SEIU Healthcare Michigan

SEIU Healthcare Michigan senior officials have been implicated in multiple alleged financial scandals dating back to the union’s founding. The first president of the union, Rickman Jackson, was relieved of his office shortly after the formation of Healthcare Michigan when he was implicated in the scandals surrounding Tyrone Freeman, another Stern ally in charge of a California-based SEIU local who would later go to prison for financial offenses. In February 2017, SEIU International placed the affiliate under emergency trusteeship over allegations of “financial malpractice,” removing the union’s elected officers. SEIU International placed SEIU Healthcare Michigan under trusteeship for a second time in April 2022, again citing financial mismanagement. ^{5 6 7 8}

Formation and Freeman Scandal

SEIU Healthcare Michigan was organized in 2008 as part of then-SEIU international president Andy Stern’s efforts to reorganize the SEIU local unions into so-called “mega-locals” on regional and industry-wide bases. Stern installed Rickman Jackson as president of the new mega-local, but Jackson’s tenure would be short-lived. ^{1 8}

In October 2008, Jackson was removed from his local union office and the SEIU international executive board after he was implicated in the scandals surrounding Tyrone Freeman, a California SEIU local president and fellow Stern ally who would later go to prison for financial misconduct. Jackson had worked as Freeman’s chief of staff at a Los Angeles-area SEIU local union. Jackson was ordered to repay $33,500 in payments made by a corporation associated with Freeman’s local and demoted to an employee position at SEIU headquarters. ^{9 10}

Dues Skim

The Plan

Before the formal organization of SEIU Healthcare Michigan, SEIU officials, including Rickman Jackson, strategized a plan to artificially increase SEIU membership in the state. SEIU sought to grow its dues paying membership by exploiting the federal government’s Home Help Program, which provides Medicaid payments to elderly and disabled persons, allowing them to be cared for in their homes or in the homes of a relative or friend, rather than institutions. ¹¹

In order to “organize” the caregivers paid under the Home Help Program, SEIU Healthcare Michigan needed the caregivers to be assigned to a public “employer.” To this end the Michigan Department of Community Health, under a director appointed by then-Governor Jennifer Granholm (D), partnered with the Tri-County Aging Consortium to create the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQCCC). The Granholm administration recognized MQCCC as the “employer” of the home caregivers, providing the SEIU with a government employer to target for a unionization drive. ^{12 11}

Fewer than 20 percent of the home health care providers being targeted for membership by SEIU Healthcare Michigan participated in the election that led to their forced unionization. ¹³

Marge Faville, who held the position of president of SEIU Healthcare Michigan following Rickman Jackson’s removal, was later quoted as describing the purpose of the union’s home-caregiver organizing drive as to “make sure Democrats get elected.” ¹⁴

Effects

SEIU Healthcare Michigan reported dues-paying membership as high as 55,265 at the end of 2012, with four of every five members at that time being home health care workers caring for disabled Medicaid patients. Almost two-thirds of the additional 44,000-plus members were the family and friends of the disabled people for whom they cared. SEIU Healthcare Michigan received an estimated total of more than $34 million in dues from these Medicaid checks while the policy was in place from 2006 to 2013. ^{11 15}

Repeal

In 2012, Governor Rick Snyder (R) signed into law a bill allowing home health care workers to resign from the union. Nearly all the more than 44,000 people affected by forced unionization exercised this option and left; SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s membership rolls declined by 80 percent, roughly falling back to levels seen before the dues skim began. At the peak of the dues skim in 2012, SEIU Healthcare Michigan reported annual dues receipts of $11,307,314. As of 2015, following the steep membership decline, the union was reporting annual dues receipts of $5,446,451. ^{16 11 15 17}

Ballot Measure

After the dues skim ended, Michigan SEIU locals solicited the signatures needed to place a proposed amendment to the Michigan Constitution requiring mandatory unionization of home healthcare workers, restoring the dues skim and making it impossible for lawmakers to get rid of it. The measure was titled Proposal 4 for the November 6, 2012, general election ballot. ¹⁸

Proposal 4 was defeated by more than 550,000 votes, along with another union-backed proposal that would have enacted a constitutional prohibition against the passage of a right-to-work law. The defeat of the two labor union proposals is credited with creating the momentum for the successful effort by Michigan legislators to enact a right-to-work law in December 2012 that lasted until its repeal by a Democratic “trifecta” government elected in 2022. The ensuing protests at the Michigan Capitol against the right-to-work effort resulted in eight demonstrators facing felony charges, with seven of them having connections to SEIU Healthcare Michigan. ^{19  20}

In September 2013, the Michigan Secretary of State’s office launched an investigation into whether the SEIU had illegally funded Proposal 4 using finances from two nonprofit entities. The case was settled on March 14, 2014, with the SEIU agreeing to pay a $199,000 settlement, the second-largest campaign finance fine in state history at the time. ²¹

