Please do not support any of these three bills: HB 2089, HB 2495, and HB 2764. If passed, any of them will cause many problems for the vast majority of Virginia's citizens. We do NOT need collective bargaining in the Commonwealth. I am speaking from experience as a retired City of Virginia Beach employee with over thirty-three years of service. Thank you. Thomas K. Tillman

Vote NO to collective bargaining!! There is nothing good that will come from this!

The Virginia Association for Home Care and Hospice Opposes this legislation as introduced. Current reimbursement rates for agency directed personal care are so low that it is imposable to provide a sick leave benefit. We would support this legislation if it required DMAS to reimburse agency directed personal care for providing a sick leave benefit.

The Virginia Association for Home Care and Hospice Opposes this legislation. We believe it will place thousands of frail, disabled and elderly individuals in great harm by creating a collective bargaining unit. The goal of collective bargaining is called a collective bargaining agreement. This agreement is meant to establish rules of employment for a set number of years. It appears that this legislation is a forced unionization of home care workers. We know that union members pay for the cost of this representation in the form of union dues. The collective bargaining process may involve antagonistic labor strikes or employee lockouts if the two sides have trouble reaching an agreement. How does the authority reach a bargaining agreement when they do not have authority to appropriate state funds? What happens when your personal care aide goes on strike? You don’t receive needed care. Let us remember people receiving this care are nursing facility eligible. Are we going to temporarily put them in a nursing facility? Is the Virginia General Assembly prepared and willing to allow employee collective bargaining determine how state general funds are spent? Virginia’s Budget decision making process may not be perfect, but we call have the right to be heard. That will not happen if this legislation is enacted. Simply this is not good policy! Massachusetts currently has a similar structure to the one described in the legislation. It is not part of its Medicaid agency and it applies to consumer directed personal care only. In Massachusetts consumer directed personal care aide under this law are considered public employees. This has resulted in huge program cost growth making consumer directed personal care the highest per capita program in the country. There have been no improvements in oversight, reduction in fraud, waste and abuse has not improved. It has been about wages. The cost of waiver services cannot exceed the cost of institutional care which in most waiver would be nursing facility cost. This is a federal requirement. We estimate that Medicaid personal care rates fall short approximately $1.5 billion according to several recent rate studies. How does collective bargaining function when the state is at a loss for revenue? Dose this result in a tax increase on all Virginians? VAHC has been working with the General Assembly since in inception of Medicaid Personal care in the early 80s. While the system is flawed and rates have been suppressed for decades it is unclear how collective bargaining will solve these issues. Ultimately, collective bargaining will affect all home care workers, agencies and MOST importantly the person receiving care. We have tens of thousands of Virginians that pay out of their own pocket for in-home private duty personal care. At some point the cost of delivering this care will exceed the ability for many of these self-pay individuals to receive services. Some will go into a spend down situation and qualify for Medicaid, other will go without needed care resulting in hospitalization or even early death. Is this really the direction we want to go for Virginians? Please vote against the passage of this legislation.

Having worked in the health care industry for many years I can tell you that unions do not benefit the industry, unions are not about customer service, it's about control. Control over the very industries that employ their members in ordor to increase their coffers with membership dues. The first nursing home I worked in was a union required state facility, the patients barely had clothing, one patient I remember had a bedsore you could put your fist in, The next was a non union facility patients were well taken care of, had clothing, were well feed, had activities and physical and occupational therapy. They had another facility that was unionized and when they went on strike I became a SCAB thats' a person that crosses union lines. So while they were striking I was taking care of the patients . We were not under paid I made more money in the non union shop than the union shop and the customer service was far better. I never worked in another union shop again. While you can join a union if you want to Employers should NEVER be forced to collectiving bargain with them.