Service Employees International Union

An initiative to boost training for long-term health care workers has been put back on the ballot by the Washington State Supreme Court.

The initiative is sponsored by the nation's largest union, the Service Employees International Union, as part of a strategy of organizing such health care aides. The idea is that by requiring training and imposing other regulation of such aides, the union can leverage government influence to convince such aides to join the union.

But the initiative had a fundamental error in its drafting. Petitions circulated among voters identified the measure as an "initiative to the legislature" -- what other states might call an indirect initiative, submitted to lawmakers -- instead of a citizen's initiative to be submitted to the people. But all other filings referred to the initiative as a citizen's initiative. The court, without offering a justification for its ruling, said the mistake shouldn't knock the initiative off the ballot. That's a good decision, but it again points out the need to permit mistakes to be fixed during the initiative process in Washington and other states.

The country's largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union, has been backing legislation and ballot initiatives around the country to establish standards for home health care workers. The bills and measures are part of a strategy to organize more of those workers. It's a fine strategy. But in Washington state, SEIU appears to have made a major error.

Instead of qualifying an initiative directly for the ballot, the union labeled its petitions as an initiative to the legislature. Washington, like some other blockbuster democracy states, permits citizens to gather signatures on a document and present it to the legislature first, instead of the voters. The union didn't really want that. And it's possible that state officials may allow them to get away with the mistake and put the measure on the ballot.