The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling that Illinois home care workers can’t be forced financially to support a union they don’t want to join could ultimately have far-reaching repercussions for home care workers in several states.
 
The decision in the Harris v. Quinn case immediately affects home care workers in Illinois providing care for Medicaid recipients but who do not work as part of a larger and private agency. The ruling makes it harder for the union that had represented them — the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — to finance its operations there, says attorney Howard Bloom, a shareholder in the Boston office of Jackson Lewis.
 
But the high court’s 5 to 4 ruling won’t directly affect home care agencies, because their employees are employed by private businesses and are not public employees, says Bob Brody, president of Brody and Associates, a labor law firm in Westport, Conn.
 
The ruling, however, could potentially affect individual home care workers in Massachusetts, Washington and other states that have similar statutes as Illinois and allow labor unions to require home care workers to financially support them even if they are non-members, Bloom says.
 
In Illinois, these home care workers were classified as state employees, for the purposes of union representation, to gain better wages and benefits. They are paid through Medicaid funding at rates set by the state of Illinois. The state’s rationale for paying for these services through Medicaid is to keep health care costs down by providing care for the elderly and disabled at home rather than in care facilities.
 
But while paid through Medicaid, the workers continue to be hired, supervised and fired by individual clients or their families.
 
The SEIU has worked to negotiate pay increases for these workers, and the workers had been seeing a portion of their hourly wages deducted from their paychecks and sent to support the union. The deductions came even for home care workers who didn’t want to be part of the union.
 
The SEIU contended that all home care workers who care for the disabled — including non-union members — have benefited from its negotiations with the state.
 
But the high court has determined it would violate the First Amendment to force the Illinois workers, who were classified as state employees solely for bargaining purposes, to pay union fees.
 
The judges, however, did not overturn the landmark 1967 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education ruling, which determined that public employees who don’t want to join a union still need to pay representation fees as long as those fees don’t pay for political activities. Instead the judges questioned Abood and said it should only apply to “full-fledged” state employees and not partial public employees such as the home care workers.
 
Related link: See the Supreme Court decision in Harris v. Quinn at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/11-681_j426.pdf.