Aren't Unions Great?

[Oldgrunt]

This is out and out thievery!


SEIU Siphons “Dues” from Michigan Medicaid

On November 15, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
.


Outrageous. That is the only way to describe the SEIU’s latest scheme to pad their coffers:


If you’re a parent who accepts Medicaid payments from the State of Michigan to help support your mentally-disabled adult children, you qualify as a state employee for the purposes of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). They can now claim and receive a portion of your Medicaid in the form of union dues.

Robert and Patricia Haynes live in Michigan with their two adult children, who have cerebral palsy. The state government provides the family with insurance through Medicaid, but also treats them as caregivers. For the SEIU, this makes them public employees and thus members of the union, which receives $30 out of the family’s monthly Medicaid subsidy. The Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3) deducts union dues on behalf of SEIU.

Michigan Department of Community Health Director Olga Dazzo explained the process in to her members of her staff. ”MQC3 basically runs the program for SEIU and passes the union dues from the state to the union,” she wrote in an emailobtained by the Mackinac Center. Initiated in 2006 under then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., the plan reportedly provides the SEIU with $6 million annually in union dues deducted from those Medicaid subsidies.

“We’re not even home health care workers. We’re just parents taking care of our kids,” Robert Haynes, a retired Detroit police officer, told the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “Our daughter is 34 and our son is 30. They have cerebral palsy. They are basically like 6-month-olds in adult bodies. They need to be fed and they wear diapers. We could sure use that $30 a month that’s being sent to the union.”According to the Mackinac Center, the theoretical public employer for whom the Haynes’ work is the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3), an entity within the DCH that continues to operate, even though the state legislature has defunded it. Even the MQC3 calls the families hiring in-home health care providers”employers of providers,” but these health care providers are also treated as employers of MQC3 when it comes time each month to take dues out of their Medicaid payment and send it to the SEIU.

Mr. and Mrs. Haynes, of course, are both the parents (the employer) and the health care providers for their children, but they still lose money to the SEIU every month, despite having no interest in joining the union. They have been arbitrarily classified as state employees so that the union can take money from them.

Gov. Rick Snyder, R-Mich., already ended a similar scheme to provide unions with new “public employees” in the area of child care. His predecessor, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., had classified in-home daycare providers as public employees — a designation that forced them to pay union dues but conferred no other benefits upon them. Snyder’s director of the Department of Human Services ended that program. “[We] will stop all funding and, because these providers are not state employees, will also cease collecting union dues,” DHS director Maura Corrigansaid at the time.

Michigan’s state House has already passed a bill to prevent this sort of rent-seeking by public-sector unions, but it has stalled in the state Senate.

[CharlieK]

This is sickening. Here is how my opposition to labor unions was developed:

During the summer of 1947, when I was 12 years old, my dad was building a rather large house, large for that time, for the manager of Moore Business Forms, a large national company that still exists. The house was one story, but had three levels and had redwood siding on all of the outside walls. That house was the first one on which Dad had hired union carpenters.

During the summers and on Saturdays during the school year, I had always worked on the houses (without pay) cleaning up scrap materials for the carpenters, carrying lumber and making sure that the carpenters had the right kind of nails for the job that they were doing, etc. One day at this house, Dad asked me to get some nails out of some boards so the carpenters could reuse the wood. So, I got a hammer out of Dad’s tool box to remove the nails. As soon as I picked up the hammer and started pulling nails from the boards, the union carpenters objected, because I was not a member of the Carpenter’s Union. Even though I was only 12 years old and was only using the hammer to pull nails out of some old boards, since I was not a member of the Carpenter’s Union, I was not allowed to use a hammer as long as those union carpenters were on the job. Dad fired every one of the carpenters on the spot, and for as long as he built houses after that he did not hire union carpenters again.

Then, in the summer of 1954, at the end of my first year in college, I worked at Tempco Aircraft Company, later to become part of Ling Tempco Vaught (LTV) Corporation. I was working to make money so I could go back to college. One day when I entered the work site, a man met me at the gate and asked me to fill out a form. I noticed on the form that it had something to do with the labor union. I told the man that I didn’t want to join the union. He said, “Oh, this isn’t for you to join; it’s just to let us know that you work here.” So, I filled out the form as he stood there and watched. Well, the next week when I got my pay check, union dues had been deducted from my pay. I tried for rest of the time that I worked there to get them to stop taking union dues out of my paycheck, but to no avail. I worked there throughout that summer and fall, until mid January, 1955, when I started back to college, and they deducted union dues for that entire time. So much for labor unions.

[jlr87105]

Bloated, blood (money) sucking, parasites that live in the weeds of society; sucking the lifeblood (money) from their host (membership) and doing nothing for them, spreading distrust and dissension to all around them

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net...48101207_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net...48101207_n.jpg

[swsd40]

Right, what is so great about them??

[stovepipe]

This is why Nancy Pelosi said "You have to pass it if you want to see whats in it" , Obamacare so backward its full of Leaches .

We need to vote these Traitors out of office and then prosecute them!

[Babarock]

Regardless of pro/anti union feelings, to consider these people state employees and take money from them that could be used as intended IS WRONG.

To make this consideration and take these dues with no compensating balance is akin to taxation without representation in my mind.

[CharlieK]

Regardless of pro/anti union feelings, to consider these people state employees and take money from them that could be used as intended IS WRONG.

To make this consideration and take these dues with no compensating balance is akin to taxation without representation in my mind.

Sounds more like theft, in my opinion

[Babarock]

Sounds more like theft, in my opinion

That works for me also

[fstroupe]

That works for me also

I find it beyond theft. This is racketeering. (which was made illegal in the 1920s due to the organized crime influence in the Teamsters' Union, which shows how long that crime and the Unions have been hand in hand) Shaking down American citizens via the government. They obviously felt empowered by Obama' giving the unions so much money from the "stimulus", and his giving most of Chrysler to the UAW.

[FN1910]

I find it beyond theft. This is racketeering. (which was made illegal in the 1920s due to the organized crime influence in the Teamsters' Union, which shows how long that crime and the Unions have been hand in hand) Shaking down American citizens via the government. They obviously felt empowered by Obama' giving the unions so much money from the "stimulus", and his giving most of Chrysler to the UAW.

When unions were first formed they were needed and did a lot of good things for the workers. That very quickly changed and your term of racketeers is much more descriptive of what they are now than an actual labor union. It is highly debatable about how much they do for the workers but it is not debatable at all how much they do for the union leaders. Because the rank an file members are much like other groups and fall in line with whatever they are told to do when they go into the voting booth a politician can ill afford to ignore them and do what is right. It is slowly changing but the present administration is fighting the change just like the recent lawsuit against Boeing over the plant in SC. It is time for people to wake up and realize that they do not have to listen to the lies being told about what they have to do but make their own decisions.