will finally restore the right of more than 30,000 independent provider home health care workers to collectively bargain for better pay and benefits and start to build out the caregiving infrastructure we need to help Michigan families and care for our neighbors who need day-to-day support,” Whitmer said in a statement.