The ability of public employee unions to charge non-members for their share of the costs of collective bargaining remains intact after a U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday that labor leaders feared would be a “kill shot” for their movement.
Ruling in Harris v. Quinn, a 5-4 majority said that Illinois home care workers who objected to joining a state-recognized union could not be forced to pay so-called agency fees, in part because they are not “full-fledged” state employees. But the court stopped short of overturning the 1977 case that allowed agency fees in public employment, in spite of a frontal First Amendment attack on the precedent mounted by union critics in the case.
