California nears passage of a law whose effect, if not actual intent, will decimate the private nanny/caregiver industry in California. Not coincidentally, it will simultaneously benefit unions and the powerful institutional nursing/caregiver lobby. Cynically titled the “Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights,” AB 889 imposes a massive unfunded mandate on families and parents, and its indirect victims will be thousands of minorities who mostly populate the domestic worker ranks. In short, Democrats have declared war on California families and minorities in favor of Big Business and the SEIU.
AB 889 declares any person who hires a nanny, babysitter, or in-home caregiver an “employer” who must comply with a mountain of regulatory red tape such as buying workers comp insurance, maintaining meticulous time records, hiring “back up” workers to fill in during state-mandated breaks, and subjecting mom and dad to a dizzying and expensive array of legal hellfire penalties for compliance miscues. Imagine hiring a babysitter for a night then later being sued for an array of penalties because you failed to hire a second babysitter to cover during the first’s required breaks and dinner.
Parent-employers must also document and prove identification and citizenship with the worker’s social security number. The indirect effect will be massive unemployment among illegal immigrants – mostly Hispanics and minorities – who comprise a significant proportion of the domestic workforce.
So, parents, minorities and the poor stand to lose big under this law. Who stands to win? Big business, lobbyists, and unions.
If you’re the Democrat-controlled state government, how do you appease such a powerful and lucrative lobby and still pass a viable budget? Easy. Fill their clientele’s nursing homes with tens of thousands of new, unwilling customers forced there by a cynically styled “workers bill of rights” law. GOP state senator Greg LaMalfa has specifically exposed AB 889’s goal as forcing increased “institutionalized care rather than allowing children, the sick or elderly to be cared for in their own homes.”
It is no small irony that many of these unwilling institutionalized customers may end up being the same Baby Boomers who fought so hard for the modern Democrat/socialist society that now warehouses them against their wishes.
But there is still another winner with this law. SEIU. Yes, them. SEIU is the largest healthcare union in the nation, including nursing home workers and caregivers. Ask yourself which is easier — unionizing a nursing home institution? Or trying to unionize tens of thousands of private household workers who are not identified and categorized in a government database? Democrats doubtless chafe at the idea of a maid or nanny entering your home without being accompanied by some purple-shirted goon threatening you with Labor Code violations.
So where are liberal groups, and their Make-Believe Media surrogates, in denouncing AB 889? It clearly targets poor immigrants and minorities. If, as liberals claim, 70% of domestic workers are illegal immigrants, then AB 889’s proof of citizenship requirements are far more socially destructive than, for example, Republican voter ID laws. But AB 889 does even worse. It is another liberal class warfare attack on the middle class that burdens families, the elderly and single parents struggling to care for their own children or parents and struggling to maintain family cohesion. Yet this wholly owned racist debacle of the Democrat party has received absolutely no national media mention whatsoever!?!
If Republicans proposed a bill whose effect would cause mass unemployment among Hispanics and the poor, the Make-Believe Media would unleash against such racist, hateful, job-killing, SOB Tea Party terrorism. Recall the ongoing hysterical response to GOP voter ID laws seeking to address ACORN style voter fraud – Wisconsin Republicans are suppressing votes with regulations; Voter ID is a veiled racist poll tax; Voter ID is racist because minorities and old folks don’t have photos; Republicans pass voter id laws to ensure election of the “right” people. Blaming the Tea Party for media’s fabricated racial epithets and spinning polls on how the tea party’s belief in hard work is code for hatred of blacks.
The Make-Believe Media remains silent on the social and racial impact of this unnecessary and punitive law, most likely because it is California Democrats who are about to put vast numbers of Hispanics out of work while simultaneously greasing the palms of Big Business and SEIU. Just a handful of quick, local or fluff stories have come from the MBM. Not a single Republican supports this disastrous, racist bill and the liberals’ media partners are keeping Californians in the dark, no doubt waiting until after passage when they can spin this as a victory for “workers’ rights.” Much like Democrats’ war on small business, the feigned concern for “workers” is belied by the job-killing nature of their agenda that favors powerful Democrat special interests.
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