Freedom Foundation Highlights Problems with SEIU Monopoly Before the Legislature

Freedom Foundation Highlights Problems with SEIU Monopoly Before the Legislature
max-blog-post-1-8-2015.jpg

Freedom Foundation Highlights Problems with SEIU Monopoly Before the Legislature

This week the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) heard a presentation from the State Auditor’s Office (SAO) about a recent report issued by the SAO on the certification rate of long-term care workers in Washington.

In 2011, state voters approved Initiative 1163, dramatically increasing the training and certification requirements for long-term care workers.

Many state-paid care providers, private home care agencies, consumers in need of care and other industry participants have contacted the Freedom Foundation in recent months with concerns about the stringent requirements for certification, which discourage would-be caregivers from entering the market and make it hard for those in need of care to find qualified caregivers.

Many individual provider home care aides have also expressed concern that SEIU is the only state-recognized provider of their required training. Under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement SEIU 775 has negotiated with the state, taxpayers pay SEIU to offer the training. The union is also guaranteed an opportunity to pitch membership to a captive audience during the training, which is increasingly vital to maintaining the union’s cash flow given that IPs can now choose for themselves whether to join the union and pay dues.

Effectively, SEIU possesses a publicly funded monopoly on offering mandatory training for individual providers. The results are inefficiency and high costs for taxpayers, poor service and unhelpful training for caregivers, and an artificially restricted labor pool of certified caregivers. Only SEIU consistently benefits.

While the Freedom Foundation testified before the committee, other organizations and disabled individuals also testified about the downsides to the stringent certification and training requirements.

For his part, the SEIU 775 lobbyist defended the training and certification requirements by attacking the straw man argument that training should be done away with entirely:

“The argument that we need more long-term care workers, therefore we need to do away with training requirements, is a little bit backwards. There are a lot of fields where we require workers to receive training because it is in the public interest and because public safety is an issue.”

Given that the certification requirements have become steadily more difficult in recent years, however, the real issue is whether the current requirements are appropriate.

The text of my testimony before JLARC on this issue is included below, as is the complete video from the hearing.

Good afternoon Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Max Nelsen and I am the labor policy analyst for the Freedom Foundation here in Olympia.

I was happy to see State Auditor examine the certification rates for long-term care workers. This is an important issue.

However, over the last several months, I’ve communicated with dozens of home care providers and agencies as I field questions about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Harris v. Quinn decision affects providers in Washington.

At this time, I don’t have much in terms of hard data, but my communications and conversations with these providers have lead me to think that there is room for significant improvement in the training and certification process for long-term care workers, and particularly for Individual Provider home care aides (IPs) who are paid with Medicaid funds.

Some providers and agencies are concerned that the stringent training and certification requirements are creating a shortage of care providers.

One IP has a grandson with autism. She recently told me that, “It has become very difficult for my daughter to find individuals who are able and willing to take the mandatory 75-hour training to become certified.”

The parent of a developmentally disabled young man who has worked with a number of individual providers describes the required training course as “problematic at best” and a “waste of resources.”

He noted further that, “The irony of the increased training certification requirement is that a labor union has narrowed the labor pool, not expanded the market. We no longer can find providers as the training requirement is too daunting.”

The owner of a private home care agency reports that, “We are short staffed and turning away business because we cannot hire enough qualified caregivers quickly enough. At the same time, there are many quality applicants that we are forced to pass over because they do not meet the current licensing requirements.”

Other providers are concerned about the SEIU monopoly on training for individual providers. Part of this training involves a mandatory membership pitch from the union. Furthermore, the state has negotiated a contract with SEIU that generously compensates the union for providing the training without any accountability for the certification rate.

Another IP told me that he “never understood why SEIU got in charge of the training program and the state funds to provide it, with a bias to keep pushing to get more funding to provide training. A separate entity without union bias and only a training emphasis would have been better for the state instead of supporting a union-biased training entity.”

Private-care agencies have indicated to me that private training programs that certify agency caregivers have much higher certification rates than SEIU’s training program for IPs.

I have even heard from some individuals involved with the SEIU’s training and certification program who are concerned it is wasting taxpayer money and poorly serving applicants.

A properly designed training and certification system will not unduly limit the supply of long-term care providers and will balance the interests of taxpayers, caregivers and service recipients.

With that said, my anecdotal information indicates that there is significant room for improvement in each of these areas, and I would encourage the legislature and JLARC to consider giving this system additional scrutiny.

Director of Research and Government Affairs
mnelsen@freedomfoundation.com
As the Freedom Foundation’s Director of Research and Government Affairs, Maxford Nelsen leads the team working to advance the Freedom Foundation’s mission through strategic research, public policy advocacy, and labor relations. Max regularly testifies on labor issues before legislative bodies and his research has formed the basis of several briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Max’s work has been published in local newspapers around the country and in national outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, National Review, and the American Spectator. His work on labor policy issues has been featured in media outlets like the New York Times, Fox News, and PBS News Hour. He is a frequent guest on local radio stations like 770 KTTH and 570 KVI. From 2019-21, Max was a presidential appointee to the Federal Service Impasses Panel within the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which resolves contract negotiation disputes between federal agencies and labor unions. Prior to joining the Freedom Foundation in 2013, Max worked for WashingtonVotes.org and the Washington Policy Center and interned with the Heritage Foundation. Max holds a labor relations certificate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and graduated magna cum laude from Whitworth University with a bachelor’s degree in political science. A Washington native, he lives in Olympia with his wife and sons.