This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 24, 2024. 

A Galesburg mother says bills pending in the Michigan Legislature would hurt her family and her disabled son. Senate Bills 790 and 791 would unionize people who provide in-home care to elderly or disabled adults. The bills would enable a union to skim some of the public aid designed to support caregivers and convert it to union dues, despite the lack of benefits unionization would provide.

Tammy Martin provides in-home care for her adult son, Nathan.

“I supply all of his nursing care 24/7,” she said, “which allows us to keep him at home and not in a hospital or in a care facility.”

The Martin family participates in a federal Medicaid program the state administers. People who participate in the program use the federal funds to support a caregiver who assists with medical care, bathing and household tasks. The caregiver is usually related to the person they are taking care of, as with the Martin family.

Nathan Martin, 24, says his mother’s care is life changing.

“I don’t have a lot of what you would call quality of life, and this is kind of it,” he said. “Without this I would have to basically live in a hospital.”

The legislation pending in Lansing would pervert a loving relationship by unionizing Tammy (and other caregivers like her) against her son. A union could then pocket the funds otherwise intended for needy families. SB 790 and 791 would also require caregivers to sit through a mandatory orientation meeting, allowing union officials to pressure them to join.

Tammy does not want a union.

“I would never strike against my son,” she said. “I just would continue to take care of him regardless. And it’s not an easy job, but it is a job that I love, and no one knows how to care for my son better than I do.”

The dues skim may sound familiar.

Michigan established a similar program in 2005. The Service Employees International Union used a secretive process to unionize tens of thousands of home help providers and then skimmed union dues from the federal payments. Over the life of the program, SEIU took $34 million. Caregivers were forced to make ends meet with less, as they found themselves with fewer dollars to provide the same care.

Families across the state helped expose the dues skim. Robert and Patricia Haynes, who took care of their two children suffering from cerebral palsy, were shocked to see union deductions from their checks. Similarly, Steven Glossop discovered the union’s scheme while helping his mother after she suffered a stroke.

Stories like these triggered officials to act. In 2011, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services dissolved the arrangement that allowed the SEIU to represent caregivers, and the department stopped collecting union dues. The Michigan Legislature ended caregiver unionization in 2012.

Even then, SEIU was not deterred. In 2012, the union concocted Proposal 4, a constitutional amendment to codify the dues skim. Voters found the scheme so odious they rejected it 56 to 44%. The Michigan Secretary of State later fined SEIU $199,000 for concealing its role in funding Prop 4.

The union never paid restitution for the $34 million it took from some of Michigan’s most vulnerable residents.

Sens. Kevin Hertel, D-St. Clair Shores, and Sylvia Santana, D-Detroit, the sponsors of SB 790 and 791, seek to revive the dues skim. Their bills cleared the Senate in June and are pending in the House. If passed, the program would take money from the needy and hand it to a powerful political ally — both Hertel and Santana took generous contributions from SEIU for their Senate campaigns.

Tammy Martin does not mince words about the pending legislation.

“I look at my son as one of the most vulnerable people in our population, and that’s who we’re going after,” she said. “And that’s sad.”

She’s right. It is a heartless and grotesque scheme. The Legislature should reject it.

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.