Will unionization election for Home Help caregivers really happen?

August 11, 2025

I've posted two previous stories on this subject: New legislation allows union to take percentage of Home Help worker pay last November and Huge door-to-door campaign underway to unionize Home Help workers in April. The door-to-door campaign is over with and the next step is an election to make Service Employees International Union the exclusive representative of Michigan's Home Help workers. Or not. According to a flyer distributed recently, SEIU thinks there is going to be an election. Ballots will be mailed soon, they say:

But an election may not be necessary. The Public Employees Relations Act allows an employer to voluntarily accept the union and since Public Act 144 made the director of the Department of Health and Human Services the employer of all Home Help workers ("solely for the purposes of collective bargaining"), voluntary recognition should not be a problem.

An election would be problematic. Union elections for public employees are supervised by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC). The process is described in the MERC publication Guide to Public Sector Labor Relations Law in Michigan. There are 35,000 Home Help workers scattered all over Michigan. 35,000 is a huge bargain unit. For an election to be held, it must first be established that 30% of the employees want representation. To show their interest, employees sign "application for membership" cards. 30% of 35,000 is 10,500 cards. The union collects the cards and presents them to MERC, where they are counted and verified against a list of employees supplied by the employer. That will be a big job, and we are not done.

Five days before the ballots are mailed, "notices of election" and sample ballots must be posted in "prominent places in and about the employer’s establishment". So where exactly are those notices of election and sample ballots to be posted? In the office of the pretend employer, the director of the Department of Health and Human Services? They won't be seen by Home Help workers there. Where they should go is the homes of the actual employers, the 35,000 Home Help recipients. The cheapest way to do that would be to mail them with instructions saying to pin them to the refrigerator. That would be one expensive mailing!

Voting in a union election is normally done in person, but absentee voting is allowed for cases of sickness, military leave or physical disability. For the Home Help election, with voters all over the state, voting by mail will be the only feasible option, and that will require the mailing of 35,000 ballots. Many fewer than 35,000 will be returned, but counting the votes for and against will be another huge undertaking. And they must be checked against a voter eligibility list.

As you can see from the above, an election with 35,000 electors is going to be an administrative nightmare. . .and costly. But there is reason to believe that MERC's normal election procedures will not be followed. Although SEIU flyers talk about the upcoming election, it could be bypassed by voluntary recognition by the employer. The director of MDHHS - the so-called employer-for-purposes-of-collective-bargaining - would surely be willing to recognize SEIU. She needs to be convinced that a majority are for the union, but that should not take much, since the whole purpose of the legislation making her the fake employer was to make SEIU the union for Home Help workers so that dues can be deducted from their pay. Throughout the Home Help Program Handbook it is emphasized that the person being cared for is the employer, so if the Whitmer administration is comfortable with the lie that the employer is Elizabeth Hertel, why would they hesitate to violate any of the rules of the election process? The legislation contains provisions that I suspect were ignored. It required the formation of a Home Help Caregiver Council made up of the MDHHS director, the director of the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, director of the Department of Treasury, two members appointed by the director of the department to represent participants, and two members

MDHHS Director Elizabeth Hertel

appointed by the director of the department who represent nonprofit organizations that advocate on behalf of older adults or people with disabilities. The Council is to meet regularly and do the following:

Provide for additional and relevant training and educational opportunities for individual home help caregivers, including opportunities for individual home help caregivers to obtain certification that documents additional training and experience in areas of specialization.
The council may contract with organizations with expertise in providing training and workforce development services to develop and deliver orientations and any additional trainings.
By not later than September 30, 2025, and then semi-annually thereafter, compile and maintain a list of the names, home addresses, home telephone numbers, personal cellular telephone numbers, and personal email addresses, if known, of all individual home help caregivers who have been paid to provide individual home help services within the immediately preceding 6 months. [Not necessary, because MDHHS already collects that information in order to pay the caregivers.]
Maintain a registry of individuals qualified to be individual home help caregivers to promote and coordinate effective and efficient individual home help services. Individual home health caregivers may request to opt out of having the individual’s information maintained in the registry created under this section.
Espouse, support, and work to preserve participant selection and self-direction of individual home help caregivers.
Provide support to individual home help caregivers through a variety of methods aimed at encouraging competence, achieving quality services for participants, and improving individual home help caregiver retention through improved job satisfaction.
Collect statewide information and data related to the home help caregiver workforce, including, but not limited to, individual home help caregiver pay, retention and turnover rates, individual home help caregiver job satisfaction, service gaps caused by individual home health caregiver shortages, and other relevant information as requested by the interested parties advisory group.
Serve as a communications hub for the home help caregiver workforce to disperse information relevant to individual home help caregivers.

I doubt if this council ever met. It is not necessary to installing SEIU as the home help caregivers union. I suspect that the council never met because I sent a FOIA request asking for the meeting schedule for the Home Help Caregiver Council and on August 11, MDHHS responded saying "To the best of the Department’s knowledge, information, and belief, this Department does not possess or maintain records under the description you provided or by other names reasonably known to the Department."

Voluntary recognition would seem to be the best option. For voluntary recognition, the employer must be satisfied that a majority of employees want the union. 50% of 35,000 is 17,500 membership cards. But if the employer is in favor of the union, as MDHHS director Elizabeth Hertel surely is, she could be persuaded by the union's pitch or by a large pile of cards that appears to be at least 17,500.

Here are some flyers and emails I've received over the last few months.

On August 6, the Mackinac Center filed suit against the Michigan Employment Relations Commission and the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. The lawsuit claims MERC "is unlawfully preparing an election that may end up designating the Service Employees International Union as the exclusive bargaining representative for the providers."

Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.