SEIU Dues Skim Surpasses $34 Million

The SEIU has just passed $34 million skimmed from home-based caregivers.

The “dues skim” began when the Service Employees International Union teamed up with the administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2005 in order to use a shell organization to take money from tens of thousands of caregivers to be used by the union. The vast majority of these caregivers did not vote in the “election” to certify the union and are relatives or parents looking after disabled loved ones.

The good news is that relentless Michigan Capitol Confidential coverage of the issue and citizen outrage forced the Legislature to look into and eventually attempt to stop the scheme. The SEIU then spent millions of dollars attempting to lock these workers into the union permanently through a constitutional amendment — Proposal 4 — which was voted down 56 percent to 44 percent last November. The skim is slated to finally end on Feb. 28 when the “contract” between the union and the caregivers expires.

To read how the whole scam took place, click here. To see the human side of this issue told by Robert and Patricia Haynes, click here.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.