Recently, I railed against unions voting to not work, preferring standing around with signs over creating products and services that could help the economy. Today, my plan is to rail against people in unions <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/16124">who didn't choose to be in union</a>s:<br />
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<div>The &ldquo;take&rdquo; so far from Michigan's forced unionization of supposed home health care workers for the Service Employees International Union is $28 million. That tally is going up on a monthly basis. <br />
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Yes, the SEIU, Obama's personal campaign funding mechanism (along with Wall Street firms - take that Occupy Wall Street) gets dollars from day care works. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy provides a little background on forced unionization issue:</div>
</blockquote>The &ldquo;forced unionization&rdquo; began when Jennifer Granholm was governor. It involved the creation of the Michigan Quality Community Care Council, which was used as a sham employer for the so-called home health care workers. The term &ldquo;home health care workers&rdquo; is in many cases misplaced. Many of those who were shanghaied into the union roughly six years ago are actually parents or other relatives who take care of developmentally disabled adults.<br />
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Hmm, a scheme to funnel money to unions was done under a Democrat. How unexpected.<br />
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What isn't expected, though, is how long legislation to stop future occurrences of this is taking to get through the Capitol. The bill, House Bill 4003 (introduced by Dewitt's Paul Opsommer, by the way, has passed in the House, but it is moving through the Senate more slowly. However, <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/16092">MCPP reports</a> that it has moved out of committee and is now before the full Senate. (I now have the tune &quot;I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill&quot; from <a href="http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/">Schoolhouse Rock</a> going through my head.) So more damage from the Granholm years is hopefully about to be undone. <br />
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In other union news, in the Peoples Republic of Ann Arbor, we have research assistants who apparently never want to leave school, and are thus attempting to <a href="http://www.mackinac.org/archives/2011/121311DFP-judge.pdf">form a union of their own</a>, and they're getting closer:<br />
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<div>A group of University of Michigan graduate student research assistants now must persuade a judge to allow them to form a union.<br />
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The Michigan Employment Relations Commission, on a 2-1 margin, voted this morning to send the question to an administrative law judge for a hearing. If the students win there, they will be allowed to have an election.</div>
</blockquote>(It was two Granholm appointees against one Snyder appointee, by the way.)<br />
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Look, U of M students, if you want to give money to Democrats, you can just send them money. You don't have to form a union to collect dues and then send them their cash. Really, just cut out the middle man.<br />