Living Liberty, October 2022

LIVING LIBERTY

FF lawsuits a chance for SCOTUS to reinforce its Janus ruling

By JEFF RHODES, VP for News & Information

won a 5-4 decision in Janus recognizing the First Amendment right of every pub lic employee to decline union membership and/or dues.

Apair

of Freedom Foundation lawsuits — each representing a different unconstitutional method by which public-sector unions seek to avoid com pliance with Janus v. AFSCME — have been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Savas et al v. CSLEA challenges the unions’ reliance on so-called “mainte nance of membership” provisions — state laws passed specifically to circumvent Ja nus by preventing members from leaving while the union still has a valid collective bargaining agreement in force with the agency employing them.

The second case, Polk v. Yee, deals with the assertion that unions can refuse to process a member’s opt-out request unless it is submitted during a union-defined “window” lasting only a few days a year.

Savas and Polk were originally litigat ed by Freedom Foundation attorneys in California. When the reliably liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against both plaintiffs, the decision was made to petition SCOTUS for two writs of certio rari.

The Freedom Foundation is collaborat ing on the appeals with the Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which in 2018

“A Supreme Court ruling is only as good as the effort put into enforcing it,” said Freedom Foundation attorney Re bekah Millard. “In the case of Janus, the wording was unambiguous, but unions continue to ignore the law and trample the rights of workers who only want to be left alone. It’s been four years now, and it’s time for the justices to start defending their own decision.”

The Freedom Foundation has brought several related appeals to the high court, including Belgau v. Inslee, which argued that, because Janus affirmed workers have a constitutional right not to partici pate in a union, dues cannot be deducted from their wages without an affirmative waiver of that right.

Last year, the justices declined to hear Belgau but made no determination on the substance of the case.

“The evidence continues to pile up that unions have no intention of complying with Janus, and the lower courts have no intention of making them,” Millard said. “Both of these new cases represents an opportunity for the justices to say ‘Enough is enough.’ ”

In Savas, the California Statewide Law Enforcement Agency (CSLEA) is re fusing to recognize the right of lifeguard Jonathan Savas and 20 of his colleagues to leave the union, citing its still-in-force contract with the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

In effect, CSLEA claims a law created in the wake of Janus for the clear purpose

PAGE 3

LEADERSHIP MEMO

By AARON WITHE

Unions

“Quote”

JASON CHAFFETZ

Former

PAGE 4

THE CASE FOR FREEDOM

By AARON WITHE

A bigger IRS makes Biden more damgerous.

PAGE 5 LITIGATING FREEDOM

What They Said & What They Meant

PAGE 6

FIGHTING for FREEDOM

By KIRSTEN ALTUS

Reprinted from FOX BUSINESS

Biden didn’t solve rail crisis; he caused it.

PAGE 7

FIGHTING for FREEDOM

By JEFF RHODES

Union members victimized by Biden student loan payoff scheme.

Attorney Sydney Phillips earns Freedom Fighter of the Year Award.

PAGES 8-9 FREEDOM STATE BY STATE

By MAX NELSEN

CALIFORNIA:

Reprinted from the WALL STREET JOURNAL

Proposed tax credit for dues would subsidize unions.

By JEFF RHODES

OREGON:

Legislative employee lawsuit finally gets under way.

PAGE 10 FREEDOM IN ACTION

By JEFF RHODES

In Joe Biden’s universe, every day is supposed to be Labor Day.

ACTION

FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE

FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE

By JEFF RHODES

If public employee pay isn’t keeping pace, blame their unions.

By SPENCER PAULEY

Reprinted from the CENTERSQUARE.com

WASHINGTON: Teachers strikes are illegal but still happen in state.

By HUNTER TOWER

PENNSYLVANIA:

Teachers union leaders just can’t resist playing the COVID card.

Freedom Foundation’s Friends, Foes Weigh

By DAVID McFADDEN Freedom Foundation files amicus brief with FLRA in decertification lawsuit.

Reprinted from the DULUTH (MINN.) NEWS TRIBUNE

If a country needed a queen, why not one who recognized the importance of free markets?

Whatever else one can say about England, at least the leftists on that side of the pond are a trifle more open about who pulls their strings. Or perhaps a better word would be brazen.

As we at the Freedom Foundation know all too well, lib erals in this country align themselves almost exclusively with the Democratic Party and unions still cloak themselves in the lie that their only concern is advocating on behalf of workers. In reality, the two entities have formed an alliance in which Big Labor essentially functions as a shadow gov ernment — albeit one never acknowledged openly.

American politicians like Joe Biden shamelessly court the favor of Big Labor, promising to be the “most prounion president you ever saw,” then expect us to believe they haven’t been bought and paid for by millions of dues dollars.

In Britain, however, the dominant political force for years — and, thus, the principal cause of what’s reduced that once-proud nation to the brink of utter irrelevance on the world stage — proudly calls itself the Labour Party.

Britain’s liberal leaders have been so thoroughly com promised by that country’s unions that neither side feels obliged to lie about the relationship at this point.

Assuming you weren’t born and raised in the UK, as I was, you might never have considered any of this. And it’s not likely you’d have read about it, either, given that the British media could give even their American cousins a few pointers when it comes to running interference for the party in power rather than providing the public with fair and bal anced coverage of the day’s events.

Worse still, if you’re one of those poor, misinformed souls who get their news entirely from social media, you’ve prob ably concluded by now the blame for Britain’s dysfunction can be laid at the door of Windsor Castle.

When Queen Elizabeth II died last month at the age of 96, platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram were deluged with toxic posts whose authors obviously missed the memo that England’s royals haven’t wielded anything approaching that kind of power since the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

Over many centuries, kings and queens evolved from dic tators to figureheads.

By the time Elizabeth had succeeded her father on the throne in 1952, the monarchy had become an anachronism — little more than a tourist attraction like Big Ben and the Tower of London.

As a conservative, of course, the whole royalty thing nev er resonated with me anyway. What passes for governance in my native country was more than authoritarian enough to prompt me to immigrate to America a decade ago and earn my citizenship last year.

As William Atkinson, writing after Her Majesty’s death for the popular blog Conservative Home, observed with proper British understatement, “Monarchy and free-mar kets are not natural allies.”

Which isn’t to sug gest Queen Elizabeth didn’t have countless admirable qualities. Most notable among these was her almost superhuman commitment to a civility almost unheard of in this day and age.

