The Supreme Court in June ruled that home care workers in Illinois who are not members of the union should not have to pay any dues to the home care workers' union there.

It was a 5-4 decision, and it has big implications for Minnesota, where home care workers voted to organize in August. About 27,000 will be part of the bargaining unit, but far fewer than that will be members of the union, so whether the union can collect money from nonmembers is an important determiner in how powerful it will be.

Unions argue, and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan agrees, that home care workers who benefit from the bargaining power of the union should have to pay what's called a "fair share fee." The fee is a portion of the dues paid by union members. It is supposed to reflect the cost of negotiating, but not the cost of political action by the union, and should never rise to more than 85 percent of the dues paid by members.

The key question in whether home care unions can charge fair share fees is whether the workers are public employees, since a union's right to collect fair share fees from public sector employees was upheld in the 1977 Supreme Court decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.

The Supreme Court decided in the case Harris v. Quinn that the Abood case does not apply to the Illinois home care workers because they are not true public employees, but instead at least partially private employees of the people they are caring for. The decision is very long, but it basically comes down to that.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said:

Justice Kagan, writing for the dissent, argued that it's very clear that home care workers are public employees, and, citing the many ways the state is involved in home care workers employment, she rejected the idea that they are "quasi-public":

But Kagan was in the minority. The court ruled that home care workers are not public employees. The impact in Minnesota was pretty much immediate.

Even though 17 state employee bargaining units already collect fair share fees, Jamie Gulley, president of SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, wrote a letter to the Minnesota Department of Human Services notifying them that the SEIU would not collect "fair share" fees from nonmember home care workers.

Of course the unions don't like the court's decision, and argue that home care workers are public employees, but it looks like they've lost this battle.

Another lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Minnesota by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund, this one challenging the SEIU's right to represent nonmembers of the union. I have to admit, I don't understand what the implications of that case might be, but the New York Times editorial board, predictably, does not approve.

This all interests me because home care and personal care are the new low wage job in Minnesota, and it will be worth watching to see whether the union can negotiate a pay increase for these workers.

After that, it will be interesting to see how the Minnesota legislature reacts. Both the House and Senate must ratify the contract, and a pay increase for 27,000 workers would require some reordering of state fiscal priorities, at least to some extent.