placed limits on unions.
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In a decision that sidesteps a major shift in labor policy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that Illinois can't force home health care workers to pay dues to unions.
The narrow 5-4 ruling applies most directly to the Illinois home care providers who challenged a state decision to classify them as public employees and require them to pay fees to a union.
But it also deals a blow to union efforts nationwide to extend their reach in an era of declining membership and political influence.
"These home workers share a lot of attributes of the new emerging work force, and for unions, it's a big blow because that was their growth area," George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. "And it's going to be very difficult now to extend these contracts to get those types of dues."
Still, the ruling was not as broad as many union activists had feared, falling well short of what some had predicted would be a vote to gut a 37-year-old Supreme Court decision allowing for what's known in labor circles as the agency shop system.
The narrow 5-4 ruling applies most directly to the Illinois home care providers who challenged a state decision to classify them as public employees and require them to pay fees to a union.
But it also deals a blow to union efforts nationwide to extend their reach in an era of declining membership and political influence.
"These home workers share a lot of attributes of the new emerging work force, and for unions, it's a big blow because that was their growth area," George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley said. "And it's going to be very difficult now to extend these contracts to get those types of dues."
Still, the ruling was not as broad as many union activists had feared, falling well short of what some had predicted would be a vote to gut a 37-year-old Supreme Court decision allowing for what's known in labor circles as the agency shop system.
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