With political help unions have snared almost 177,000 home day care providers in 15 states

The Granholm administration's paraticipation in a covert plan to unionize home day care providers in Michigan is just one of 15 such schemes that have snared almost 177,000 workers, a new legal filing revealed Tuesday.

The most successful efforts have taken place in Illinois, where 50,000 providers have been added to union rolls, and New York, where 52,500 now pay union dues.

In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in connection with a lawsuit related to the Michigan effort, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says, “At a time when families are struggling and jobs are leaving the state, we find it unconscionable that a state agency would aid and abet the diversion of taxpayer dollars into big labor’s pockets.  If this isn’t stopped now, labor unions, with the help of the state of Michigan, will go after other private businesses and force them to join unions as a condition of receiving state payments for services and goods provided.”

The NFIB joined a lawsuit filed by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation against the Michigan Department of Human Services. The department subsidizes services provided by some 40,000 home day care providers who have been enrolled, in some cases involuntarily, in unions.

Through a process that remains to be fully unraveled, the DHS participated in dealings through which those providers came to be labeled state employees. The department withholds union dues from those subsidy checks and sends the money directly to public employee unions. An estimated $3.7 million has been funneled to the unions so far.

A lawsuit filed on behalf of the providers is on appeal.

“The union was formed after DHS entered into an agreement creating a new government entity that transformed home-based child care providers into government employees," said Karen Harned, executive director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center.

"This was done without the passage of any legislation, and therefore does not pass constitutional muster. DHS does not have the authority to simply deem home-based day care providers government workers.”

“In today’s political climate, unions have garnered undue influence at the executive and legislative branches of government. In some cases, the last hope for small business owners is in the legal arena, and that is why the Legal Center will remain on the forefront of the fight against the big labor movement.”

According the NFIB, the public employee unions have had their biggest succcesses in New York, where 52,500 home day care providers have signed up, and Illinois, where 50,000 providers now belong to unions.

Other states, and the number of unionized providers, are:  Washington, 10,000; Oregon, 11,000; New Mexico, 3,000; Kansas, 7,000; Iowa, 6,000; Minnesota, 2,600; Wisconsin, 7,000; Ohio, 8,000; Maryland, 5,000; New Jersey, 5,000, and Maine, 2,200.