Complicated issue.....
The case is Harris v. Quinn. The program it threatens is called consumer-controlled personal assistance services. That program responds to a basic problem: Many people with disabilities are fully capable of making choices about how to live their lives, but they lack the physical ability to perform the necessary tasks themselves.....
Disability rights activists in Illinois and these other states agreed to support these collective-bargaining systems--but only on the important condition that the systems preserved the consumer control that is essential to promoting the independence and integration of people with disabilities. Collective bargaining with the state, over the terms and conditions of employment that the state itself sets, can serve disability rights interests by reducing turnover in the personal-assistance workforce--and the evidence suggests that that is exactly what has happened. But disability rights activists insisted--and the states agreed--that each individual with a disability who obtains personal assistance must retain the power to hire, fire, and direct the person who provides her services.....
If accepted, it would have devastating consequences for the people with disabilities who rely on consumer-controlled personal assistance services. States would be put to a choice. They could continue providing personal assistants with effective collective bargaining rights, but they would then have to abandon the principle of consumer control over hiring, firing, and day-to-day supervision. Alternatively, they could abandon collective bargaining and simply treat personal-assistance workers for all purposes as employees of the individual consumers they serve, but they would then have to abandon collective bargaining over wages and benefits--bargaining that has proven to reduce turnover in the personal-assistance workforce.