Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan announced last night in his State of the State address that he plans to merge the Department of Health and Human Services with the department of Community Health. While this is being billed as a move to streamline services to help the needy, I am wondering what the impact will be on employees working for both departments. Particularly, given that the 17,000 employees working for DHS and Community Health are members of the UAW.
From the Detroit Free Press:
Ray Holman, legislative liaison for United Auto Workers Local 6000, said 9,000 of the union's 17,000 members work in the human services and health departments and the move could make sense. But, he said he's concerned about the planned merger.
"I would just be concerned that it would open the door to more outsourcing," he said.
DHS announced last week it would layoff 100 employees and John Walsh, director strategy for Snyder, said Tuesday that there has been no discussion of how the merger would affect the number of employees in either department. It may become a question of how to better deploy employees to provide the most comprehensive service available.
There will be obvious reductions right away from redundancies between the departments. I have heard from DHS workers personally that there is talk of replacing case workers with automated phone attendants, an obvious blow to the quality of service provided to those in need (how much explaining of circumstances can someone do when asked to press numbers as opposed to speaking with a case worker?). This is on top of cuts DHS is just no taking after budget cuts of $7.5 million last year, which has lead to about
100 layoffs.
The question we continually will be asking ourselves is how much more can Republicans cut? I'm sure Tea Partiers will answer, "Until there is nothing left."