The rights and benefits accompanying public sector union membership, e.g. collective bargaining, job security, and workplace safety, do not apply to home care workers. They are often family members that look after a medically impaired parent, spouse, or child who would otherwise require expensive professional care or institutionalization.
Organizing family caregivers (as with any group of workers) creates a steady revenue stream from collecting membership dues and other fees. Gone are the days when labor unions represented workers interests; now Big Labor represents a powerful player in Democratic politics bent on increasing membership, its financial reservoir, and ability to elect and influence politicians.
Vermonters of Health Care Freedom applauds the new proposal by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to roll back the 2014 Obama-era rule, which provided legal grounds for states to divert Medicaid monies intended for home care workers to third parties like labor unions. This illegal scheme of dues skimming, practiced by eleven states including Vermont, violates Medicaids purpose to financially assist poor, elderly, and disabled Americans.
As per the collective bargaining agreement between the State of Vermont and Vermont Home Care United (AFSCME Council 93, Local 4802), effective July 1, 2018, the state can subtract union dues (2 percent) if the home care worker elects to join the union and authorizes such wage deduction. Further, the state can make donations from a workers Medicaid wages to the unions political action fund (PEOPLE fund), or to another legal PAC organized by AFSCME, if requested in writing by the individual.
Governor Phil Scotts Administration will need to cease these deductions when the CMS rule change takes effect. Consequently, Vermont home care workers should expect to receive higher Medicaid payments soon.
The CMS rulemaking comes at the heels of another strike against union cash-grab schemes the US Supreme Court decision in the landmark case, Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. By observing United States constitutional and labor laws, the judicial and executive branches of this federal government have granted more Americans the freedom and right to work, and ensured that our taxpayer funds support those, amongst us, in gravest need.
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