Public Unions Still Spreading
In a time of austerity, some states continue to go along.
November
23, 2011 Andrew Stiles National Review on Line
In the wake of the 2010 midterms, newly elected
Republican governors have, quite rightly, targeted public-sector unions —
specifically, their lavish, taxpayer-funded pensions — in an effort to rein in
state budget deficits. The results have been mixed (see: Wisconsin’s
Scott Walker vs. Ohio’s
John Kasich), and the struggle continues.
But there is a less-publicized flip side to the GOP’s
campaign to wrest power from entrenched union interests. Whereas Republican
governors are attempting to limit the influence of public-sector unions, their
Democratic counterparts — the near-exclusive beneficiaries of union largesse —
are looking to expand it.
In Connecticut
and Minnesota,
the 2010 gubernatorial elections saw outgoing GOP governors succeeded by
labor-backed Democrats. Naturally, the victors in both states — Dan Malloy (Conn.) and Mark Dayton (Minn.) — have made union recompense a
priority in their first year in office. Both have recently issued executive
orders seeking to categorize home-based child-care providers as “government
employees,” thus making them eligible for unionization and, more importantly,
susceptible to union dues.
Because most private child-care providers, even those who
operate out of their homes, receive some form of state assistance, through
subsidies or other payments, public-sector unions and their Democratic allies
have argued that such individuals are, in effect, “employed” by the state.
Designating them as such would qualify them for union representation by groups
like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) or the American
Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which could then
appropriate a portion of those government subsidies as “dues.” The inevitable
consequence of the policy would be to significantly increase child-care costs,
as the unions extract generous concessions through collective bargaining and
providers simply pass on the costs of dues to their customers.
When Republicans decry the innately corrupt relationship
between public-sector unions and Democratic politicians — the unions spend
heavily to elect Democrats, who are then charged with “negotiating” the
salaries, pensions, and myriad other benefits of their political benefactors —
this is precisely what they are talking about.
In Connecticut, Malloy went one step further, issuing a
second executive order that would facilitate the unionization of personal
health-care attendants — individuals who provide state-subsidized in-home care to seniors and
people with disabilities — creating yet another source of revenue for groups
like SEIU. The Michigan-based Mackinac
Center for Public Policy reported recently on the absurd consequences of a similar
scheme enacted by then-governor Jennifer Granholm
(D., Mich.) in 2006:
Robert Haynes and his wife, Patricia, take
care of their cerebral palsy-stricken son and daughter in their Macomb Township
home. Taxpayers help out with monthly checks to the Haynes family. The checks,
which are sent by the state, allow them to keep their son and daughter at home
instead of having them institutionalized.
But some of the taxpayer dollars that are supposed to go to
the Haynes family are being siphoned off. The state takes a $30 monthly
deduction from the checks and sends it to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). This deduction is the result of the forced
unionization of home health care workers that
came about in a deal between unions and politicians in Lansing.
While in office, Granholm
was also successful in forcing union representation on home child-care
providers, though current governor Rick Snyder (R.) has since done away with
the policy. However, SEIU continues to rake in about $6 million each
year in “dues” from “state employees” like the Hayes family. Apparently, the
labor group remains a seductive and influential benefactor
even for the Republican state lawmakers who control the legislature.
More than a dozen states currently allow
unions to collect dues from home-based health-care or child-care providers.
Wisconsin used to, for example, until those policies were repealed as part of
Governor Walker’s budget-reform bill. It’s no surprise that Democrats would
seek to enact similar policies in their states. But in some cases, Democratic
governors have been forced to confront the reality of the fiscally untenable
alliance between their party and public-sector
unions.
In October, California
governor Jerry Brown (D.) astonished many by vetoing a bill that would have
allowed for the unionization of some 40,000 home child-care providers, citing
the state’s “huge budget challenges.” The bill was co-sponsored by SEIU, which
reportedly spent $5 million to help Brown defeat Republican Meg Whitman in
2010. The union, of course, was “profoundly devastated” by the veto.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/283867/public-unions-still-spreading-andrew-stiles