By AARON WITHE, CEO

As befitting a sovereign of the entire Empire, the queen remained steadfastly neutral throughout her 75-year reign, never coming down publicly on one side or the other of poli ticial controversies.

If only her offspring (and theirs) were as circumspect.

One of the very few occasions on which the veil of secrecy may have slipped, however, came at the height of the Brexit movement, when the queen hosted a dinner party at which the guests boisterously debated whether England should vote to sever ties with the European Union.

Uncharacteristically, the queen is reported to have risen to her feet and asked whether anyone present could offer a good reason why the country shouldn’t depart.

The question went unanswered, and I take her asking it as evidence the queen had a soft spot in her heart for opting out of unions.

At a minimum, her actions demonstrate a keen apprecia tion that countries — like indi viduals — are more productive when given the freedom to advance their own goals and enjoy the benefit of their own industry rather than being shoe-horned into a collectivist scheme that rewards corrup tion and punishes virtue.

Again, the value of the mod ern monarchy is purely sym bolic, a physical manifestation of the what it means to be Brit ish. And if that’s true, we could do a lot worse than her shining example.

For longer than any other any other sovereign in British history, Queen Elizabeth II served with grace, elegance and surprising humor.

Former British politician current TV host Nigel Farage, who delivered the keynote address at the Freedom Founda tion’s annual banquet in Oregon just days after the queen’s death, movingly described her as someone who, “...repre sented values — values of honor, dignity, honesty, patrio tism and, above all, service.”

When she assumed the throne, “Winston Churchill said, ‘We are entering a new Elizabethan Age,” Farage recalled. “And my goodness me, he was right.”

The queen is dead. Long live the king ... and freedom.

THE FIGHT!

“(T)he value of the modern

monarchy is purely symbolic, a physical manifestation of what it means to be British. If that’s true, we could do a lot worse than her shining example.”

THE CASE FOR FREEDOM

FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE

FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE

Doubling the size of the IRS is another Biden power grab

By AARON WITHE Reprinted from the DULUTH (Minn.) NEWS TRIBUNE

Aug. 18, 2022

Tom Bako

When did you join the Freedom Foundation?

I joined our band of happy warriors in November 2017.

What were you doing before?

For almost five years prior to joining Freedom Foundation, I led the foundation relations of the Commonwealth Foundation, our sister think tank in Pennsylvania. Before that, I worked in higher-ed ucation policy, helping ensure that colleges teach basic core curricula well.

Where are you from originally?

I grew up in a Hungarian family in Romania, and moved to the U.S. in 2005. I am now a proud natural ized citizen of my adopted home land. I’m currently in the process of moving my family to the Dallas, Texas, area.

What makes you conservative?

Growing up in post-communist Romania, I witnessed firsthand the opposite of the values we stand for. I have a very deep personal stake in making sure it never happens here.

What does a director of foundation development do?

I help us build enduring rela tionships with grantmaking foundations and some other supporters across the country, helping them fulfill their philan thropic mission by empowering us to fight government union tyranny.

What’s the best thing about working for the Freedom Foun dation?

There are three ----- the people (all committed, happy warriors for freedom); the culture (of mutual trust and “get stuff done” with out needless bureaucracy); and, the mission (going up against a massive union machine ----- and winning).

Do you have any special hobbies or talents?

I’m fluently trilingual, in addition to knowing bits and pieces of many other languages.

The American people have been calling for governmental policy changes that would bring down energy prices, reduce crime in our cities, improve the supply chain bottleneck and stop the overwhelming number of unknown people streaming across the southern border.

Doubling the number of employees at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) topped no one’s list of priorities, and yet that’s what the federal government will do with the Inflation ‘Reduction’ Act.

You read that right. Americans across the country are deciding whether they can put in a full tank of gas this week, but the party in power wants to add 87,000 new IRS agents to the al ready bloated federal workforce.

By comparison, the Minnesota Vikings stadium only holds 66,900 fans and the Golden Gophers can only accommodate about 51,000.

Many are outraged at the seemingly tone-deaf focus on expanding a bureaucracy that everyone knows is dedicated to taking more money out of American taxpayers’ paychecks, but there is an other, even more insidious motivation for such a move.

Government employee unions are the sin gle-largest funders of left-leaning politicians and causes in America.

The bought-and-paid-for elected officials don’t mind doing the government employee unions’ bidding once they get into office because once they prove themselves reliable votes in support of Big Labor, they can reasonably count on a steady

stream of campaign cash and an army of volun teers to help them remain in office.

And now, the majority party is trying to double down on the IRS — an agency that had already proven itself blatantly political more than a de cade ago when Lois Lerner was caught discrim inating against organizations that included in their names the words “patriot,” “constitution,” “freedom” and “liberty.”

During the past decade, the IRS employee union has given more than $600,750 in political funding to Democrat party committees, and in the 2022 election cycle the union gave 100 percent of its political spending to Democrats.

The vast majority of the 87,000 new IRS agents can be expected to join the union, and that rep resents a lot more campaign contribution dollars flowing in one direction.

What could possibly go wrong with doubling an agency that has already weaponized itself against those taxpayers it deems its political opponents, and doing so using the very taxpayer dollars of the people they despise?

Thankfully, shortly after the U.S. Senate passed the Inflation “Reduction” Act, President Biden declared that the country saw “zero percent inflation” in July.

If true, that’s great news and the president can put down his pen and not sign this massive spending bill into law.

Aaron Withe is CEO of the Freedom Founda tion.

Withe: ‘Biden deserves blame for causing rail problems, not credit for averting strike’

By KRISTEN ALTUS Reprinted from FOX BUSINESS

Sept. 16, 2022

impacts would have been “disas trous.”

After

President Biden took a victory lap in averting a looming railroad worker strike that could have cost the U.S. economy $2 billion per day, one workers’ rights executive is putting the onus on the presi dent for causing the conflict to begin with.

“What you can blame is the Biden ad ministration, because they’re the ones that … created vaccine mandates these rail road workers were covered by. They had to get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs,” Freedom Foun dation CEO Aaron Withe told FOX Business’ Cheryl Casone on Sept, 16.

“And then on top of that,” he continued, “Biden’s printing out money like it’s going out of fash ion and basically incentivizing people not to work.”

The Biden administration reached a labor agreement with railroad companies and unions on Sept. 15 after 20 hours of in tense negotiations.

If a deal wasn’t struck by Fri day, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) claimed a rail shutdown would cost the econo my upwards of $2 billion a day, warning in a press release that a strike would “immediately harm every economic sector by rail” and “trigger retail product shortages, wide spread manufacturing shut downs” and “job losses.”

