California law prohibits anyone from accessing the list of state-compensated home healthcare providers unless the requestor is a public bargaining unit.
Translation: Unions have special privileges that others don’t.
Even though these employees are taxpayer-funded and licensed through the state of California, their information is exempted from the same public disclosure laws that apply to every other government employee.
The only folks permitted to communicate with these employees are unions themselves. No other point of view need apply.
The rationale for this is to “protect” union members from harassment from outside groups. Well, what happens when the unions themselves are the predators?
Who protects these homecare workers? It’s certainly not the state or the county government. They just sign over the checks.
The Freedom Foundation received a letter this past week from an Orange County homecare provider (her name is left absent for litigation purposes) who, after hearing about her rights under Harris V. Quinn, informed the United Domestic Workers union (UDW) she no longer wished to be a member.
The union responded with the same old tired excuse: “You’re outside your membership opt out period.”
The only problem was that she had never signed a union membership card, so the UDW’s intentionally deceptive rules and regulations didn’t apply to her.
Is this story starting to sound repetitive? If so, that’s because it’s happening over and over again across this state.
The Freedom Foundation is the only organization that cares enough to educate providers on their rights. The caregiver told us her story and is considering pursuing legal action if the union doesn’t recognize its fault in this situation.
Why would a union commit fraud? Who knows why an organization that’s lasted for decades in California can continue to commit fraud repeatedly without some sort of complicity from the top. Sure, maybe the senior presidents of this farcical organization have no direct crime.
They weren’t the ones who dispatched 20-year-old canvassers to collect and forge providers signatures. But they did create the system that incentivized such behavior.
What kind of system? Most likely they collect a bounty for every signature they collect. After 2014, unions in California had to create an “opt-in” system. They went door to door and told providers they must sign the union card to keep their benefits. When folks don’t sign, the union signed for them.
Your signature on a membership card is a valuable commodity to the union – no matter what it ends up costing you.
