MONTPELIER, Vt. – The American Federation of Teachers union in Vermont learned a valuable lesson last year:

If at first you don’t succeed, try again using crony politics and a little financial persuasion.

The AFT is on the brink of winning the right to force all home child care workers who receive subsidies from the state to vote on whether or not they’d like to unionize. If the majority vote “yes,” the AFT would be their sole bargaining agent and make a lot of money from the dues they would be forced to pay.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

The state Senate recently approved S. 316, legislation that would authorize the vote by the home child care workers. The measure recently passed out of the state House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee and will have a final stop at the House Appropriations Committee.

A vote by the full House could come as early as this week.

“It most likely will pass, is my guess,” said Elsa Bosma, head of Vermont Child Care Independence, a group of 250 active child care providers fighting against the legislation.

If it does, “our next goal would be to get out the message about the votes and how that works,” she said.

S. 316 is the latest incarnation of an ongoing effort to unionize home child care providers in Vermont. It started when representatives from the AFT began visiting the homes of child care providers to gauge their interest in joining the union, and asking them to sign cards so they could supposedly receive more information about unionization.

But many, including Bosma, later realized their signatures were improperly used to indicate support for legislation introduced in 2010 to authorize a unionization vote for child care workers.

The union’s sleight of hand with the card signatures convinced Bosma to get more engaged in her profession, and she researched the AFT’s proposal, only to realize the union offered little beyond vague references to “a stronger voice” for child care workers in state politics, all for just $500 to $700 per year in dues.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

Bosma sent a message to about 1,000 of her colleagues across Vermont expressing her concerns about the AFT. She quickly learned that many of her peers share her concerns.

With the AFT as the sole representative for child care workers, independent business owners like Bosma would lose their individual voice on topics like professional development, grievances and state subsidy negotiations. They would also likely take home less pay, after union dues are deducted.

When lawmakers reintroduced the union bill in 2011, Bosma and her group went on the offensive by contacting senators and lobbying against the bill through social media and in person.

They successfully killed the legislation – but not for long.

“I think there is an ulterior motive. I think they are trying to increase their membership, and it’s a financial gain,” she said in 2012. “If they really are about us – and there are so many of us that don’t want this – they would make it voluntary.”

This year it was déjà vu all over again, and the AFT may have finally found a political carrot that state legislators can’t resist.

Crony politics

The effort to unionize Vermont workers gained momentum when lawmakers passed Act 37, Ethan Allen Institute President Rob Roper explained in a recent editorial.

“Act 37, an act relating to payment of agency fees and collective bargaining fees, forces people who do not choose to join a union – and want nothing to do with a union – to pay fees equal to 85% of full union membership dues. In other words, it allows unions to use the power of government to confiscate money from people who are not its members,” Roper wrote.

Act 37 has allowed the Vermont National Education Association – an affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers union – to collect several hundred thousand dollars in agency fees from 2,600 support staff in public schools every year.

Roper explained that after Act 37 became law, the NEA spent $35,000 to poll Vermont residents about single payer healthcare, and another $80,000 to help support the single payer advocacy group Vermont Leads.

The American Federation of Teachers announced that it will be donating another $100,000 to start Vermont’s Coalition for Universal Reform (CURE), a 501(c)4 that “plans to unleash a lobbying, organizing and advertising campaign in support of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s plan to provide universal health insurance in 2017,” Roper quoted from Seven Days.

What this means is that the unions are willing to contribute to the pet project of many lawmakers – the creation of a universal, state-operated health care system – in exchange for their support in passing the legislation that could lead to unionization for home child care workers.

What it all boils down to is “crony politics in which the powerful look out for each other at the expense of anyone else,” Roper wrote.

“What this bill would do is effectively pick the pockets of Vermont’s smallest businesses, mostly run by women who don’t make a lot of money,” Roper wrote. “The windfall from this action will benefit some of the most powerful special interest organizations in Montpelier, and represents a very ugly side of crony politics.”

Bosma and Vermont Child Care Independence, however, have already made an impact. They successfully stopped the bill in previous attempts, and the new version is slightly less offensive than the original version.

Under the Senate-approved bill, only child care workers receiving subsidies from the state would be forced to join the AFT if a unionization vote is successful, instead of all child care workers in the state, as it was under the original bill. Regardless, it remains unclear how a unionization vote would be conducted if the legislation is approved, Bosma said.

“It’s all passed off to the labor board if it’s approved,” Bosma said.

Vermont Child Care Independence members believe that if the AFT is ultimately successful in unionizing subsidy-receiving home child care workers, it would likely hurt families that rely on the state assistance.

“All of these people who do not want to be part of the union will no longer take subsidies,” Bosma predicts.

Another wildcard that could derail the AFT’s effort is a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. Harris V. Quinn questions “whether a state may … compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs,” according to SCOTUSblog.

Vermont Child Care Independence is watching the case closely “because depending on how the Supreme Court rules, it might make this whole issue a moot point (by establishing that) it’s unconstitutional to force these providers into a union,” Bosma said.