On “Mornings with Ma ria,” Withe argued railroad worker shortages have been caused by the Biden admin istration’s actions.

“I’m usually the first to bash on unions,” he said, “but in this instance you really can’t. The unions were repre senting the best interests of its members. They were having poor working conditions due to Biden’s economy and other deci sions he’d made, including long work hours (and) not being able to travel so far from their office areas if they were on-call.”

Withe said the looming strike’s economic and consumer

“On top of Amtrak being canceled,” he said, “people rely on that, of course, to get to and from places. But you think about what we use the railroads for, a lot of the U.S. major economy uses these railroads … a lot of the international economy uses it, as well.

“We export a lot of oil to Mexi co through the railroads,” Withe explained. “If they would not have been able to agree to these deals, then it would have been disastrous for all of us.”

The president “dodged a bullet here because this would have been on him,” he said. “Ul timately, the fault is the Biden administration’s.”

Withe further called out the president for his green energy agenda and college loan handout, arguing Biden’s economy leaves blue-collar workers behind.

“Biden’s idea of the economy is basically to incentivize liberal elites while leaving the blue-col lar worker behind,” the Freedom Foundation CEO said. “You think about the railroad work ers, I can’t imagine that many of them went to college or got col lege degrees … it’s a big hurdle, what (the Biden admin’s) asking for.”

Aaron Withe

Freedom Foundation files amicus brief with FLRA in decertification lawsuit

Justas it’s harder for an individual to get out of a union than to get into one, so it is with an entire bargaining unit.

While a union has resources and staff to campaign for certification as the exclusive representative of a bargaining unit, an effort to decertify a union falls on the shoulders of dissatisfied members brave enough to take a stand.

To succeed, an advocate for decertification normally must gather signatures from 30 to 50 percent of the workers in the bargaining unit to trigger a vote and then prevail in the election.

Further, it’s not uncommon for laws to sharply limit when employees can change or decertify an unwanted union.

These hurdles make unseating an incumbent union hard enough. But it’s even more diffi cult when an agency adds restrictions that are not authorized by the law, as happened to an employee of the National Park Service’s Blue Ridge Parkway.

The employee’s petition to decertify the American Federation of Government Em ployees was dismissed by a regional director of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) on the basis of an FLRA regulation that bears only a vague resemblance to the statute it ostensibly implements, the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Stat ute.

The regional director held that, under the regulation, the employee’s petition was untimely because it was filed within a year of the union’s certification as the exclusive representative of the bargaining unit.

The petitioning employee, represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foun dation, filed with the FLRA an application for review of the regional director’s dismissal of the petition.

Finding an absence of precedent on the issues, the FLRA invited interested persons to submit briefs on whether the regulation or the statute apply to bar a decertification petition filed under the circumstances of the case.

The Freedom Foundation submitted a brief to the FLRA on Aug. 29.

It called the FLRA’s attention to the text of the statute and argued that the agency should

SCOTUS

Continued from page 1 of circumventing the ruling should take precedence over the First Amendment.

Even worse, the union’s actions also violate Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the 1977 Supreme Court ruling overturned in Janus that first established the right of public employees to opt out of union participation (while still paying a so-called “agency fee” for the union’s unsolicited representation services).

In the second case, Delores Polk and several other Cal ifornia homecare providers being compensated by federal Medicaid funds are being prevented from opting out of

By DAVID MCFADDEN, Public Employee Labor Relations Specialist

follow the law rather than its own conflicting regulation and precedents.

While the law does prohibit certifying a new union as the representative of a bargaining unit within a year of an election that led to the cer tification of a different union, that prohibition has nothing to do with a decertification petition seeking to remove the union from the work place.

Unfortunately, agencies tend to go astray in interpreting a statute by overlaying what they imagine to be public policy, either theirs or Con gress’s.

As this case shows, they sometimes need to be reminded to just stick to the text of the law.

Service Employees Interna tional Union (SEIU) Local 2015 because their request wasn’t submitted during the union-recognized escape win dow.

“The whole point of Janus was to recognize that public employees have always had a First Amendment right to opt out of union membership and dues,” Millard said. “By what authority does the union presume to impose its own arbitrary limits on the ability of free Americans to exercise their God-given rights?

“That was never the court’s intent in Janus,” Millard said.

“The burden of proof is on the union to show workers want in, not on the workers to prove they want out.”

Since prevailing in Janus by a single vote, the Supreme Court’s presumed conserva

tive wing has been enlarged to six members with the addition of Justice Amy Comey Barrett replacing liberal mainstay Ruth Ginsberg.

In 2018, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Jus tices Clarence Thomas, Sam uel Alito and Neil Gorsuch voted in favor of Janus, while Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan dissented.

Trump appointees Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, howev er, have not yet weighed in on the case, nor has the newest justice, Biden choice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“You never know how the court will vote,” Millard said, “but these cases don’t break new ground. They simply reinforce a previous ruling and make it harder for the unions and the lower courts to ignore.”

What They What They

&

What he said: “Most Washingto nians are not as concerned about whether the governor has an emergency order in place as they are over whether it is appropriate, helpful and effective at keeping their communities safe.”

What he meant:

MIKE FAULK Spokesman for Washington

Gov. Jay Inslee

The Center Square

Aug. 10, 2022

“That’s what we’re counting on, anyway. We exploit an emergency ---- even a phony one --- to seize more power than the state consitution allows, then we never give it back again. And we get to decide whether the governer’s actions are appropri ate or helpful because neither the Legislature nor the voters are ever given a say in the matter.”

n n n

What she said: “We ... faced obstacles --- business interests pushed for early reopening and right-wing groups like the Freedom Foundation (on behalf of anonymous parents) slammed the union with a lawsuit for not reopen ing schools earlier.”

What she meant:

ARLENE INOUYE, Secretary, United Teachers of Los Angeles

The Forge

Aug. 24, 2022

“Imagine the nerve of par ents thinking their kids should be in school learn ing instead of letting us use them as bargaining chips to demand everything from univer sal healthcare to more spending on homelessness. And shame on the Freedom Foundation for standing up to us.”

n n n

What he said: “(Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe’s) commentary misrepresented the IRS, its role in enforcing tax rules, and the likely effects of increasing its workforce ... The fear of ‘big government’ is misplaced. We should instead fear ‘unfair government.’ ”

What he meant: “Unfair to whom? And who gets to decide? The Constitution calls for a government only big enough to protect its citizens from each other and external threats. It says noth ing about an armed force of IRS agents deputized to persecute the president’s political foes.”

