Representative Mary Franson makes no secret of her low regard for unions, despite her union leader grandfather. From the attacks on her Family Freedom Act website to her attacks on her 2012 opponent, a retired coach, as "Big Labor Bob," she's against them.
As a former home child care provider, she has ridden point against an organizing drive by AFSCME and SEIU to organize daycares.
But we've never seen her tear up while she's tearing up. We probably would too if we thought the DFL was destroying the world as we know it.
In today's Alexandria Echo Press, Crystal Dey reports in Ingebrigtsen, Anderson and Franson discuss Dayton's plans:
Although it was billed as a legislative town hall meeting, a Friday gathering in Alexandria felt more like a political platform for Republican leaders to analyze the DFL’s recent proposals. . . .
A former child care provider, Franson was visibly distraught over the issue.
“I’m just very emotional today because the Democrats are just destroying this state,” she said through tears.
Franson said child care providers should have the right to run their business without a union, to choose to be privatized and receive the subsidy.
But it isn't the DFL coming after your children that has Franson distraught; it's also the drive of home health care aides to organize that's bothering her:
“The union is going to denigrate the child care system as we know it,” she said. “It doesn’t stop with the unions; they’re going after our disabled people also.”
Franson said it is not only child care subsidies that are affected. The money available for care of disabled people will be cut as well.
This is curious stuff given the cuts to home health workers Franson helped hand out in her first term. In July 2011, Minnesota Public Radio reported in Health and human services budget cuts worry providers:
It's a troubling result to this difficult legislative session," said Steve Larson, the public policy director at The Arc Minnesota. The budget outlook for disabled people barely improved despite intense lobbying from his organization. Larson estimates there are at least $170 million dollars in cuts to waiver and home care programs that serve people with disabilities, including a pay cut that targets personal care attendant services provided by non-legally responsible relatives."Some of our lowest paid health care workers that do a tremendous job are now going to have to take a 20 percent cut," Larson said.
The Direct Care Alliance had the deets in September:
The budget included a 1.5 percent across-the-board cut for all health care funded by Medical Assistance, Minnesota’s Medicaid plan. In addition, several targeted cuts reduced payments for particular populations. The most unfair of these was a 20 percent cut for personal care assistants who provide services to a relative, which goes into effect on October 1. According to the law, “relative means the parent or adoptive parent of an adult child, a sibling aged 16 years or older, an adult child, a grandparent, or a grandchild.”For example, a PCA providing care to a relative for $10 per hour will probably be earning $8 under the lower reimbursement rate, while other PCAs with the same amount of experience at the same agency will continue to earn $10. In addition, the agencies that employ these critical caregivers will have to find other ways to cut costs, since their reimbursement rate will be cut by significantly more than $2 an hour for PCAs who are related to their clients.
Workers went to court to block the change.
In December 2012, a court reversed the policy as discriminatory. Via SEIU Minnesota State Council's website, Home Care Workers Applaud Reversal of Discriminatory Family Caregiver Cut:
Home care workers seeking the right to form a statewide union applauded Monday’s decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling that a 2011 provision ordering that people who care for elderly or disabled relatives receive 20 percent less pay than their non-relative counterparts is unconstitutional and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Minnesota Constitution.
Just weeks after going into effect in October, 2011, the provision was challenged in court and blocked for months by a temporary restraining order before being upheld in March by Ramsey County District Court Judge Dale Lindman. It was then delayed by the legislature and would have gone into effect again on July 1, 2013
Indeed, the cuts are one the reason for coming together, organizers say, as are low pay and no benefits.
But Mary Franson was pleased with slicing the health and human services budget, as she wrote her August 2011 piece, It’s the Spending Stupid:
The fact that we were able to turn Health and Human Services from a projected growth of over 22% and bend the curve down to less than 5% is impressive in itself. Even still, Minnesota has a spending problem NOT a revenue problem and it needs to be seriously addressed.
At the end of the day – we are at war. We are fighting an ideological war. . . .
Apparently, it's ok to slash pay for some of the state's hardest workers in low-paying jobs. But should they organize so that they might avoid the whims of budget battles?
Mary Franson will cry you a river.
Photo: Representative Mary Franson at an anti-union event.
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All workers should have the right to organize if they choose to do so. The legislation pending at the legislature will not create a union, it will only allow these groups to decide via an election. Amazing how warped the anti-union propaganda has been on this issue....
Posted by: Patrick Guernsey | Mar 13, 2013 at 07:33 AM
Democrats are destroying more than that single state. This country is being torn to shreds with no end in site. What will the country be left with in 10 years?
Editor's note: The commenter is a company in Las Vegas.
Posted by: New Sunset Home Care | Mar 15, 2013 at 03:37 PM