In Preemptive Move, SEIU Stops Collecting Fair Share Fees

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has discontinued collecting “fair share” dues from home care workers beyond Illinois who are not union members but had been required to pay the fee, reports an August 12 Chicago Tribune article.

Fair share fees support the union’s collective bargaining and administrative costs that benefit all employees — even those who are not union members.

The move by SEIU comes on the heels of the June 30 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Harris v. Quinn case. The Court ruled that home care workers employed in Illinois Medicaid-funded, consumer-directed care programs do not have to pay the fair share fee because they were deemed to be only “partial public employees.”

SEIU is reportedly trying to stave off more lawsuits from groups like the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which brought the non-union home care workers’ case against Illinois Governor Pat Quinn.

“We can’t afford to be distracted by more attacks,” Meghan Finegan, an SEIU Healthcare spokesperson, is quoted as saying in the article. Finegan added that SEIU represents 600,000 of the 2 million home care workers in the nation.

SEIU has also discontinued collecting fair share fees from non-union childcare workers in the states where they were required to pay it, the Chicago Tribune reports.

— by Deane Beebe