CHARLES GESSERT Retired Physician

Duluth, Minn.

27, 2022

,

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

US Sens. BOB CASEY, PATTY MURRAY & RON WYDEN

Technically speaking, Patty Murray and Ron Wyden are only two of four U.S. senators to sign on to Bob Casey’s provoc atively titled “No Tax Breaks for Union-Busting Act,” the others being New Jersey’s Corey Booker and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

But since Casey, Murray and Wyden just happen to represent, respectively, Pennsylvania, Wash ington and Oregon — states where the Freedom Foundation has been firmly entrenched for years (if not decades) — one can’t help but be struck by the coincidence.

For the record, the bill is as hypocritical as it is unconstitution al — not that either would doom its chances in the Congress as currently configured, of course.

Introduced by Casey last May, the measure seeks to classify employer spending on “anti-union” activities as political speech under the tax code, preventing compa nies from deducting the costs as a business expense on their tax return.

It’s not exactly an original thought. In April, National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Coun sel Jennifer Abruzzo penned a memo asserting that meetings between private-sector em ployers and their employees at which the potentially negative impacts of forming a workplace union are discussed constitute an unfair labor practice.

However, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1948 ruling in Babcock & Wilcox v. Allied Prod ucts Workers of America, “…any views, argument or opinion, or the dissemination thereof … shall not constitute or be evidence of an unfair labor practice.”

And if isn’t an unfair labor practice, Casey, Murray and Wyden are simply proposing a garden variety suppression of the employer’s free speech.

Their actions also reek of hy pocrisy because the same sort of “capitive-audience” meetings between employee and employ er targeted by the bill have been a favorite tactic of public-sector unions who demand the right to make an unchallenged sales pitch to every new employee is hired for a government position.

Apprrently the senators are perfectly fine with workers only hearing one side of the story ... just so long as it’s the union side.

Union members victimized by Biden’s student loan scheme

Chew

on this for a minute, union members:

Depending on your job and the local to which you belong, it’s entirely likely you labored five long years or more as an apprentice, honing your skills before finally earning the right to call yourself a journeyman in a profession where your expertise is desperately needed by the U.S. economy.

And now your reward is to have your paycheck plundered to pay off the student loans taken out by millions of spoiled brats who took a four-year, taxpayer-subsidized vacation swilling beer, sup pressing free speech on campus and majoring in gender studies, only to ultimately find themselves lacking even minimal workplace relevance, let alone able to command income sufficient to meet their loan obligations.

Who made all this possible? You guessed it, the administration propelled into office less than two years ago thanks in large part to the dues money diverted from your wallet into Joe Biden’s campaign war chest.

In late August, the president unveiled a proposal to forgive up to $10,000 per individ ual in student loan debt — at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of between $440 billion and $600 billion over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Fed eral Budget.

The much-reviled scheme is all but certain to push already-soaring inflation rates even higher, but the Biden brain trust is clearly gambling — with the taxpayers’ money — that millions of students and former students eager to see their loan obligations reduced or retired altogether will flock to the polls and, thus, prop up the president’s still-anemic public approval numbers.

Even Democratic pollster Nate Silver admitted as much. The same day Biden rolled out his bail out plan, Silver tweeted, “The thing about stu dent loan debt relief is that, while other policies would be more economically progressive, it fairly efficiently redistributes well-being toward people in the Democratic coalition.”

“There is no way to ‘cancel’ student debt,” countered Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. “This will cost every taxpayer an average of $2,100.”

He added that Biden is “illegally burdening hard-working Americans with debts they didn’t take on themselves.”

Including, most assuredly, hard-working union members, whose earnings wind up being assaulted twice — once to pay for yet another leftist program that can only result in higher taxes and reduced buying power, and a second time in dues deductions funneled into the pock policies are to blame for it all.

By JEFF RHODES, VP for News & Information

And the whole dirty enterprise has the outspo ken support of their own union leaders.

“This is a working people’s issue,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said during a town hall with young workers last month. “There is a sort of stereotype that we’re talking about Ivy Leaguers who have racked up all this debt. It’s absolutely not true.”

Government employee unions, predictably, have been even more supportive.

In mid-August, a letter to the president cosigned by Shuler; Lee Saunders of the Ameri can Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT); Becky Pringle of the National Education Asso ciation (NEA); and, Mary Henry of Service Em ployees International Union (SEIU) clamored for even more giveaways than the president offered.

“We ask that your administration enact ro bust student loan forgiveness that cannot be means-tested and does not require an opt-in for participation,” the union leaders demanded, add ing that Biden should go higher than the $10,000 per borrower he’s considering, citing a poll show ing majority support for “debt cancellation of at least $20,000 per borrower.”

Meanwhile, as of Monday, more than 70 local and national labor organizations had signed onto a public campaign organized by the Student Bor rower Protection Center — a far-left organization whose directors include numerous labor leaders — to pressure Biden into canceling student loan debt.

“(Student debt) matters to young voters, and young voters matter to Democrats,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University. “It is one of the big things that just weighs them down, and if the labor movement can help them take that — one of the big burdens — away from them, that’s huge.”

It’s hardly surprising that Biden should brush aside any suggestion that his latest cash-for-votes scam comes with a hefty price tag. Nor should anyone familiar with the workings of the modern American labor movement — which effectively functions as the political left’s piggy bank — be surprised to discover that union leaders have no qualms about cannibalizing their own members to pay it.

Nauseated, sure. But surprised? Not anymore.

FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM

Attorney Sydney Phillips earns annual Freedom Fighter of the Year award

ith legal representation of public employees struggling to leave their union such an integral part of the Freedom Foun dation’s mission, it wasn’t going to take long before one of its team of attorneys was singled out for special

Meet Sydney Phillips, winner of this years Freedom Fighter of the

chief litigation counsel, Sydney rep resents the Freedom Foundation and other pro bono clients. She is also specifically responsible for all public records lawsuits and ap peals throughout the entire country — a commodity that will never be in short supply as long as unions continue to keep the

Freedom Fighter Yearof the

“Sydney per Freedom Foun dation,” said CEO Aaron Withe.

“She works incredibly hard and incredibly well because she’s in credibly passionate about helping government workers exercise their Constitutional right to be free of union tyranny.”

The award is the legacy of former Freedom Foundation Board Chair man Steve Neighbors. When he died in 2020, his widow Betty proposed naming an annual award in his honor to recognize the staff member making the most meaningful contribution to the Freedom Foundation’s activities.

