U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez issued the following statement today regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s Harris v. Quinn decision:
“Home care workers do heroic work, providing high-quality, compassionate care that allows seniors and people with disabilities to live at home with independence and dignity.
“By organizing together, these workers have improved both their own working conditions and the quality of services they provide. The demand for skilled home care workers will only increase as the population ages and more people require these services.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision will make it more difficult for home care workers to have a united voice and the support they need to best serve their clients. We can and will continue to work in partnership with home care workers, consumers, employers, unions and states to ensure both good jobs and quality home care.”
Background:
The Supreme Court has dealt a blow to public sector unions -- ruling that thousands of home health care workers in Illinois can't be required to pay fees that help cover the union's cost of collective bargaining.
It was a 5-to-4 ruling, split along ideological lines.
The justices said requiring those workers to pay the fees violates the First Amendment rights of non-members who disagree with the positions that unions take.
It's a setback for labor unions that have increased their ranks -- and boosted their bank accounts -- in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers. The ruling could cause members to leave those unions -- feeling they have little incentive to pay dues if non-members don't have to share the burden of union costs.
But the ruling was limited to this particular segment of workers, and not private sectorunions. And it stopped short of overturning decades of practice that generally has allowed public sector unions to pass their representation costs on to non-members.
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