The Biden administration has set its sights on increasing union rolls and stepping up antitrust enforcement, lawyers for the Polsinelli law firm said Thursday during a webinar about home care industry trends.
Union organizing is “surging” in home care, commented Denise Delcore, an attorney who specializes in labor and employment. Major activity has occurred in Nevada, Colorado, California and parts of the Midwest, she noted. Dramatic changes have taken place since President Biden took office, she explained. Declaring that he wants to be the most pro-union president, he expressed early on his intentions to make it easier for home care workers to unionize and identified barriers that need to be overcome.
“There’s a renewed effort to organize this industry,” she said during the two-hour presentation.
Unions are capitalizing on discontent felt by home care workers since the pandemic started, she said. They are promising job security, higher wages, more time off, safety improvements and better training.
Home care firms need to “take back the message,” she offered. To keep unions at bay, home care operators need to make their companies great places to work, keep employees happy and satisfied with their jobs, and make employees comfortable discussing concerns. It’s also important for operators to identify supervisors who play a key role in avoiding union organizing and prepare them in the event they are approached.
One tactic unions are employing is bringing people to the table who haven’t collaborated before. It is an effort to obtain worker information and gain a foothold in the industry, she said.
It is a “surreptitious effort to gain access to employees,” she said.
Antitrust crackdown
The Biden’s administration also maintained a laser focus on antitrust violations, another Polsinelli attorney said during the webinar. Will Vail noted that the Department of Justice has the most antitrust grand jury investigations open in 30 years.
One sign of the administration’s plans occurred in July 2021 when the president issued an executive order, outlining his broad antitrust policy. Since then the Federal Trade Commission has begun looking at home-based providers, Vail said. It recently issued a Civil Investigative Demand, or a request for information about practices. While a seemingly generic demand, it is a sign that the administration is looking at how agencies may be running afoul of antitrust laws, Vail said.
