From Oregon Journalism Project: Battle Erupts Between SEIU and Long-Term Care Providers

At issue: a request that Service Employees International Union filed last November with the Oregon Department of Human Services.

SEIU, Oregon’s largest public employee union, with 72,000 members, asked the agency for a list of names of people who had applied for a DHS criminal background check. Such a check is a necessary step in getting a job in care industries that serve older, developmentally disabled or otherwise vulnerable Oregonians. Although employers in the care industry are private companies, DHS regulates them and has a background check unit that vets all prospective workers.

On the DHS background check portal, the agency tells prospective caregivers the agency “will begin the checks only after you have provided your authorization and submitted information about your history. The website is secure and confidential. We do not provide any of your disclosures made in this website to anyone (emphasis added)."

It is these names — of people seeking work in the long-term care industry—that SEIU wants to obtain (the union did not ask for other personal information, such as phone numbers, home addresses, or dates of birth).

The union’s motive?

Over the past 20 years, SEIU has successfully organized home health care workers. Felisa Hagins, executive director of the union’s state council, acknowledges SEIU would now like to do the same with long-term care workers, most of whom are currently nonunion. Unionization, she says, would benefit workers. She also acknowledges, however, that it would strengthen SEIU, whose financial clout and large membership already make it a colossus in the Capitol.

“When workers have more power and better benefits and better pay that’s good for them and good for us,” Hagins says. “That’s always important to us.”

In recent years, Oregon’s Public Records Law has become a battleground between interests seeking greater disclosure and opposing groups seeking to ensure privacy. At times, SEIU and other public employee unions have fought anti-union groups, such as the Freedom Foundation, who seek contact information for members of public employee unions so they can dissuade them from paying union dues.

In the current standoff, however, SEIU is fighting to get approximately 70,000 names it believes should be public. Oregon’s Public Records Law says anyone may request “information relating to the public’s business,” including any information “owned, used or retained” by a public body. There are hundreds of exemptions to the law, but generally speaking, it requires disclosure of information that is in the public’s interest to know.

On March 12, the state Department of Human Services suddenly notified the Oregon Health Care Association (a trade association representing 1,000 nursing homes and assisted living facilities) and other groups that serve vulnerable Oregonians that it planned to give SEIU on the next day, March 13, all of the names of people who had requested background checks.

“The Oregon Department of Human Services periodically receives public records requests for information on all state employees,” the notice said. “ODHS wants you to know that it will be releasing employee information (that is not exempt from disclosure) in response to public records requests received from Service Employees International Union.”

Phil Bentley, CEO of the health care association, whose members employ 50,000 workers, immediately engaged lawyer Brian Kiolbasa of the Ballard Spahr firm. Kiolbasa told DHS the tight timeline was unfair—and that the names of care workers who’d requested a background check should not be disclosed.

“The employees at issue, however, are employed by private employers, not the state,” Kiolbasa wrote in an email he sent to the agency at 3:21 pm March 12. “Those employees have privacy rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Oregon’s statutory exemptions to the Public Records Act, and elsewhere.”

Kiolbasa said he would immediately seek a temporary restraining order in Marion County Circuit Court unless the state halted the release.

At 9:19 a.m. on March 13, DHS blinked. “We are pausing release of information pending legal review,” the agency replied in an email. “We will follow up with you as soon as possible.”

Bentley says he’s glad DHS paused the release but says it was never appropriate.

“These workers are not public employees, and their background check data is not a public record,” Bentley tells OJP. “Releasing this personal data, particularly at a time when many workers and their families are fearful of aggressive actions by the federal government, would have been a catastrophic error.”

Lois Gibson, executive director of the Oregon Resource Association, which includes about 100 organizations that provide services to people with intellectual, developmental and other disabilities, echoed Bentley’s concerns.

“The proposed release would identify workers by name and list their ‘work sites’ — which, in many cases, are private homes of Oregonians with disabilities. That creates very real safety implications,” Gibson says. “For some workers — particularly those with protective orders or other safety concerns—this kind of disclosure could put them at risk. This is especially troubling given that this workforce is largely made up of women and minorities.

“Additionally, releasing this information appears to contradict recent legislative efforts in Oregon aimed at strengthening protections around personal information and limiting its disclosure to outside parties. We urge the state to reconsider and prioritize the safety and privacy of this essential workforce.”

SEIU’s Hagins says such objections are overblown and miss the larger point: Much of the money that goes to pay care workers starts out as tax dollars, through Medicaid, Medicare or other funding programs.

And, Hagins says, because those tax dollars pay for services for hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, the public has a broad interest in whether employees are properly trained, fairly compensated, and in a position to provide the best possible care.

“We believe that is an undertrained, underpaid workforce—and we know that a lack of training has caused serious harm to some clients,” Hagins says. “And we know Oregon is going to need a lot more of these workers in the future.”

As OJP reported, SEIU backed a bill in the 2025 legislative session that would have created a workforce standards board to address what the union believes are critical gaps in the care industry. The Health Care Association and its allies defeated the bill.

Hagins says finding out who the workers are in the care industry is an important first step to improving worker training and compensation and reducing high turnover, which she says will improve quality of care.

“We think there needs to be real accountability in this system,” Hagins says. “This is one of many human services public records requests we have filed to answer important questions about how the system operates.”

Jake Sunderland, a DHS spokesman, declined to answer questions about why the agency initially decided to release the names of people who sought background checks to SEIU.

“No records have been released,” Sunderland told OJP on March 20. “The Oregon Department of Human Services is currently consulting with the Oregon Department of Justice regarding what Oregon Public Records Law requires to be released.”

Kiolbasa asked DHS for a two-week delay, which would pause the process until March 27; it is unclear, however, when the dispute will be resolved.

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This story was produced by the Oregon Journalism Project (oregonjournalismproject.org), a nonprofit investigative newsroom for the state of Oregon.