SALEM, OR — Home-care workers in Oregon have been carefully watching a U.S. Supreme Court case decided last week. The justices ruled 5-to-4 that home health aides working for state Medicaid clients in Illinois don’t have to pay a fee to the state employees’ union that represents them if they don’t want to be union members. Some claims the case (Harris vs. Quinn) is part of a larger attempt to weaken labor unions. Rebecca Sandoval, who heads the home-care division of Oregon’s SEIU Local 503, said she sees it instead as an opportunity.
“We’re going to use this as a challenge to prove how valuable our union is – not just to home-care workers, but to our clients and then even further, to the state and the taxpayers of Oregon. I mean, that’s exactly what this does for me is, it’s kind of a defining moment.”
The High Court said as private contractors, the home health-care workers in the case shouldn’t be required to pay union fees or join the union. Sandoval said it isn’t clear yet how the case would affect Oregon’s 20,000 state-paid home-care workers, who also are contractors.
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