Today's Supreme Court Decisions a Mixed Bag for Unions

Labor scored a mixed bag in a pair of new Washington Supreme Court decisions released this morning. 

In Herring v. Texaco, the court unanimously held that an asbestos-injury plaintiff, who works for a subcontractor on a project owned by a company that goes into bankruptcy, is not entitled to notice of the bankruptcy through his union.  Though not a close call on the law, the court was very sympathetic about the facts.  Since a bankruptcy proceeding bars claims against the company after a certain date, and Mr. Herring never had actual notice of the date, he never got his day in court.  The court was not persuaded that Mr. Herring's union should have received notice.

However in Morin v. Harrell, the court, again unanimously, held that although Initiative 518 in 1988 may have violated the subject-in-title requirements of the state constitution when it amended the state Minimum Wage Act to include home care workers, subsequent legislative amendments to the Act cured any constitutional defect.  I-518 changed the exemption from the overtime requirements of the Act from an exemption based on domestic service to an exemption based on casual labor. 

This was a subtle but important win for the Service Employees International Union, which filed a friend-of-court brief.  SEUI's biggest wins in Washington have been in the organization of home care workers and the relentless pursuit to make them quasi-state employees, thus providing a deep-pocket collective bargaining partner.  Had this one gone the other way, SEIU members perhaps could not claim overtime protections.