Imagine that you run a daycare business out of your home. Some of your clients are poor families whom your state has decided to help with daycare. The state program allows such families to choose any daycare they want and then reimburses the provider up to a certain amount. Now the state has declared that because of this program, you—and even people who provide at-home daycare for family members’ children—will be considered a state employee for the sole purpose of giving a union exclusive representation rights.
You don’t get state medical or dental insurance. You don’t get state retirement benefits. You don’t get paid vacation on national holidays. The only thing you get is a union you didn’t choose and you refuse to join that is now representing your “interests” before the state, which isn’t even your employer. Does this sound far-fetched? Yet it’s what’s happened to Kathleen D’Agostino and seven other women in Massachusetts who are asking the Supreme Court to take their case after the lower courts dismissed their lawsuit.