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A Michigan branch of the powerful Service Employees International Union saw its membership and revenues plummet after the reversal of a measure that forced caregivers tending to friends or relatives to be members with their dues paid by those they cared for.
More than 44,000 home-based healthcare workers parted ways with SEIU Healthcare Michigan after learning they did not have to join the union or pay dues, according to reports the union filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. Thousands of the employees were allegedly forced into the union under a plan the SEIU successfully lobbied for that classified even unpaid family members caring for their elderly parents as "home health care workers." Dues were then automatically collected from the care recipients' Medicare or Medicaid checks.
Retired Detroit police officer Steven Glossop and his wife Patricia Haynes say they were forced into the union after they were considered public employees because they cared for two adult children with cerebral palsy in their home.
“Our children’s case worker had come for their usual six-month visit and he had told us that we were now part of the union,” Haynes told FoxNews.com. “I was like, ‘What?’”
But Haynes and her husband weren’t concerned.
“I didn’t think much about it,” she said. “Then my husband heard the news that the law was reversed and we realized they were doing nothing for us.”
Haynes said that every month, $30 was deducted from their children’s Medicare payments, and, while it did not break their bank, they objected on principle.