“Sydney is exactly what Steve and Betty wanted to celebrate,” said Free dom Foundation president Tom Mc Cabe, who presented the award during the organization’s Staff Bonding Day on Aug. 24. “It was important to both of them not only that we do good work now, but to build up a strong bench full of young freedom fighters.”

A Canadian by birth, Sydney left her native Ontario to attend law school at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and came directly to the Freedom Foundation after grad uating in 2018.

“I’m especially proud to have earned an award bearing Steve Neighbors’ name,” she said. “He was a true champion of liberty, and his example continues to inspire us.”

If public employee pay isn’t keeping pace, blame unions

Despite an agenda calculated to lavish billions of taxpayer dollars every day on his benefactors in organized la bor, a story published during August in the Washington Post suggests that government employees are faring no better under Joe Biden than Joe Sixpack.

The story, headlined “Government work ers feel inflation’s pinch as wages lag,” cites just-released numbers from the U.S. Depart ment of Labor revealing that wages in the private sector rose by 5.5 percent over the past year — the highest increase in the his tory of the data — while wage gains for state and local government workers rose by only 3.4 percent.

“It’s really striking how much wages are trailing for public-sector workers,” said Guy Berger, principal economist at LinkedIn. “The sector is not doing great. When you talk about sectors that are booming right now, it’s not just one of those.”

What the story works hard not to address, however, is whether the disparity represents a temporary trend or a permanent swing of the pendulum.

In fact, even if private-sector wages do seem to be increasing more rapidly in the short term, they have a long way to go before the workers who actually produce the nation’s goods and services — and tax revenues — catch up with those who only consume them.

As recently as 2017, the Congressional Budget Office concluded government employ ees earn 17 percent more than their counter parts in the private sector. The discrepancy can be explained by recognizing the CBO’s numbers compare total compensation — in cluding the gold-plated benefits packages

By JEFF RHODES, VP for News & Information

that come with a government position — while the WaPo story refers only to wages.

But that isn’t the only major consideration omitted from the article.

For one thing, there’s the whole question of basic economics. While the story spotlights several public employees and tries to make the case that they aren’t being paid what their labor is worth, it is an often-unpleasant reality that, by definition, no one can be un derpaid in a free-market economy.

While the Spokane, Wash., legal secretary profiled by the Post may not be satisfied with her $39,000 salary, there’s nothing keeping her from accepting a better offer. If she doesn’t, it’s likely because she hasn’t yet received an offer that exceeds the total com pensation package she’s currently receiving. Or perhaps she hasn’t gotten any offers at all.

In either case, a worker isn’t underpaid just because his or her value is determined by market forces rather than the arbitrary calculation of a fellow bureaucrat.

But even more pointedly, why should gov ernment employees expect to be insulated from the ravages of double-digit inflation when their unions are arguably the largest single reason Biden sits in White House with Democratic majorities in both houses and their preposter ous economic policies are the law of the land?

Since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME affirmed that public employees cannot be compelled to join a

labor union or pay dues to one, tens of thou sands have opted out. But millions more have thus far been either unwilling or unable to break free.

Meanwhile, during the 2020 election cycle, labor organizations pumped $27.5 million into Biden’s presidential bid, compared to just $360,000 for incumbent Donald Trump. In return, Biden has assiduously kept his campaign promise to be the most “pro-union president you’ve ever seen.”

His gratitude has manifested itself in countless ways, from firing the Trump-ap pointed Labor Relations Board counsel with in minutes of taking the presidential oath and installing a union crony in the position to larding his signature Build Back Better infrastructure proposal with union give aways to allowing teachers’ unions to rewrite the Centers for Disease Control’s guidelines during the COVID pandemic.

Apparently the one blessing his union allies haven’t (yet) received is dispensation from the economy Biden and his union cro nies have ruined for everyone.

If government employees are really tired of seeing their paychecks eroded by inflation, the most direct solution is to opt out of the union unashamedly enabling it.

Not only will keeping dues dollars in their own pockets rather than those of the labor moguls and their pet politicians improve the workers’ personal finances, but it will make the unions more accountable to the members they claim to represent.

If public employees find themselves losing ground economically, the answer isn’t simply to hand them more money. It’s to enlist their support in eliminating the reason why.

FREEDOM STATE BY STATE

By MAXFORD NELSEN Reprinted from the WALL STREET JOURNAL

Sept.

California is on the verge of an unprec edented giveaway to Big Labor with the potential to make national political waves. In the final hours of the Legislature’s 2022 session, lawmakers sent a bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom that would create a first-ofits-kind tax credit for union dues.

The starting annual cost to the state would be $400 million.

The credit would make union membership more attractive to employees by shifting part of the cost to taxpayers. Alternatively, unions could collect more from existing members by increasing dues to capture the credit.

California law allows unions to spend member dues on electoral politics, so taxpay ers would effectively be forced to subsidize union politicking.

There’s little doubt about which side of the aisle would benefit. Noting that unions “have deep ties to the Democratic Party and a stake in nearly every aspect of state gov ernment,” CalMatters reported that unions spent more than $25 million defending New som in last year’s recall, more than a third of his total backing.

Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento may be feeling more pressure than usual to help bolster union finances. The U.S. Su preme Court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME (2018) struck down state laws forcing public employees to pay union dues or agency fees.

Democrats in Sacramento tried to blunt the ruling’s impact by making it easier for unions to deduct money from employees’ paychecks and harder to avoid or cancel the deductions, but some unions have still expe rienced steep membership declines.

Since Janus, the percentage of dues-pay ing state workers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 1000— California’s largest state employees’ union— has declined significantly.

Before Janus, the burden of subsidizing union speech fell on public employees. A tax credit for union dues shifts it to taxpayers, with no limiting principle. If taxpayers can be required to pay part of employees’ dues, why can’t they pick up the whole tab?

Does it matter that, as Justice Lewis Powell

CALIFORNIA: Proposed tax credit for dues would subsidize union activities

Big Labor

court and avoid the consequences of a rul ing.” He has called on states to use govern ment funds to replace union revenue lost to Janus directly.

Troublingly, this might even pass constitu tional muster. While Janus recognized that “compelled subsidization of private speech se riously impinges on First Amendment rights,” the Supreme Court concluded in Johanns v. Livestock Marketing Association (2005) that Americans “have no First Amendment right not to fund government speech.”

