Medicaid authorities have launched a new attack on unions serving home healthcare workers. Make no mistake: This is nothing but another step in a 40-year attack on public employee unions.
Melissa Unger, executive director of SEIU Local 503 in Oregon, said the union chose to settle the lawsuit rather than go through a costly and time-consuming legal battle.
The Oregon lawsuit was supported by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is handling some 200 other cases across the country, including a class-action lawsuit in California by 30,000 state employees.
A union buster may be coming to your door.
By joining together and working in union, we will fight the corrupt forces intent on dismantling worker protections and continue the fight for safe jobs with good wages and benefits, dignity and respect in the workplace for all.
Walker’s attack and the Janus litigation are similar not only because they directly attack working people and their right to organize, but because both have been bankrolled and directed by a network of billionaires and right-wing foundations.
Although Janus threatens to deal a blow to U.S. unions, the West Virginia teacher strike suggests a way forward for organized labor. The strike effectively used social media as a tool for mass organization, centered on the needs of the community, and linked its cause to issues of social justice.
“If you look at the strongest unions today, they are our public sector education unions and these are unions that by and large are made up of women with women leaders,” says Lily Eskelsen García, the National Education Association president. “We aren’t not sitting by and accepting the status quo.”
The potential effects of an anti-union ruling in Janus v. AFSCME could already be on display in Orange County, where a right-to-work group scored a win involving orientations for new in-home health care aides.
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