Today, the Center for Union Facts released a new report on how union presence impacts the rating of nursing homes in California. The report examines all California labor unions that represent nursing home caregivers but is primarily focused on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents the vast majority of these homes.
CUF examined all nursing homes in California registered with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and investigated their respective unionization status, CMS quality rating, and abuse indicators.
Despite claims from SEIU Local 2015 that the union wants to “truly transform the nursing home industry for the better,” a regression analysis found that union presence appears to lower a nursing home’s CMS rating by almost 10 percent.
Highlights from the report include:
- CMS-registered nursing homes in California with a labor union have a rating that is roughly one-third of a star lower than homes without a confirmed union (out of five stars), controlling for median county household income.
- This means that unionization could lower the rating of a nursing home in a median-income county by roughly 9.6 percent.
- Having nurses unionized with the SEIU specifically had an even larger negative effect on star ratings of nursing homes.
- Unionized nursing homes were 5.5 percent more likely to have an abuse indicator than non-union homes.
The report is part of CUF’s ongoing SEIUExposed public education campaign. A similar report, focused on the impact of union presence in California hospitals, is available here.