A Union Scam Could Be About to End Home health workers get ‘organized’ without their knowledge or consent. Janus makes that harder.By Red Jahncke
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-union-scam-could-be-about-to-end-1531778546
One of the worst public-sector union scams is about to end. “Partial public employee” unions represent in-home health aides, paid by states with Medicaid money to care for disabled beneficiaries—often the aides’ own children or elderly parents.
In recent decades, PPEs have typically come into existence when Democratic governors order union-certification elections with loose rules, usually including a participation rate of only 10%. Many workers are unaware that they have become union members. They remain ignorant, as the state deducts union dues and fees before sending payments. Such payments are usually made through direct deposit and often without an itemized pay stub.
The unions have no incentive to inform the workers—who in turn have no idea they need to contact the union to opt out. Thus money keeps flowing to these unions even though the Supreme Court, in Harris v. Quinn (2014), imposed on PPE unions a ban on forced nonmember “agency fees.” This year, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the court extended that rule to all public-sector unions.
Janus struck a second blow by requiring affirmative consent before collecting money from public workers. That’s good news for the litigants in the 2014 Harris case, whose claim for damages has been pending under the new title Riffey v Rauner. The day after the high court decided Janus, it sent Riffey to the lower court for reconsideration “in light of Janus.” Riffey seeks to recover $32 million in pre-Harris payments to a single Service Employees International Union local in Illinois. Five days later, PPE workers in Washington state filed a lawsuit, Schumacher v. Inslee, seeking refunds from another SEIU local.
A third blow to PPE unions came July 12. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed to repeal its Obama-era rulemaking that validated and approved the practice of deducting union dues and fees from Medicaid payments to in-home health aides. Soon PPE health-care unions will have to collect dues and fees directly from workers. Not so easy.
Comments are closed.
