ST. PAUL - Opponents to establishing unions for child care and personal attendant businesses say they think a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a related Illinois case also will result in overturning a 2013 Minnesota law.
The court ruled Monday that in-home care workers in Illinois who are paid by the state are not similar enough to government employees to be compelled to pay union dues. The court held on a 5-4 vote that plaintiff Pamela Harris and others who provide in-home care for people, including family members, with disabilities are not full-fledged public employees who could be forced to pay union dues to a public employees union.
Minnesota Republicans, including all four major GOP governor candidates, strongly agreed with the high court decision, while Democrats who supported the new law called it bad news.
“Today we received some great news,” state Rep. Mary Franson, R-Alexandria, wrote to her constituents Monday.
Franson, a former child care provider, said the ruling “sends a clear signal to Gov. (Mark) Dayton and Democrats in the Legislature that they must cease their reckless attempts to force independent childcare providers into a government union.”
A federal appeals court has put a hold on a case brought by owners of Minnesota child care businesses who want to stop the law. The court said it would wait for the Supreme Court to rule.
Early in his term, Dayton, a Democrat, issued an executive order to allow child care providers who receive state subsidies to join a union to negotiate how much the state pays them, as well as state rules that would affect them.
A court ruled that the governor did not have authority to do that and overturned the order.
However, once Democrats took control of the Legislature in 2013, they passed a law like Dayton’s order, and he signed it into law. It included both child care workers who receive state payments and health-care attendants who care for disabled and elderly in their homes.
Dayton said the high court ruling is a civil rights setback.
“If people can’t vote for themselves to decide if they want to join a union or not, that’s just not democracy,” Dayton said in a statement.
Opponents, however, said people who own the child care and health care attendant businesses would have no choice but to pay union dues.
“These laws are part of a scheme to artificially boost union membership, and if the law were implemented in Minnesota it would be harmful to independent care providers by driving up their costs and forcing them to pay dues that are used in part for political activities that they might not support,” State Director Mike Hickey of the National Federation of Independent Businesses said.
Hickey said the Minnesota law was modeled after the Illinois one that justices struck down.
Last year, a judge in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota threw out legal challenges to the Minnesota statute, saying they were premature because the unions weren’t yet functioning and might not come into being. Opponents of the Minnesota unionization law appealed the decisions to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard arguments in one of the cases but has not issued a ruling, said Doug Seaton, an attorney representing child care workers opposed to the state law.
Seaton said he expects the appellate court will soon rule in the case, sending it back to the lower court.
“I think ultimately we will prevail,” Seaton said.
Union supporters said they will continue to organize.
“This ruling will not stop the home care workers in Minnesota who are joining together to form a union to raise our wages, have a voice on the job and improve conditions in the healthcare field,” said Sumer Spika, a St. Paul home care worker. “Our state faces a looming workforce crisis in public home care programs, and this decision will not stop home care workers from fighting to ensure quality care for all Minnesotans.”
The St. Paul Pioneer Press, a Forum News Service media partner, and Reuters contributed to this report.
