Home Health Care Workers

The country's largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union, has been backing legislation and ballot initiatives around the country to establish standards for home health care workers. The bills and measures are part of a strategy to organize more of those workers. It's a fine strategy. But in Washington state, SEIU appears to have made a major error.

Instead of qualifying an initiative directly for the ballot, the union labeled its petitions as an initiative to the legislature. Washington, like some other blockbuster democracy states, permits citizens to gather signatures on a document and present it to the legislature first, instead of the voters. The union didn't really want that. And it's possible that state officials may allow them to get away with the mistake and put the measure on the ballot.

In Missouri, the Service Employees International Union, the largest labor union in the country, is backing an initiative to move funding from nursing home care to home health care. SEIU is rapidly organizing home health care workers nationally, and this initiative is designed to produce more workers to organize in the Show Me State.