First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh considers direct taxpayer funding of unions constitutionally permissible as government speech. “Nothing forbids the government from funding controversial causes like Planned Parenthood … the National Rifle Association or the American Civil Liberties Union,” he has written.

Newsom

Taxpayers

Presumably this means that government can constitutionally fund political parties themselves. But the high court cautioned in Matal v. Tam (2017) that the govern ment-speech doctrine is “susceptible to dan gerous misuse,” especially if “private speech could be passed off as government speech.”

observed, “(T)he public-sector union is indistin guishable from the traditional political party” in many respects?

At least some of the funding increase unions will enjoy from this credit will go straight to political campaigning.

Many federal and state laws restrict the use of public funds for politics. To remain tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations are pro hibited from supporting or opposing candi dates for office. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a state can’t change the rules.

Aaron Tang is a University of Califor nia-Davis law professor who specializes in brainstorming ways to “outmaneuver the

California may have fired the first shot in an interstate political arms race. If lawmak ers in blue states begin forcing taxpayers to fund national progressive political organiza tions, politicians in red states will inevitably feel that forcing their respective tax bases to subsidize conservative groups is necessary and justified.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this could accelerate the nation’s de scent into extreme partisanship and winnertake-all governance. Given the already pre carious state of civil society, that’s the last thing the country needs.

Maxford Nelsen is director of labor policy at the Freedom Foundation.

Oregon: Legislative employee union suit gets under way

After more than a year of procedural delays, a lawsuit filed by Oregon State Rep. Kim Wallan (R-Medford) and a member of her staff challenging the union ization of Oregon legislative employees can finally proceed.

Opening briefs were filed on Sept. 7 by the Freedom Foundation, which is representing Wallan and her aide, Sarah Daley.

Their original petition was filed on Aug. 5, 2021, but the case was stalled for months by a series of motions, including a motion to dismiss.

Wallan and Daley acted in response to the Oregon Employment Relations Board’s (ERB) decision on June 8, 2021, to certify a bargain ing unit consisting of Oregon legislative assis tants, to be represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 89.

“Unionizing legislative staff under the umbrella of the executive branch destroys the balance of power in Oregon,” said Freedom Foundation Oregon director Jason Dudash.

“This is nothing but a brazen power grab by the union to reinforce organized labor’s influence over this state’s governing process,” he added, “We’re asking the Court to protect and reinforce that balance of power that was tossed aside here. Right now, we have an ex ecutive bureaucracy working to take control

By JEFF RHODES, VP for News & Information

over state legislators’ personal assistants. This is a major infringement of legislative power by the executive.”

Union leaders have spent generations consolidating power in Oregon by using their members’ dues money to elect malleable pol iticians. But thanks to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision recognizing the right of public employees to decline union membership and dues payment, labor organizations have seen their numbers — and corresponding political clout — shrink precipitously.

“Kate Brown’s executive branch is com pletely out of control, and the Freedom Foun dation is determined to hold her accountable, even if we’re the only ones doing so,” added Freedom Foundation attorney Rebekah Mil lard.

IBEW’s scheme violates the doctrine of separation of powers guaranteed by the Oregon Constitution by subjecting the Leg islature to the authority of the Employment Relations Board, which functions under the executive branch.

Legislative branch employees don’t fit

into the current statutory framework for government unions, yet the ERB concluded that’s what the Legislature intended when it approved the general unionization scheme for public employees.

Finally, in addition to all the administra tive roadblocks, the plan makes no practical sense — except, of course, to unions and their allies on the political left — because legisla tive staffers working for conservative law makers are now represented by an organiza tion openly working to defeat and undermine their employers.

“An Oregon court already decided that government employee unions are political organizations. IBEW is no exception,” said Millard. “Imagine being a Legislator in the minority political party, and your personal assistants are now represented by an outside organization that supports your political op ponents. Do you think that might give you pause?”

“There are countless reasons why unioniz ing legislative staff is a terrible idea, both for constituent services and the general work ings of state business, and Oregon is ignoring all of them,” concluded Dudash. “The ERB’s decision needs to be reversed. It represents yet another overreach by an executive agency to the detriment of individual freedoms and our form of government.”

FREEDOM STATE BY STATE

WASHINGTON: Teacher strikes are illegal but still happening in state

By SPENCER PAULEY Reprinted from the CENTER SQUARE

Sept. 1, 2022

Washington

state law establishes that teacher strikes are illegal, but they are still occurring in the Kent School District and may happen in Seattle Public Schools.

The Kent School District has had to delay the start of school for the 25,000 students as the Kent Education Association declared a strike seeking a contract that focuses on class size, caseload, mental health services for students and higher salary for educators.

The Seattle Education Asso ciation voted recently to autho rize a potential strike as the contract between the teachers union and the district expires Wednesday.

However, a formal opinion issued in 2006 by Washing ton’s then-Attorney General Rob McKenna stated that “state and local public employ ees, including teachers, have no legally pro tected right to strike.”

Maxford Nelsen, the director of labor pol icy at the Freedom Foundation, says that is still the case today. However, the burden falls on the school districts to initiate legal action against teachers unions.

“In the past, what typically happens is a

PENNSYLVANIA: Teachers’ union leaders just can’t resist playing the COVID card

school district will seek a court injunction in the local county superior court, ordering the teachers back to work,” Nelsen said in a phone call to The Center Square. “That sometimes ends a strike, sometimes it doesn’t.”

To get an injunction, a district must show that the strike is hindering its operations and the students the teachers serve.

In the case of the Kent teacher strike, KEA’s contract prohibits strikes on penalty of termination.

The Kent School Board held a vote to allow a lawsuit against the union on Aug. 29. The board voted 2-2 for no decision to be made, keeping the strike and contract nego tiations ongoing.

Nelsen says it’s essentially un heard of for public employees to strike, except in the case of teach ers.

“When it comes to students and families relying on public schools, at least the current majority of the legislature does not seem to care that teach ers unions are able to shut down public edu cation as they see fit,” Nelsen said.

Teacher strikes are illegal, but Nelsen says that the the teacher strikes still occur because the unions know the legal processes in the case of a school district filing a court injunction take time. Teachers also know they will not lose pay for going on a strike because the school calendar is relatively

fixed for days missed because of the strike.

For public employees that are not teach ers, they risk losing pay if they strike, which Nelsen says is one reason why such strikes tend to be rare occurrences.

The last time Kent educators went on strike was in 2009, which lasted for 15 days.

