Illinois Day Care Workers Given Permission to Dump Union

At the end of June, The Supreme
Court ruled in
Harris v. Quinn that the state of Illinois could not
force private home healthcare workers to join a union the state
foisted upon them using the basis of these private workers
receiving government subsidies as a justification. Though the
ruling was fairly narrow and specific, it turns out the home care
workers weren’t the only folks in Illinois being treated this way.
The state had done the same to day care providers for children from
low-income families.

The state provides subsidies to these workers, too, and as the
Illinois Policy Institute
explains, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued an executive order
in 2005 organizing them under the umbrella of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) and deducting dues, whether they wanted
the representation or not.

In the wake of the Harris v. Quinn decision, the
Illinois Policy Institute and the Liberty Justice Center
coordinated with a day care provider to get Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn
to apply the Supreme Court ruling to her and other day-care
workers. They’ve succeeded. The received a letter from the Illinois
Department of Human Services saying they will stop deducting union
fees from day-care workers unless they have actually signed a
membership card to belong to SEIU. This could affect up to 50,000
workers and cost SEIU (and save the workers) up to $10 million a
year, according to the Liberty Justice Center, but that assumes no
workers actually want to belong to the union.  

Read more about the case
here.