According to Channel 9 News in Denver, Colorado, state lawmakers there are introducing Senate Bill 58, which seeks to create an Alzheimer’s Coordinating Council to better plan for the impending increase in Alzheimer’s cases in the state.  We recently wrote about the fact that Denver is gaining in popularity among baby boomers.  That, coupled with results of a recent Johns Hopkins University study that estimates the number of Alzheimer’s patients worldwide will more than  quadruple by 2050, has moved the state legislature to act in what we see as a responsible and timely manner to address the concerns that will inevitably arise as a result of these changing demographics.

“If and when a Democrat takes the White House, expect to see the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow employees to form unions when a majority signed cards authorizing union representation,” says Kansas City Star workplace reporter Diane Stafford.

While this workplace prediction is just one of many by Stafford for 2008, it probably poses the most concern to operators of seniors housing and the long term care industry. The proposed Employee Free Choice Act, also called “card check,” would make it possible for work places to become unionized if a majority of employees sign union authorization cards, not requiring the secret ballot elections that have been in place for almost sixty years. The proposed act would also have stronger penalties on companies that illegally coerce employees to prevent them from joining a union.

“Since the Taft-Hartley Act of the 1940s, the right to unionize has been under secret ballot election,” says Maribeth Bersani, senior vice president of public policy for the Assisted Living Federation of America. “With this so-called Employee Free Choice Act, formation would come from employees filling out a card. This could easily create an environment where a lot of pressure could be exerted to force someone to join a union.”

Under the proposed act, some employers say they also are concerned that employees will be illegally coerced into forming and joining a union. Pro-union forces have long said that current laws make it easy for employers to illegally coerce employees to prevent them from forming and joining unions.

“We don’t see the issue as company versus union,” Bersani says. “We see this as an employee issue and feel the employee should have the right to the secret ballot.”

To read more of Diane Stafford’s workplace trends and predictions for 2008, visit: http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/419187.html

An interesting article in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette highlights the difficulty the state is having in its attempts to regulate the long-term care industry. Governor Ed Rendell (D) is meeting today with representatives from LTC advocacy groups to discuss a proposal that would create a new assisted living licensing category, separate from personal care and nursing homes. Currently, Pennsylvania lacks any official definition of assisted living and is struggling with recent personal care home regulations that The Department of Public Welfare cannot enforce due to personnel and funding shortages.