Tim Pearce of the Daily Caller explains a federal government proposal that targets shady labor union activity.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is blistering at a proposed regulation that would prevent the union from siphoning fees from American workers’ Medicaid payments.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced a proposed rule Tuesday that would require Medicaid payments to go directly to healthcare workers, ending a 2014 Obama-era rule that let third parties, such as unions and insurance companies, skim off a share of the paycheck before the worker saw any of it.

The SEIU, one of the largest public-sector unions in the U.S., referred to the proposed rule “as part of the [Trump] administration’s broad, coordinated attack against working people.” …

… Though the Obama rule legalizing the practice went into effect in 2014, unions have been skimming money from Medicaid payments for nearly two decades, according to Freedom Foundation director for labor policy Maxford Nelson.

The practice has netted unions billions of dollars from public-sector home healthcare workers forced to pay union dues or “agency fees” equivalent to 85 percent of a dues payment to cover the cost of representation for non-members.

“It is very heartening to see this administration taking the first practical steps to stop states and unions from deducting money from the Medicaid checks of home caregivers serving our society’s disabled and elderly,” Nelson told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement.