Unions have snared 40,000 Michiganians through government shenanigans; is it a pilot program?

Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration appears to be carrying out an audacious experiment in Michigan that could lead to the involuntary unionization of tens of millions of Americans.

At issue is a simple question: Can care givers be designated government employees simply because their customers receive public assistance?

The Granholm administration says yes. As a result, some 40,000 home day care providers have been enrolled in public employee unions, their dues subtracted from day care payments and paid directly by the state to the unions.

If the system survives court challenges, it seems likely that the Obama administration could apply it to other government programs, perhaps including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The pilot program, if that is what it is, would explain why President Barack Obama administration seems to be deliberately trying to extend government aid to more and more people.  It also would account for Obama's determined effort to place SEIU  lawyer Craig Becker, who holds radical views on union questions, on the National Labor Relations Board.

Democrat Gov. Granholm, officials of the state Department of Human Services, and a union front named Child Care Providers Together Michigan came up with a scheme to designate all home care providers who benefit from state assistance as state employees. Any provider whose clients receive assistance falls into that group.

The United Auto Workers and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees are on course to negotiate with the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council representing the providers.

Only 15 percent of the providers voted in the union certification election. Nevertheless, the unions were granted exclusive bargaining rights.

The state now deducts union dues from the checks it sends to the providers and forwards the money directly to the unions. That's about $3.7 million a year.

Imagine the windfall for the unions if that system was replicated in Washington for the millions who receive Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits and other payments from government.

The free-market oriented Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, a public interest law firm, filed suit in the Michigan Court of Appeals arguing that Human Services illegally took money from day care providers to force them into a government employees union. The suit was dismissed, but has been refiled.

In February, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed a class action against government union officials and the Granholm administration on grounds they illegally forced the providers to pay union dues. The suit argues that the union scheme violates the Constitution's gurantees of free political expression and association.

Last Saturday, the story took another interesting turn when President Obama placed Becker on the National Labor Relations Board through a recess appointment. The appointment had been filibustered by Republicans because of Becker's radical views.

Becker has argued that "employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives." Taken at face value, that means Becker favors universal unionization and more union control over small businesses.

In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when he was a UCLA professor, he explained that traditional notions of democracy should not apply in union elections. He wrote that employers should be barred from attending NLRB hearings about elections, and from challenging election results even amid evidence of union misconduct. He argues that elections should be removed from work sites and held on "neutral grounds," or via mail ballots. Employers should also be barred from "placing observers at the polls to challenge ballots," he maintains.

The Wall Street Journal writes, "More extraordinary, Mr. Becker advocated a new 'body of campaign rules' that would severely limit the ability of employers to argue against unionization. He argued that any meeting a company holds that involves a 'captive audience' ought to be grounds for overturning an election. If a company wants to distribute leaflets that oppose the union, for example, Mr. Becker said it must allow union access to its private property to do the same.

Mr. Becker isn't clear about which of these rules can be implemented by NLRB fiat, and which would require an act of Congress, but his mindset is clear enough. He's willing to push NLRB discretion as far as possible to tilt today's labor rules in favor of easier unionization."