SEIU’s Survival Plan If Supreme Court Ends Home Care Scheme

This SEIU Scheme Will Be Tried in Right to Work States Too, Be Aware

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Harris v. Quinn opinion likely will end the Craig Becker-SEIU Home Care scheme responsible for the union’s last twenty years of membership growth.

sally-coomer-testimony-oversight-ogrHarris v. Quinn, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s case before the U.S. Supreme Court, will likely end this political pay-off scheme to SEIU and AFSCME union bosses. One of the arguments that Foundation lawyers presented is that among other things this compelled unionism creates a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment protections.

Sally Coomer’s testimony clearly reinforces their position. Even the NEA’s own chief lawyer Robert Chanin concurred when he succinctly argued, “So you tell me how I can possibly separate NEA’s collective bargaining efforts from politics—you just can’t. It’s all politics.”

Though Monday’s Supreme Court Opinion is not certain, the tea-leave-readers seem confident that this SEIU organizing scheme through government fiat dies on Monday.

Guess what? The diabolical Service Employees International Union (SEIU) brain trust has already initiated its counter measures to keep tax dollars pouring into this pseudo-union/political party known as SEIU.  As usual, the plan relies on a corrupt political system to transfer tax dollars to the SEIU’s purple political machine.

seiu-fight-back-fundFortunately, another brave mother and home care provider Sally Coomer exposed this SEIU scheme during her testimony before Chairman Darrell Issa’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  

In California, for example, SEIU proposes to create a so-called “Training for Home Care Workers Act.” The goal is to create a taxpayer funded program in California similar to the Washington State training-scheme Sally Coomer exposed in her 2012 testimony.

SEIU, like UAW and other old line unions, intends to operate major training centers and force taxpayers to pay for SEIU union staff to teach and pay students for each hour they attend.  These tax transfer payments could dwarf the union dues that the SEIU currently squeezes out of state home care assistance programs. 

From Sally Coomer’s testimony (2/8/2012): “Since 2004, SEIU has set up other organizations such as an SEIU Health Care Trust and a Training Trust. There are millions of dollars that flow through these two trusts for the expressed purposes of health benefits and training of union Individual Providers.

Most recently, the union financed an initiative which has increased state mandated SEIU caregiver training requirements. These training increases would more than double the average training requirements in comparison to the rest of the nation. This created a controversy in our state due to the collapsing budget and the new ongoing cost of over $80 million during the next two years alone.

Last year, SEIU poured millions into what many feel was a misleading informational advertising campaign to promote this unfunded initiative. Last year, our state, out of desperation, delayed implementation of the passed initiative due to a State budget crisis.

seiu-taxpayer-paid-training-scheme

This year, SEIU ran the same campaigns promoting the passing of the training initiative again, with no fiscal note or funding source attached, and it passed. Now, the impacts from these campaigns are devastating the financial stability of the system. Many clients are losing services as a result of the absurd costs of implementing this initiative.

See excerpt out of an article from the Clark County Columbian:

[SEIU’s] I-1163 will require tax hikes or service cuts; only union benefits Voters don’t be fooled. I-1163 represents the wrong priorities. Mandatory caregiver training and criminal background checks are already required by law. For caregivers moving from another state, FBI fingerprint checks are already required by law. I-1163 costs $80 million in the next two years and benefits just one interest group — Service Employees International Union.

This SEIU-sponsored measure claims to protect vulnerable adults. What it really does is force taxpayers to pay for the watered-down training of union members, with inexperienced and uneducated trainers managed by SEIU, eliminating the current training conducted by medical professionals and credentialed educators — who are licensed by the state.

With the Supreme Court about to end SEIU’s independent home care providers forced-dues funding, its schemers are busily trying to finesse another way to piggyback off taxpayers and the money directed to help improve the quality of life for homebound individuals.

Watch out for and expose these schemes when see them.  Below is an example of how SEIU tries to conceal its plans by using innocuous legislative language.

From SEIU’s  forced-dues funded California initiative:

“Home Care Worker Training.   No later than June 30, 2015, the department, in consultation with the Department of Health Care Services, and in collaboration with stakeholders including but not limited to
consumers and recognized representatives of home care workers [SEIU], shall develop a mandatory,  basic training curriculum for home care workers and shall identify appropriate modes of  training. The basic training curriculum shall address core competencies. Appropriate modes of training identified by the department shall include an in-person component and shall incorporate best practices for adult education.

(c) All individuals providing care as home care workers shall complete seventy-five hours of basic training, subject to the following: (1) Any person working as a home care worker and who did not work as a home care worker during either the 2014 or 2015 calendar year must complete the basic training required by this paragraph by June 30, 2016or within 180 days from the person’s date of hire, whichever is later.  (2) Any person working as a home care worker and who worked as a home care worker during either the 2014 or 2015 calendar year must complete basic training required by this paragraph by December 31, 2020, or within 180 days from the person’s date of hire, whichever is later.(3) Home care workers who hold current and valid licenses as registered nurses, licensed vocational nurses, certified nurse assistants, or home health aides, are not required to complete the basic training required by this section.

(d) The department shall make arrangements for qualified individuals or organizations to provide the training required by this section. The trainings shall be available no later than January 1, 2016.

(e) All home care workers shall be paid for all hours spent completing training required by this section based on the same terms on which they are paid for other working hours, including the state supplement provided for in Section 12331. Home care workers shall not be charged for any part of the training, and hours necessary for the training required by this section shall not be deducted from the consumer’s authorized hours of services. The training and payment for time spent completing the training required by this section shall be funded through the Medi-Cal program to the extent possible given applicable federal requirements and shall otherwise be paid for by the state.