Trusteeships

On February 14, 2017, the elected and appointed officers of SEIU Healthcare Michigan were removed from their posts by then-SEIU international president Mary Kay Henry following allegations of financial misdeeds reported by a local whistleblower to the international union. According to a statement from SEIU international, “After someone with knowledge of the local reported potential financial malpractice at Healthcare Michigan, representatives of the International Union conducted a review of the local union’s books and records and found information indicating abuse of the local union’s loan and paid time off/earned vacation policy.” ^{22 23}

Following the 2017 trusteeship, SEIU International assigned responsibility for SEIU Healthcare Michigan to three appointed trustees: Tom Balanoff, who held the position of president of SEIU Local 1, a Chicago-based property-service workers’ union; Inga Skippings, who held the position of SEIU chief of staff; and Ed Burke, a longtime union organizer. Under the terms of the trusteeship, all local union officers, executive board members, and trust-fund representatives were automatically removed from office, and local union leadership was left without authority to act on behalf of the local pending the outcome of SEIU International’s investigation. ²³

In April 2022, SEIU Healthcare Michigan was again placed under trusteeship by Henry due to concerns about SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s ability to “…[carry] out its basic democratic functions,” as well as “…gross deficiencies in HCMI’s internal financial controls.” ²⁴

Henry’s April 2022 trusteeship order removed all of SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s officers, executive board members, trustees, and representatives from their positions, and Henry stated the trustees she appointed were charged with providing “the leadership and resources necessary to investigate and correct possible financial malpractice.” SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s membership, which had reached a reported high of 57,239 in 2010, had fallen to 10,918 by 2014 following the end of the dues skim described above. Dian Palmer, appointed as a trustee overseeing the local following the 2022 order, stated in a subsequent update to members that her team’s “immediate goal is to get to know leaders at your worksites and to ensure the needs of members are met.” ^{25 26}

Activities

SEIU Healthcare Michigan relocated its headquarters from Detroit to Southfield, Michigan, at some point after 2021. As of 2026, the union’s stated membership had grown to approximately 16,000 workers. ^{27 28}

SEIU Healthcare Michigan reported several organizing successes in the years following its second trusteeship. In 2023, workers at SKLD Bloomfield Hills, a nursing home whose employees had gone on strike in July 2022 over wages and staffing levels, won their first union contract following the strike. In a more recent and considerably larger campaign, 2,335 healthcare workers at University of Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor won union recognition with SEIU Healthcare Michigan through a card-check process, a method of organizing in which an employer recognizes a union based on signed authorization cards rather than a secret-ballot election; the University of Michigan Medicine unit represented one of the largest single organizing wins reported by the local in recent years. The union also reported receiving a $25 million Health Care Access Program (HCAP) grant intended to fund workforce-stability initiatives addressing staffing and retention challenges at Michigan nursing homes, describing the grant as supporting a “collaborative approach” among workers, unions, and employers. ²⁷

SEIU Healthcare Michigan was involved in a protracted labor dispute with Trinity Health at its Grand Haven, Michigan hospital, following a union election at the facility. The union reported that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued a series of unfair labor practice charges against Trinity Health for what the union characterized as illegal anti-union conduct at the facility, and that the NLRB separately dismissed an attempt by Trinity Health to overturn the results of the union election at the Grand Haven location. The union further reported that the NLRB filed a petition seeking a federal injunction against Trinity Health Grand Haven in connection with the dispute, a legal mechanism that allows the NLRB to seek expedited court intervention while the underlying unfair-labor-practice case is litigated. ²⁷

Political Activity

SEIU Healthcare Michigan has a history of involvement in Michigan Democratic Party politics dating to at least the 2018 election cycle, when the union endorsed the gubernatorial campaign of Gretchen Whitmer (D). Governor Whitmer went on to sign the 2023 law repealing Michigan’s right-to-work statute reversing a policy that Michigan SEIU affiliates, including SEIU Healthcare Michigan, had unsuccessfully sought to block through the 2012 Proposal 2 and Proposal 4 ballot campaign and the broader dues skim litigation. SEIU affiliates in Michigan have continued to endorse and campaign for Democratic candidates for state and federal office in subsequent election cycles, consistent with the national SEIU’s pattern of political spending, which has historically directed most of its campaign contributions to Democratic candidates and party committees. ²⁹

SEIU Healthcare Michigan’s continued financial and organizational recovery from its two trusteeships has coincided with a broader national organizing push by SEIU under April Verrett’s leadership, which has emphasized growth in the health care and long-term care sectors nationally. The union’s reported growth in Michigan membership, from roughly 11,000 workers in 2014 approximately 16,000 as of 2026, occurred despite the local’s continued operations without publicly identified elected officers, a structural arrangement that has persisted for several years longer than the typical duration of an SEIU International trusteeship. ^{30 11 27}