Motion: NY provider must be allowed to challenge claim that in-home personal care providers selected by Medicaid recipients can be unionized by SEIU

Buffalo, NY (October 14, 2026) – Elena Rizzo, a home care provider who cares for her fiancé under New York’s Medicaid-funded Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), has just filed unfair labor practice charges and a motion to intervene with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Both actions are related to a case filed by 1199 Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers East (SEIU), seeking to unionize an estimated 190,000 personal assistants who care for people with disabilities, often family members, through CDPAP.

Rizzo, who would be subjected to unwanted unionization under an SEIU petition filed with NLRB Region 3 in Buffalo on September 22, filed the charges and motion to intervene with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

The federal unfair labor practice charges were filed against SEIU and Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL), which SEIU erroneously claims in its petition is the employer of Rizzo and nearly 200,000 other providers in the program. The charges allege that PPL gave unlawful assistance to SEIU with soliciting and obtaining support for its unionization petition and that SEIU requested and accepted that assistance. According to news reports, SEIU has “been working closely with the PPL for years” and “worked to ensure the success of the company’s takeover of the home care program.”

Rizzo’s Foundation staff attorneys also filed a Motion to Intervene in the SEIU’s unionization petition, asking NLRB Region 3 to allow her to participate in the case in order to raise multiple issues regarding the legality of SEIU officials’ effort to impose unionization on her and every other personal assistant providing care through the Medicaid-funded CDPAP.

Among other issues, the motion argues she must be allowed to challenge SEIU’s claims that PPL is the employer of providers like Rizzo. The motion notes that home care providers are actually employed by the hundreds of thousands of individual CDPAP participants who hire them to work in their homes, and that PPL merely assists these participants with payroll processing, record keeping, and regulatory compliance issues.

The motion notes intervention is especially necessary because SEIU and PPL are actually working together, pursuant to an organizing agreement under which PPL assists SEIU in obtaining monopoly union “representation” over all personal assistants, after SEIU helped make PPL the sole fiscal intermediary of all CDPAP participants. With SEIU and PPL acting in tandem against the interests of care providers, it is vital that the NLRB allow the purported “employees” in the case to fully participate and defend their legal rights.

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Rizzo’s unfair labor practice charges and motion to intervene follow a motion filed last month by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation asking the NLRB to pause the case to allow for amicus briefs and to consult with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services.

That motion similarly pointed out that the Region won’t get complete briefing from the current parties on the important issues the case implicates, because “SEIU and PPL are not adverse to one another” due to their organizing agreement. The motion also noted consultation with federal agencies is needed because the U.S. Department of Justice has a pending lawsuit alleging PPL committed fraud to win its contract as the program’s sole fiscal intermediary in New York, and because certifying a union over every provider in a state Medicaid program could conflict with federal Medicaid law.

New York is one of 24 states that lack a Right to Work law to ensure union affiliation and financial support are strictly voluntary. As a result, if SEIU officials’ NLRB petition is successful, all CDPAP home care providers in New York State would be expelled from the program unless they hand over a portion of the money they receive from Medicaid to SEIU officials.

“We fully support Ms. Rizzo and other personal care providers as they move to challenge the SEIU’s outrageous power grab designed to siphon union dues from Medicaid funds that are supposed to be used to provide care for those in need,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Whether it’s the allegations of fraud in how PPL obtained its state-granted monopoly, unlawful assistance by PPL to support SEIU’s organizing campaign, or ludicrous claims that a payroll processor ‘employs’ hundreds of thousands of individuals required to use it to obtain payments from Medicaid — every aspect of this scheme is rotten.

“When the union and the company it claims is the ‘employer’ are working hand in glove, the NLRB must allow caregivers like Elena Rizzo to participate in the case to defend their own rights,” added Mix. “Many of these providers are caring for their own parents, children, or spouses, and they should never be forced to pay union officials for the privilege of doing so.”

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.