SCOTUS Rules Againt Public Unions

Workers handed a victory over unions: Column
Paul Kersey 11:13 a.m. EDT June 30, 2014

Supreme Court delivers major blow to public employee unions


When the U.S. Supreme Court today issued a landmark ruling for employee rights in Harris v. Quinn, it wasn't just a victory for the Illinois mom who had the courage to stand up to the state's public employee unions. The decision also bolsters hopes that all government employees will one day be free from paying forced union dues as a condition of employment.

To understand the significance of Harris v. Quinn, one first needs to understand the cozy relationship between public-sector unions and Illinois politicians. During the administration of disgraced ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) saw an opportunity to expand by organizing two groups of people: home-based caregivers in the state's Medicaid program and daycare providers.

Neither group had previously been considered state employees, and for good reason: Most of these caregivers watched over disabled relatives at home, and the daycare providers were small businesses that took in children from low-income families that received state child-care subsidies. Calling people in either group "state workers" just because they took advantage of a public social program would be as crazy as classifying food stamps recipients as state employees.

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Nevertheless, the governor cooperated, and soon the union was collecting $20 million in dues each year from the two groups. The SEIU decided to pursue a similar strategy with a second group of Medicaid recipients a few years later. It prevailed upon then-Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, and he was all too eager to comply.

But this time was different. Among those affected was a suburban Chicago mom, Pamela Harris. Pam's youngest child, Josh, was born with a rare genetic disorder and faced severe physical and cognitive struggles. Rather than put Josh in a state institution or an adult daycare facility, Pam stayed home full time to take care of him and received a Medicaid benefit administered by the Illinois state government of roughly $25,000 a year.

Harris did not want her home to be a union workplace, so she rallied other families like hers and beat back the SEIU's advances. But government unions in Illinois are nothing if not determined, and Harris knew they would soon try to force her again to join the union. To end the scheme once and for all, she joined with other parents and caregivers who already paid forced dues to file a lawsuit.

Harris had good reason to be concerned, because Illinois is not the only state where unions have tried to organize people who don't think of themselves as employees. As someone who's worked on labor policy in both Michigan and Illinois, I had a front-row seat to these unionization drives.

In Michigan in 2006, then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm created a "dummy" government agency to serve as the employer for thousands of daycare providers. The agency was then recognized as an employer and organized by the union in a by-mail election where less than 20% of the affected employees voted.

That's par for the course: If the unions win a drive like this, it's typically because of low turnout — either out of indifference, or out of the confusion that comes when you're nobody's employee and someone asks you if you want a union.

The state of Illinois and the SEIU claimed that the union was entitled to represent — and receive financial support — from home-based caregivers. But this week the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the SEIU's theory of union organizing. The court echoed a point that the Illinois Policy Institute made in our amicus brief, arguing that as a result of mandatory dues, participants in the state's Medicaid program were inevitably forced to either support the union's political speech or withdraw from the program. Paying dues to a union should not be a condition of receiving help from the state to care for a loved one.

The court could have gone further. Government union bosses want to organize as many people as possible — even those who aren't government employees — because they can usually force the people they represent to pay union dues. Harris' attorneys were hoping the court would rule that no government employee can be forced to pay dues as a condition of employment.

The court instead opted for a stern warning that unions have no business extracting dues from people who aren't even employees. Union officials should take heed: the U.S. Supreme Court is putting more limits on mandatory union dues. Soon, the high court may rightly decide that forced dues are unconstitutional and do away with them entirely.

Paul Kersey is the director of labor policy at the Illinois Policy Institute.