Home care workers are a growing segment of public sector unions and are the focus of many current organizing drives for both AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and SEIU (Service Employees International Union. The care providers are sometimes state agency employees, but are frequently relatives or friends of people with disabilities or the elderly, who provide care and ensure their family member is not placed in a much more costly nursing home. The vast majority of home care providers are women, and unionization helps to bring their wages up out of extreme poverty levels.

The Court ruling created a new category of “quasi-public” employee. The judges stated that because home health care workers can be hired or fired by the person they care for, even though their wages, benefits and other terms of work are bargained collectively with the state, they are not full-fledged public workers. The court ruled that fair share fees could not be collected from non-members in these “quasi-public” positions. The 5-4 ruling along ideological lines narrowly focused on the nature of home care workers, but opens the door for future attacks on public sector unions as a whole.

Many labor pundits were concerned that the conservative-dominated court would overturn the 1977 decision, Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education, which gives a public sector union the right to collect “fair share” fees from all workers represented under the contract, and expressed some relief that Abood still stands, for now.

However, as Joe Burns, labor lawyer and author of the book, Strike Back: Using the Militant Tactics of Labor’s Past to Reignite Public Sector Unionism Today, states, “Public employee unions must not get complacent because of a perceived victory here. The majority is clearly using this case to set up a future case overturning the Abood decision and imposing a so-called “right to work” scheme upon public employees.”

Burns continued, “Because the Supreme Court is one of the most undemocratic institutions in society, they typically prefer to avoid sharp turns in policy and instead, like here, favor chipping away at rights. If they move too quickly, they expose themselves for what they are, a highly politicized un-elected, elite handful of millionaires making decisions which directly impact millions of Americans.”

Harris vs. Quinn is just the most recent in a series of court cases aimed at breaking unions and is part of a concerted effort carried out in the courts, state legislatures, and federal government level to attack workers and defund unions (both public and private sector) by taking away a union’s ability to collect dues. These anti-union efforts succeeded in Wisconsin, where public sector unions lost at least 40% of their dues-paying membership since Governor Scott Walker destroyed collective bargaining for public employees. Across the lake in Michigan, home of the sit-down strike, unions lost power and “Right to Work” is now the law of the land. Though today’s Court upheld Abood, in writing for the majority, Justice Alito made it clear that public sector unions are on the chopping block.

The Harris vs. Quinn decision should serve as a wake up call for the labor movement. The laws and courts cannot be counted on to defend the rights of working people and our unions. Unions gained legal recognition in the first place by organizing, going on strike and by breaking unjust laws. We must build a labor movement that is willing to once again fight for our rights. As Allison Brimeyer, clerical worker at the University of MN and member of AFSCME 3800’s Clerical Assembly stated, “We don't rely on the corporate Supreme Court to confirm and establish our human rights as workers; we tell them what our rights are by demanding and fighting for them every day.”

#MinneapolisMN #publicSectorUnions #HarrisVQuinn

The case was petitioned to the Supreme Court by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), a right-wing anti-union group.  Harris v. Quinn narrowly looks at whether or not home care workers in the state of Illinois are public employees with the right to unionize. Illinois law allows home care workers to unionize, though in the case in question, the workers actually voted against having any union representation. Despite that, the NRTW appealed the case to the Supreme Court, seizing an opportunity to push the highest court to issue a sweeping ruling that would ensure no future unionization opportunities.

The NRTW is not content to have the court rule only on home care representation. They argued that it is unconstitutional for public sector unions to have exclusive representation rights and the ability to collect fair share fees for any public workers, even when the dues are used only for collective bargaining purposes. In essence, they want to turn every state into a ‘right to work’ state for public employees.

The questions posed by the most right-wing members of the Supreme Court made clear that they are salivating at the opportunity to strip the right to unionize from all public workers. A number of commentators have speculated that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia may end up the voice of ‘reason’ on this case. Though Scalia can in no way be considered a friend of labor, many speculate that he is less likely than the other conservatives on the court to reject 40 years of legal precedent recognizing the rights of public workers to unionize. Justice Scalia is also unlikely to want to restrict states’ rights to set their own laws. Union officials are counting on Justice Scalia to be the swing vote ruling in their favor on this case. A decision is expected later this year.

Harris v. Quinn is just the most recent in a series of court cases aimed at breaking unions. It is part of a concerted effort carried out in the courts, state legislatures and federal government to attack workers and defund unions (both public and private sector) by taking away a union’s ability to collect dues. These anti-union efforts have succeeded in Wisconsin, where public sector unions have lost at least 40% of their dues-paying membership since Governor Scott Walker succeeded in destroying collective bargaining for public employees. In Michigan, home of important sit-down strikes, ‘right to work’ is now the law.

Working people and the unions who represent us cannot rely on ‘moderate’ conservatives and narrow legal arguments to protect us. In fact, the law has been established to limit the effectiveness of union organizing and the Supreme Court has ruled time and again to strip us of our rights.

The more effective a strategy is, the more likely it is to be deemed illegal. Sit-down strike, where strikers occupy their worksite, thus preventing the company from bringing in scabs (‘replacement workers’) or finding other means to continue production, are a good example. This tactic was ruled illegal by the National Labor Relations Board after waves of sit-down strikes in the late 1930s led to significant gains for workers. The legality of the sit-down strike made it to the Supreme Court, which they ruled on Feb. 27, 1939, in the case of NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation, that sit-down-strikes were essentially illegal. The court ruled that workers who violated the law, regardless of whether that violation was provoked by a violation of the company, did not have to be reinstated. In other words, any worker who broke the law during a strike could be fired, no matter what.

As Joe Burns, labor lawyer and author of the book Reviving the Strike, states, “We cannot understand or overcome the weakness of the modern labor movement without addressing the role of the judiciary in suppressing labor rights. A century ago the labor movement had a crystal clear understanding of the role of the United States Supreme Court. From the early 1900s into the 1930s, labor activists railed against not just unfavorable labor law decisions but against the very idea that judges should be allowed to intervene in labor matters. From conservative AFL officials to radical unionists, labor activists understood that courts were engaged in judge-made labor law.”

As case after case is pushed to the Supreme Court by groups like the National Right to Work Foundation, labor activists must once again challenge the idea that judges can be trusted to determine labor policy. We must also challenge people to understand that if the laws are put in place to weaken our movement, those laws need to be broken.

The greatest upsurges in labor – the private sector in the 1930s and the public sector in the 1960s – were the result of hundreds of thousands of working people rising up and defying labor laws that were created to prevent us from winning. If we are to rebuild a strong movement of working people, we need to reclaim the tools of our historic successes, and not count on the courts to grant us the permission to use them.

Cherrene Horazuk is President of AFSCME 3800 which represents clerical workers at the University of Minnesota.

#MinneapolisMN #unionBusting #SupremeCourt #rightToWork #PublicSectorUnions #HarrisVQuinn