The school district sought an injunction, which resulted in a King County Superior Court judge ruling that the KEA be fined $1,500 a day with teachers being fined $200 a day if the strike continued.

The current Washington State Attorney General’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Writing

during September in the Pitts burgh Post Gazette, Pittsburgh Fed eration of Teachers President Nina Esposito-Visgitis couldn’t resist expressing her indignation when the district voted bare ly seven days prior to the start of the new school year to adopt a policy that respects science rather than union bluster.

The Pittsburgh School Board voted to classify face coverings as “recommended” rather than “required,” in accordance with unequivocal evidence showing the risk of students getting COVID is minimal while the damage done by distance learning and mask mandates is horrendous.

The Philadelphia School District, howev er, made face coverings required for the first 10 days of this new school year, and optional thereafter.

These never-ending dystopian mandates are not just confusing. They inflict incalcula ble damage on our children and their learn ing outcomes — especially students with mental or hearing challenges, who need to see the mouths of their educators.

Unions have been the source of these ri diculous COVID policies from the beginning because they regard anything that upsets smooth school operations and effective educa

By HUNTER TOWER, Pennsylvania Director

tion as an opportunity to exert more influ ence.

These same teachers’ unions backed the Commonwealth’s most radical political voic es, including Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Gov. Tom Wolf who, in turn, champi oned these measures because the unions dumped millions into their campaign coffers.

According to Harvard Medicine, study this past June, the likelihood of students coming down with the virus is very low, and

those who do won’t get very sick.

“Children,” the article noted, “including very young children, can develop COVID-19. Many of them have no symptoms. Those that do get sick tend to experience milder symptoms such as low-grade fever, fatigue and cough.”

Parents are standing up and elected offi cials are finally starting to listen. Bravo to the Pittsburgh School Board for refusing to do the bidding of the unions and, instead, listening to parents (the people who actually vote for them).

It’s past time to stand up to the labor bosses, and union members are speaking up by leaving their radical union and taking their hard-earned dues dollars with them.

FREEDOM in ACTION

In Joe Biden’s universe, every day is Labor Day

By JEFF RHODES Reprinted from INTERNEWS.com

Sept. 1,

By Email:

I received my first Living Liberty paper yesterday.

Would it be possible to post a copy online so even more people could see it?

The publication is extremely in forming about unions and the-opt out program.

Wonderful.

Oregon having 23,000-plus optouts is a pleasant surprise.

I want to support the opt-out program so I will use the phone number, (indicated on the we blink ) to do so.

I have sent a copy of your weblink to all my friends, hoping they will help.

Thank you for all you do.

DEVON KURTZ Bend, Ore.

Editor’s Note: Thanks for the kind words. Living Liberty is published monthly but isn’t typi cally posted online because it is reserved for subscribers. (See ad on page 12.)

Why is the Freedom Foundation

trying to get members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 503 to resign their union membership?

Because they want out but need our help to make it happen. The burden of proof isn’t on the Freedom Foundation to explain why it’s aiding free Americans who want nothing more than to exercise their First Amendment rights. It’s on the unions to explain why they don’t simply respect those rights and allow their members to opt out in the first place.

Americans

can still make one last trip to the beach, barbecue in the back yard or simply kick back and take a three-day break from work over the coming Labor Day weekend.

Just don’t think of it as a celebration of unions.

Given the scandalous number of taxpay er-funded freebies already handed out to or ganized labor in just the first two years of Joe Biden’s presidency, they should be thanking you, not the other way around.

In return for receiving more campaign contri butions from labor organizations than any other single funding category, Biden vowed to become the “most union-friendly president you ever saw.”

Regrettably, it seems to be the one promise the president’s kept in spades.

Among the lowlights:

n The same day President Biden was sworn into office, he fired the National Labor Relations Board general counsel in an unprec edented move to pack the NLRB — the fed eral agency charged with investigating and remedying unfair labor practices in the public sector — with union stooges;

n He installed union cronies to run the Department of Labor’s independent oversight agency;

the National Education Association (NEA) — by far the largest teachers’ union in America — last year spent more than $183 million on politics, lob bying and contributions to ideological groups, but only $32 million on representational activities.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The union spent $71 million on payments to its offi cers and staff, plus an additional $56.5 million on benefits for those officers and staff.

These figures don’t even include the nonstaff attorneys, accountants and consultants, or even the $61 million spent just on overhead and keeping the lights on in the NEA’s gorgeous ivo ry palace in Washington, D.C.

All told, of the $615 million NEA spent last year, representational activities accounted for a mere 5 percent — roughly what the average American family spends on its cell phone bill.

For this union bosses want credit for an an nual holiday?

It should surprise no one that despite — or perhaps because of — Biden’s generosity with someone else’s tax dollars, only 10.3 percent of America’s wage-and-salary workers are current ly paying dues to a union.

He called for the passage of the socalled Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would effectively kill right-to-work provisions in the public workplace, forcing millions of government employees to join and/ or support a union as a condition of employ ment;

n

n His American Rescue Plan steered mil lions in COVID-19 relief dollars to previously ineligible labor unions;

n He reversed a rule banning mandatory deductions for union dues taken from the pay checks of millions of Medicaid-compensated homecare providers;

n He signed into law the deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act” that will hire 87,000 new officers at the Internal Rev enue Service — who can be expected to pay union dues while harassing the president’s political rivals; and,

n His Office of Personnel Management is helping federal agencies identify and access personal contact information for non-union employees so they can be “recruited” into union membership.

The list goes on — and there’s undoubtedly much more to come — but you get the idea.

Whatever marginal work place improvements the American labor movement can claim to have championed in the early years of the 20th Century, modern unions have long since abandoned any pretext of advocating on behalf of work ers and, instead, serve almost exclusively as the funding arm of the extreme po litical left.

To cite a particularly egregious example,

By comparison, around 34 percent of those working in the public sector — including teach ers — are unionized. But that number, too, is declining thanks to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended (on paper, at least) forced membership and/or dues deductions in almost half the country.

Biden, of course, is an outspoken critic of the ruling, believing workers should be forced to choose between keeping their jobs and sup porting an organization that cares more about advancing a liberal political agenda than advo cating for improved pay, benefits and working conditions.

According to the Department of Labor’s own website, the Labor Day holiday is “… dedicat ed to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly na tional tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity and well-being of our country.”

What it’s in no way intended to be is a tribute to organized labor, its methods or its leaders.

It never has been and, given the depths to which unions — and the public’s perception of them — have sunk, it’s less appropriate today than it ever has been.

