Thanks to Hochul, a monster union is set to grow – Latest News
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s large push to rein in an explosive Medicaid program is proving a giveaway — at taxpayers expense, ‘natch — to one of New York’s most insatiable unions, 1199 SEIU.
It’s technically not one of the public-sector unions that wield monumental political energy in blue states, since 1199 members primarily work for private-sector hospitals, however the large quantity of authorities spending on health care (particularly in New York) makes 1199 Service Employees International Union behaving a lot the identical manner.
And 1199 is about to grow its ranks massively thanks to a hare-brained 2024 “reform” Hochul pushed via within the title of preventing fraud within the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, below the state pays relations of disabled Medicaid recipients to present home care.
After we and others flagged how unfastened eligibility guidelines and different points had led to a 1,200% spike in CDPAP enrollment, hovering fraud and outlays of $11 billion, the gov used public outrage to go a reform she vowed would rein in this system.
Yet her “solution” was merely to rent a single company, Public Partnerships, to centralize funds to these aides — which now lets them legally rely as PPL workers, and so certified to unionize.
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Or, more precisely, be focused for unionization by 1199.
On Wednesday, the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond publicized a letter notifying “home health aides” they’ll quickly give you the option “to decide whether to form a union and join 1199SEIU.”
“A campaign by 1199 SEIU to organize roughly a quarter-million home health aides,” Hammond warns, “has begun in earnest.”
The new members might swell the union’s already 450,000-strong rank and file by more than 50% — ballooning not simply its membership rolls, however its political affect and dues income.
And with all that new energy and money, this behemoth — which already spends thousands and thousands on political campaigns annually — can have Albany even more at its beck and call.
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When the union calls for larger wages and higher advantages for its members, lawmakers will soar and ask, How a lot?
And overwhelmingly at taxpayer expense.
Ditto for all of the politically progressive points the union backs that don’t have anything to do with health-care employees’ compensation.
The largest obscenity, of course, is how Hochul’s effort to (supposedly) stop fraud morphed into this huge present to 1199.
On the one hand, federal investigators are probing alleged bid-rigging within the awarding of the single-payer contract to PPL.
On the opposite is how its choice was enough for these 250,000 home-care “workers” to be thought-about PPL workers — and so qualify for unionization.
Hochul claims that hiring PPL produced financial savings of as a lot as $2 billion, however the long-term price is sure to show far larger.
Enriching and handing even more energy to 1199 will additional weaken democracy in New York — and sock taxpayers’ pocketbooks onerous, too.
