Proposal 4’s new Article 5, Section 31(5) and Article 11, Section 5, would place the in-home caregivers under the authority of PERA — that is, the labor law governing local government employees — rather than under the Civil Service Commission, which regulates state government employees. This provision would place collective bargaining for in-home caregivers under MERC.[*]
Proposal 4, having made in-home caregivers public employees of the new MQHCC, also stipulates that they would not be public employees for any other purpose than collective bargaining. This provision means that Proposal 4 would not grant in-home caregivers other conditions and benefits of public employment absent further action by the Legislature. Proposal 4 continues to permit Medicaid care recipients to “select, supervise, train and direct, or terminate, an individual provider.”[66] The proposal also reaffirms that in-home caregivers, like other public employees, “shall not have the right to strike.”[67]
[*] The proposed Article 5, Section 31(5), states in-home caregivers “shall have the same rights relating to collective bargaining with the Council as are otherwise provided by law to public employees not within the classified civil service relating to their public employers, and the Council shall be governed by such collective bargaining arrangements, to be enforced by the appropriate labor relations agency.” The proposed Article 11, Section 5 inserts new language stating that the “classified state civil service shall consist of all position in the state service except those filled by popular election, heads of principal departments, … in-home personal care providers subject to the authority of the Michigan Quality Home Care Council. …”