If we think of unions at all on Labor Day, the holiday should present us with an annual opportu nity to scrutinize the cor rupting influence of this powerful, well-financed special interest on our governing processes.

In any case, con sidering all Joe Biden has already given his union allies — and plans to give them in the second half of his term — a much more fitting Labor Day ob servance would in volve a one-day holiday from them rather than for them.

Aug. 31, 2022

FREEDOM in the NEWS

ON ONLINE

California taxpayers could subsidize union dues in future years

Aug. 28, 2022

“It’s interesting that neither the federal government nor the other major federal employee unions boasted about how the Office of Personnel Management was working with them to increase the unionization of federal employees,” said Maxford Nelsen, a labor policy expert at the Freedom Foundation. “The fact that NFFE pulled down its press release on the subject after it started getting attention suggests they spoke out of turn and exposed behind-the-scenes coordination that those involved thought best left out of the public eye.”

“(Maxford) Nelsen, (labor pol icy director for the Freedom Foundation), said this proposal is the most recent ‘and probably the worst idea in response to the Janus decision.’ He said Ja nus was based on the First Amendment implications of forcing public employees to financially support an organization that engages in advocacy they may not agree with, thereby “lifting the First Amendment burden that would have been placed on public employees.”

ON LINE

Aug. 28, 2022

Sept. 1, 2022

Biden administration uses taxpayer dollars to help grow public unions, critics push back

“The decision by the Office of Personnel Management to help unions identify additional organizing opportunities in the fed eral government is concerning, but utterly predictable,” said Maxford Nelsen, director of labor policy at the Freedom Foun dation. “In fact, it’s just the latest in a string of related efforts by the Biden administration to promote unionization.”

Union purges evidence of of taxpayer-funded collusion with Biden administration

“ ‘Helping unions identify organizing targets in the federal work force not only enlists taxpayers in promoting private, politically active organizations opposed to their interests, but exposes the reality that much union organizing comes from the top down,’ said Maxford Nelsen, labor policy director for the Freedom Foundation.”

ON ONLINE

Sept. 7, 2022

Sept. 12, 2022

Freedom Foundation attorney Tim Snowball appears on ‘Soundoff’ with Jaime Umphenour

“If there’s any silver lining to what happened with COVID, it’s that the scales fell away from many parents’ eyes in terms of what the actual agenda is with these teachers’ unions. You can’t claim on one hand to be an organization that exists to help kids get a good education and, at the same time, fight to keep kids out of school as a bargaining chip.”

Aug. 24, 2022

California’s Gavin Newsom Pays Unions Back for Recall Rescue

“Max Nelsen, the director of labor policy at the free-market conservative think tank Freedom Foundation, described the legislation as a ‘bold’ mechanism to expand union membership and empower state-sponsored speech. ‘Taxpayers are being compelled by the force of state law to pay people to pay unions,” Nelsen said.’ ”

ON AIR

The Schools Our Students Deserve

“We still faced obstacles ... business interests pushed for early reopening and right-wing groups like the Freedom Foundation (on behalf of anonymous parents) slammed the union with a lawsuit for not reopening schools earlier.

Withe appears with John Solomon and Amanda Head on Real America’s Voice

1, 2022

“It’s one of the biggest schemes we’ve ever seen in America.” Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe says government unions are funding left wing politicians and the expansion of govern ment.”

Union deletes document after report shows collusion with Biden administration

ACTION TIMELINE

SOME OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION’S

THE

MONTH

Aug. 18

An op-ed authored by Freedom Foun dation CEO Aaron Withe is published by the Duluth (Minn.) News Tribune Headlined “Doubling the size of the IRS is just another Biden power grab,” the piece argues that the plan to 87,000 new Internal Revenue Service staffers to the agency’s current em ployee rolls is more than would fit in the Minnesota Vikings’ football stadi um. Worse, the “agents” will be armed and apparently encouraged to harass the president’s political opponents.

Aug. 24

Freedom Foundation attorney Syd ney Phillips is recognized as the Free dom Fighter of the Year at the organi zation’s annual Staff Bonding Day in Olympia. The award is commemorates former Board Chairman Steve Neigh bors, who died in 2019 and wanted to leave a legacy recognizing the work of the Freedom Foundation staff.

Aug. 29

The Freedom Foundation files an

By the Numbers

Last month, nearly 670 Buckeyes gained their freedom from government unions thanks to the out reach efforts of the Free dom Foundation. The bulk of the public employee opt outs can be attributed to the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (387) and losses at the Ohio Edu cation Association (223).

amicus brief with the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) on behalf of an employee of the National Park Service’s Blue Ridge Parkway. The plaintiff’s petition to decertify the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) was dismissed by a regional director of the FLRA on the basis of a regulation that bears only a vague resemblance to the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute. The employee is represented in the case by the Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Sept. 6

A guest opinion written by Free dom Foundation Labor Policy Director Maxford Nelsen is pub lished by the Wall Street Journal.

The piece, headlined, “California’s proposed tax credit for dues would subsidize union activities,” spot lights a provision in the state bud get that would create a first-of-itskind tax credit for union dues. The starting annual cost to the state would be $400 million.

Sept. 7

The Freedom Foundation appeals two cases from California to the U.S. Supreme Court, both dealing with schemes employed by public-sec tor unions to avoid complying with the court’s landmark 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. The first case, Savas v. CSLEA, deals with a union representing 21 Orange County life guards. The union refuses to honor the plaintiffs’ request to opt out, citing an unconstitutional California law that allows unions to deny optout requests as long as its collective bargaining agreement with the agency employing the workers is still in force. The second case, Polk

v. Yee, challenges the union practice of limiting opt-outs to only a weeklong, union-determined annual window.

Sept. 7

After being suppressed for more than a year, opening briefs in the Freedom Foundation’s legal challenge to a scheme to unionize Oregon’s legislative staffers. The suit, filed on behalf of Oregon state Rep. Kim Wallan (R-Medford) and aide Sarah Daley, was stalled for months by a series of frivolous mo tions, perhaps because the unions demanding it recognize the measure violates both state laws and the Or egon constitution. Other states have considered the same action, but only Oregon has actually passed it.

Sept. 16

Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe appears on the Fox Business channel to discuss a settlement agreed to the previous days between Amtrak and the Association of American Railroads (AAR). President Biden shamelessly took credit for the deal after directly intervening at the 11th hour but, as Withe noted, the president’s radical policies created the conditions that actually made the strike possible in the first place.