Is Silence Golden?
Michigan Governor Gives Tarnished Answers About Day Care Unionization
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MIRS News (Subscription required) asked Granholm a series of questions about the creation of the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council (MHBCCC) and its home health care counterpart, the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3). These agencies were created to be the so-called “employers,” so that tens of thousands of day care providers and home care workers could be unionized. Granholm insisted in the MIRS interview that, “I don't know honestly the exact makeup or the rules behind them.”
Last spring, The Mackinac Center obtained e-mails from a union lawyer that suggest the opposite. At the time,
In a Sept. 13 e-mail, (AFSCME Attorney Nick) Ciaramitaro wrote about the MHBCCC: "In many ways, this is an experiment with little guidance from statute and virtually no administrative or judicial precedent to follow. ... The Interlocal Agreement came about at the recommendation of Michigan AFSCME and the UAW with the support of the Executive Office." (Emphasis added.)
A second curious Question and Answer in MIRS was this:
Q. So the fact that thousands of people were unionized was an added benefit, then?
A. That wasn't the intent. From my perspective, it wasn't the intent. The intent was to train people and provide quality care.
If unionizing thousands of people was not the intent, then why boast, as she did at a 2008 AFSCME conference, that because of her office’s “partnership” with AFSCME, there are now “45,000 new AFSCME members – quality child care providers.” (See the
Also, a quick check of the Department of Human Services website finds that the state has had a system in place “to train people and provide quality care” since 1973. The governor did not mention how this must have changed so dramatically in 2008 that a new agency and labor union were necessary.
Finally, if the “intent” was to train people and provide quality care, and the MHBCCC was created to help achieve this training, why did The Detroit News report some 7,500 providers were scrambling to meet a mandated Sept. 17, 2010 deadline for training, at the risk of being kicked off a state day care subsidy program? One provider told the newspaper, “I had no idea training was going on."
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has been fighting the illegal withholding of union dues since September 2009 on behalf of three day care owners, with the case now at the Michigan Supreme Court. Up until now, Gov. Granholm has remained mum, citing the pending litigation. But given these revealing comments, perhaps silence really is golden.
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See also:
The Saga of Forced Unionization
Michigan Court of Appeals Judges – Not on the Same Page?
Court's inaction allows illegal stealth unionization to continue
National Media and the Stealth Unionization Case
Union Lawyer Admits in Court that Stealth Unionization Is a 'Slippery Slope'
Deadline Looming: Day Care Providers Could Lose State Subsidies
Forced Unionization: Big Labor's Last Stand?
Stealth Unionization Plot Survives Another Attempt to Kill It
Senate Seeks Another Way to Kill Forced Unionization of Child Care Providers
'No Comment' from Day Care Union Lawyer on E-Mails, Senate Hearing
E-mails Reveal Child Care Union All About the Money
The Michigan Zombie Child Care Council
Connecting the Day Care Union Dots
Stealth Unionization: Action and Inaction
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