Posted on 03/02/2011 5:07:30 PM PST by sbMKE
After hemorrhaging members for decades, labor unions have hit upon a new way to shore up their annual dues revenue.
Michelle Berry runs a private day-care service from her home on the outskirts of this city, the birthplace of General Motors. Her clients are mostly low-income parents who need child care to keep their jobs in a city that now has a 26% unemployment rate.
Ms. Berry owns her own business—yet the Michigan Department of Human Services claims she is a government employee and union member. The agency thus withholds union dues from the child-care subsidies it sends to her on behalf of her low-income clients. Those dues are funneled to a public-employee union that claims to represent her. The situation is happening elsewhere in the country.
A year ago, Ms. Berry and more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union had won a certification election conducted by mail under the auspices of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. In that election only 6,000 day-care providers voted. The pro-labor vote turned out.
Many of the state's other 34,000 day-care providers never even realized what was going on. Ms. Berry tells us she was "shocked" to find out she was suddenly in a union. The real dirty work, however, had been done when the state created an "employer" for the union to "organize" against.
Of course, Michigan's independent day-care providers don't work for anybody except the parents who were their customers. Nevertheless, because some of these parents qualified for public subsidies, the Child Care Providers "union" claimed the providers were "public employees."
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Full article at link.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
This is more a cabal of mobsters than anything resembling workers' rights.
Here's hoping for RICO prosecutions in the near future - they are warranted.
Thought I just saw an article about our legislature abolishing this practice.
I would guess that Michelle Berry gets all of her day-care income from the Government. Given that Government and Unions are right and left hands of the same ruling body in many places, she should not be surprised she has wound up in a union.
Did you post this knowing that the new MI DHS director just stopped this crap *yesterday*?
The Mackinac Center is still waiting to hear if the unions will fight this.
Why are you posting an article that’s over a year old? I believe this was rescinded this last week, anyway.
So now public unions can spread like a virus instead of soliciting membership?
This travesty of justice is the result of a criminal enterprise working with the corrupt politicians they have in their debt. I, for one, will include this disgusting situation in my arsenal of talking points when talking to the sheeple who still think politics should be about civility.
of course they will fight it. They will fight it to the SCOTUS if necessary. Don’t ever get between a union leader and his plantation workers’ dues.
The article is instructive of union tactics.
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