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Hey, welcome back to the Large Large and Show.
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So a woman in New York who cares for her own fiance says that a union wants a cut of her Medicaid check.
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Why should anybody have to pay a union to be able to care for their own family?
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I thought we'd put that question to Mark Mix, who's president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
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Mark, welcome back to the program.
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Lars, good to be with you.
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This is another one of those you can't make this up stories when it comes to the union getting involved in collecting the money from uh home health care providers.
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We've been down this road before, Lars.
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We've talked about it, you and I.
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We won a U.S.
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Supreme Court case in 2014 called Harris v.
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Quinn.
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That would be Pam Harris, the mother of a disabled child who was taking care of her child in her own home, and Quinn being the governor of the state of Illinois.
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The U.S.
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Supreme Court said that no, these these people, these parents, these family members can't be uh can't be uh subjected to union collections of union dues uh without their consent.
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And that's what's happening here in New York again, Lars.
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This one's a$10 billion Medicaid program where the Department of Justice has already got involved and filed a lawsuit, at least they're investigating the potential of a lawsuit against the so-called employer in this situation, Lars.
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And this is where the union has determined that one provider, one financial intermediary, is now the employer of almost 200,000 home health care providers in New York.
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And now this quote unquote employer, this public partnership, which the union has been involved with for years, is now the employer, and they're agreeing to give the SEIU control over all of these health care providers, making them union members.
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And guess what, Lars?
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Here's the punchline.
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They'll have to pay union dues.
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Well, of course they will, because this is what what should just gall everybody.
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When you say, well, but these, you know, if if if a group of people, and Mark, you know I've taken this position, I really don't like unions.
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I was in a union a couple of times.
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I wasn't in by my own choice.
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I got out as fast as I could.
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Load full transcript
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I decertified, or I and my co-workers decertified one of the unions.
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I kind of despise unions.
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But if somebody wants to be associated with or represented by a union, I think they have a right under federal law.
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They may even have a constitutional argument saying I have a right of freedom of association and freedom of representation and freedom of speech.
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So if you want to speak or have your union speak on your behalf, you can do that.
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But these people, 200,000 providers, they didn't choose this union, did they?
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Not at all.
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In fact, the the bottom line is this is that the union has now petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to have an election.
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And Lars, the way this election works, let's say that 200,000 is the number of providers.
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And let's say, let's say uh a thousand of them go vote, and five hundred and one vote for the union, all 200,000 are now in the union and subject to forced union dues.
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This is that exclusive monopoly bargaining privilege that unions have gotten going back to the 1930s for private sector workers and a relatively new phenomenon, 1970s and up till now, for public sector employees.
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But either way, when you give the union the ability to compel workers to pay dues as a condition of working, that's exactly what this is.
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It's just a redo and the SCIU, the Service Employees International Union, looking for a new source of dues revenue without the consent or without the vote of people that are quote unquote now union members because the employer, which is working hand in glove with the union to get them into the union and is really the sole source of what really is, Lars, just a payroll service.
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So imagine ADP making the argument because they produce the payroll for your radio station and for your paycheck.
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They say all of a sudden we've agreed with the union that we're your employer because we're in the payroll processing business, and therefore you have to pay union dues.
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That's what the scheme is all about, and it's outrageous, and it comes with a Medicaid fraud overlay on it that the Department of Justice is actually investigating this particular organization, this public partnership, LLC, from actually what is looks like a pretty significant fraud case.
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And Lord Lord know uh Lord knows Lars, there's a lot of fraud going on in these government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid.
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And Mark, one of the things I could suggest, I I'm not that crazy about making new uh structures because of the union, because I'd rather have them out of public employment altogether.
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But having said that, if they're going to do this kind of thing, I've seen this done with votes on things like tax levies throughout America at the local level, where they'll say the school district not only has to get a majority of the voters to approve of a levy, but they have to have at least 50 percent of the voters turn out.
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Now, if you had that kind of requirement on the union to say, you want to represent 200,000 people, then if you're gonna have a uh a union election, then you've got to get at least 100,000 plus one to show up and vote.
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And then you have to get 50 percent of that.
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Even still, you're only getting 25 percent of the total.
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But at least it's better than 200,000 members and a thousand or two thousand cast to vote, and a tiny, tiny fraction of all the members actually say yes, and they end up obligating the other 199,000 people, right?
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Well, Lars, you're an innovative guy and you have lots of great ideas, but that's already the case when you're trying to get rid of a union, believe it or not.
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Yeah, you've got to have a lot of people.
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So believe me.
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And they argued against us and they said we have a right to bring back former employees of the company who get to vote in the decertification vote.
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Did you know that?
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Yeah, we did.
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We're fighting a case like that right now on behalf of nurses up in Michigan at a big hospital.
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Uh workers went out on strike for over a year at that point.
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Then the the employer was hired nurses to actually continue to take care of patients.
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And the union, the Teamsters Union, Sean O'Brien, who represents these quote unquote represents these workers out, these nurses out in in Grand Blanc, Michigan, came in and and lobbied and said, we got to get the striking workers who have been out for a year plus, we got to get them back in the unit so they can protect us against a decertification vote.
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We're literally at the second petition that we filed helped those nurses file.
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I think eighty percent of the nurses currently on the job said they wanted to decertify the union.
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But when they put in the employees that had been out on strike for over a year, obviously the numbers don't work mathematically for a dessert, to your point, Lars.
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It's outrageous.
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It is.
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Well, and in fact, in my case, this goes back probably three decades at least, maybe three and a half.
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And I remember at the time saying, why are they letting those people vote?
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They left the company voluntarily years ago.
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And they said, Well, if they left within the last ten years or whatever, they have a right to come back and vote.
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I said, Why would a former employee have the right to come back and decide whether or not I or my co-workers who still work at the radio station are going to be represented by the union or not?
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And they said, Because that's what the union rules say.
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And that's what the federal law says when it says it's really easy to get in the union, but it's virtually impossible to get out.
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And that's what this is all about here in New York is this new revenue stream.
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And and Lars, imagine if the if annual union dues are$1,000 a year, for example, which is not out of the question for lots of union quote unquote dues paying members.
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Um, this is a huge revenue stream and probably one of the biggest organizing successes in the union movement in literally decades, if not ever.
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When you think about them cutting a secret deal with this quote unquote public partnership LLC, which is the single representative and kind of financial intermediary in this case, cutting a secret deal with them.
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And now the employees have no voice.
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And that's why we have filed uh with uh or an employee, a person that provides help that you put the lead in, is got us to represent her in this case because the union and the employer, quote unquote, are on the same side.
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Exactly right.
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That is Mark Mix.
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Mark is the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
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Mark, it's always a pleasure to have you on the program.
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Glad to get your calls at 866.
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Hey Lars.
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That's eight six six four three nine five two seven seven.
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Send your emails to talk at larzlarsen.com.
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And by the way, check me out on Instagram.
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You'll find I've got a face for radio.