[Swiftwater Gazette] Baby Sitting

[Brad Haslett]

More, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" -

http://vimeo.com/6594709

More on the issue below. And who was the single most frequent visitor
to the White House in 2009?

Brad

-----------

    * DECEMBER 25, 2009, 9:04 P.M. ET

Michigan Forces Business Owners Into Public Sector Unions
After hemorrhaging members for decades, labor unions have hit upon a
new way to shore up their annual dues revenue.



By PATRICK J. WRIGHT AND MICHAEL D. JAHR

Flint, Mich.

Michelle Berry runs a private day-care service from her home on the
outskirts of this city, the birthplace of General Motors. "The Berry
Patch," as she calls the service, features overstuffed purple
gorillas, giant cartoon murals, and a playroom covered in Astroturf.
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 crazy—and it's happening elsewhere in the country.

A year ago in December, 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."

Michigan's Department of Human Services then teamed with Flint-based
Mott Community College to sign an "interlocal agreement" in 2006
establishing a separate government agency called the Michigan Home
Based Child Care Council. This council was directed to recommend good
child-care practices—and not coincidentally, to serve as a "public
employer." Although the council had almost no staff, no control over
the state subsidies and no supervision of the providers' daily
activities, it became the shell corporation against which the union
could organize.

Thus the state created an ersatz employer and an ersatz "bargaining
unit" against which what was essentially an ersatz union could
organize.

Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in
annual dues to the union—from the child-care subsidies. The money
should be going to home-based day-care providers—themselves not on the
high end of the income scale. Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to
her go to a union that does little for her. She says she is "self
employed and wants nothing to do with the union."

The union claims it is working for Ms. Berry and others like her by
pressing the legislature to increase child-care payments. But lobbying
is not an activity that requires compulsory unionism.

Sherry Loar, who owns a day-care center in Petoskey, Mich., is the
lead client in a lawsuit brought against the Department of Human
Services in state court by the legal arm of the Michigan-based
Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank for whom we work. (Ms. Berry
is petitioning to join the suit.) The case is based on the grounds
that state law presumes that no one is subject to public-sector
bargaining unless state legislation has made them so, and in this
case, there is no legislation—only the flimsy interlocal agreement.
"I'm not opposed to unions," Ms. Loar says, "everything has a place.
But when we enter my door, this is my home."

The larger question, not part of this lawsuit, is whether this sort of
unionization violates the U.S. Constitution. The freedom of
association clause prevents compulsory unionism except, courts have
determined, when it is necessary for "labor peace." But in this case,
whom would the day-care providers riot against? The parents?

The federal question may be raised soon, as other states have pursued
similar unionization schemes over the past decade, primarily at the
behest of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees and the Service Employees International Union, better known
as the SEIU. Fourteen states have now enabled home-based day-care
providers to be organized into public-employee unions, affecting about
233,000 people. And nine have done so with home health-care providers.
The idea to unionize in this way was hatched in California, though
ironically Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed legislation to
unionize child-care providers.

It's telling that in several states that have gone down this road,
state and federal subsidies are the source of the union dues. In
Michigan, the scheme is essentially throwing a cash lifeline to unions
like the UAW, which are hemorrhaging members.

There's another, ironic twist to the story in the Great Lakes state.
Last month the Michigan Economic Development Corporation granted a
for-profit SEIU subsidiary, the SEIU Member Action Service Center, a
$2 million refundable tax credit to locate a new business facility in
the state that will provide administrative services for the union and
other local labor organizations. The subsidy strikes us as
inappropriate because it categorized the SEIU subsidiary as a business
and occurred just before the 5,000 member SEIU local 517M granted the
state wage concessions. Shamelessly, the SEIU requested the credit
because Michigan has high labor costs.

Some states are redefining straightforward terms—a union as a
business, an employer as an employee—primarily to aid organized labor.
This highlights the need to re-examine public-sector collective
bargaining. Shielded from market pressures, public employee unions
have driven up taxpayer costs for decades. Now labor leaders are
shanghaiing entrepreneurs such as Ms. Berry and Ms. Loar into
government unions because their clients receive government aid. Who
will be next? Grocers? Landlords? Doctors?

Mr. Wright is director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation. Mr.
Jahr is senior director of communications for the Mackinac Center for
Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in
Midland, Mich.