On March 4, 2017, MNPCA, the Center for Worker Freedom (CWF) and the Center for the American Experiment hosted an event in St. Paul, Minnesota for the press on the Minnesota homecare worker decertification project.

Minnesota homecare workers are trying to get rid of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) because they don’t want the union coming between their patients and them. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton (D) had allowed the personal care assistants (PCAs) to become unionized by declaring them government employees in 2013, but only for collective bargaining purposes.

The SEIU quickly won an election in 2014 where fewer than 6,000 PCAs out of 27,000 workers voted, but the majority of the voters supported the union.

CWF and our coalition allies have discovered, however, that there might be fraud and hosted the event to let PCAs explain what has happened.

There were a number of PCAs who attended the event and talked about their personal experiences with the SEIU.

Two of these homecare workers told the attendees that their names had been forged so that the union could deduct dues automatically from their paychecks.

Patricia Johansen, a PCA who takes care of her two special needs grandkids, explained to the Washington Examiner how she knew her name had been forged, "The signature did not look anything like mine. I'm left-handed." The union told her later that the union representative who turned in the card had been fired.

Holly, another PCA who prefers to keep her real name private, also said that she had never signed a card, but dues were deducted from her paycheck. Although she tried to get the union to stop deducting dues, she finally had to send a letter to her employer: "’Eventually I had to forward the emails I was sending to the union to my employer and tell them to stop making the deductions,’ Holly said.”

Executive Director of CWF Matt Patterson has written about their stories in a Wall Street Journal article and a Forbes article.

The PCAs’ attorney Doug Seaton also believes the initial showing of interest in the SEIU as a representative through signed cards might have contained forged signatures:

"’We have very good reason to believe that many of those cards were forged,’ said Seaton, pointing to the fact that 9,000 were supposedly signed by homecare providers but only 5,800 actually bothered to vote.”

Below are some photos from the event: