Sabotage

The Minnesota state legislature is poised to gut home care workers’ latest contract.

Home care workers won a raise from $6.15 to $11 an hour after voting in 2015 to unionize. SEIU Healthcare Minnesota brokered a new contract with the state this year, to raise their minimum pay to $13 an hour.

But that raise would cost taxpayers money, which legislators are keeping out of the union’s reach.

Minnesota’s 27,000 homecare workers are paid by the state’s Medicaid program, which is funded in the state’s health and human services appropriation. If the new contract is ratified, Medicaid appropriations will automatically increase by way of a formula.

But the state’s final budget is due May 22. The contract is currently stalled before its final hoop: approval by the Subcommittee on Employee Relations.

At the subcommittee’s May 8 meeting, republican legislators appeared sympathetic to anti-union activists. Anti-labor lawyer Doug Seaton, who recently made Donald Trump’s short list for a NLRB appointment, is leading a court battle to decertify the union. He asked the committee to delay its vote until his case has been decided in Ramsey County court later this summer.

The union’s old contract won’t expire until July 1. But the new contract depends on appropriations this month.

DFLers on the subcommittee resisted what they saw as the legislature usurping the judiciary. Under the guise of waiting for a court ruling, a deferred vote would create the same effect as a ruling against the union.

“I’m puzzled why we’re trying a court case here,” said Sen. Chris Eaton. “It’s just improper.”

Seaton and members of MNPCA, an anti-union advocacy group, claimed the election to unionize was fraudulent, that union dues are too expensive, and that most home care workers actually oppose the union. They steered legislators’ attention to the union itself, rather than the new contract.

SEIU members, in contrast, focused on the contract’s new provisions, which they say will attract new recruits to home health care. All sides agree Minnesota is facing a shortage of home health workers.

At the EFC, we witness the process that leads to that shortage. We work with home health workers who want to leave the field. They are tired of the strenuous work and low pay. We help them move on to better jobs, in nursing homes and hospitals.

Jim Carlisle’s story illustrates the impact of that shortage.

As an accountant and activist, Jim had navigated tricky tax code and negotiated labor deals. Yet the challenge he faced on a recent evening was unparalleled. His caregiver hadn’t shown up. After three hours he gave up on putting himself to bed, and called a paramedic.

Jim and his wife, Claudia, have cerebral palsy. To get in and out of bed, dress and undress, eat and speak, they depend on other people.

Jim counted on his mother’s care for the first 40 years of his life, according to records. When she died, he turned to Dakota County Human Services, which used Medicaid to pay for seven hours per day of professional care. Jim still gets funding from Medicaid to reimburse the $11 per hour he pays, but he struggles to find competent workers.

“We have not been able to fill essential evening shifts,” he told legislators through a surrogate speaker. “The scheduled caregiver has gotten sick or, more often, had a short notice engagement that was more interesting than earning $11 an hour working for us.”