As Donald Trump returns to the White House this week, the people that Capital & Main has covered for the last 18 months in its national series on worker organizing could face a difficult transition. This is the fourth in a four-part series looking at how labor organizing could be affected by the second Trump administration.
Industry
Home health care aides
Number of Workers
35,000 in Michigan
What They’re Fighting For
A union and contract to raise wages, professionalize training and regulate work.
Backstory
In March 2024, Michigan Home Care Workers United, a worker organization of the state’s 35,000 home health aides, affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, launched a campaign for its members to be declared public employees in order to organize a union. Over half of the aides, who are paid by Medicaid to help program recipients with daily activities ranging from bathing to doctor’s appointments, rely on public assistance, according to national caregiver advocacy organization PHI. While workers are spread across the state’s 83 counties, the workforce is concentrated in Michigan’s largest cities. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
In October, with Democrats controlling both houses of the Legislature and the governorship, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed two bills pushed by the workers, Public Acts 145 and 144. Public Act 145 reclassified workers in the state’s Home Help Program as public employees, giving them the right to form a statewide union across workplaces. Public Act 144 established a public authority to standardize registration, training and care for home care workers. Both acts are set to take effect in March.
Current Status
Michigan Home Care Workers United spent much of December pushing state legislators to boost funding for the bills from $2 million to $10 million. Campaign officials say additional funding will assist in the creation of a public authority and provide improvements to the Home Help program. They were unsuccessful in persuading the Michigan House of Representatives, which Republicans will control this year, to allocate the money.
Coming Soon
Workers aim to elect a union by the end of 2025, said Beth Menz, deputy director of the SEIU healthcare division. Menz said the campaign has “talked to thousands” of workers statewide, and is working to collect at least the 10,500 worker signatures required to call a union election. The union declined to share its current signature count.
While the conservative policy agenda known as Project 2025 suggests Congress “consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place,” that policy is aimed at federal employees. It’s therefore unlikely to affect workers who are state-level public employees directly, said Menz.
Among those workers is Rodney Tate, 59, a retired construction worker and home care worker in Detroit who has worked as a caregiver for close relatives since 2000. Although care days can be very long, he says the state pays him for about 31 hours of care a month, sending him $500 for his work. That puts his official wage at $15.88, about 20 percent less than the county living wage for a single adult, $19.65. Tate said he hasn’t read the Project 2025 agenda and is focused on getting a union.
“We’re always facing adversity,” said Tate. “What I care about is we got these bills passed… what I care about is we’re going to keep fighting.”
Why This Campaign Matters
Success for Michigan Home Care Workers would be a powerful example of workers’ ability to create change at the state level regardless of the federal policy landscape, said Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal director at the National Employment Law Project.
Wages for home care workers paid with Medicaid, who make up the majority of the more than 2 million home care aides nationwide, are usually set by state officials. Meanwhile, care workers are typically either employed directly by the person for whom they care, or by small independent agencies receiving Medicaid funds. That decentralization has made it difficult for care workers to improve their jobs or organize unions.
Turning workers paid with public funds into public employees has been a powerful workaround for that problem, said John August, director of health care and partner programs at Cornell University’s Scheinman Institute. Becoming state employees allows workers to organize into statewide unions with enough political muscle to raise wages and make other improvements.
While SEIU was unable to tell Capital & Main how many of those members had fought for, and won, public employee status, it currently counts about 800,000 home care workers as members.
