April 2017 ll pages

LIVINGLIBERTY USING SEIU ’S TAC T IC S AG A INS T I T [ 4 ] UNION FEEL INGS VS. H A RD FAC T S [ 6 ] ONE-T IME SEIU RECRUI T ER HEL P S IP ’S OP T OU T [ 10 ]

A PUBLICATION OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION | APRIL 2017

Backseat Drivers Lawsuit would aid Uber, Lyft entrepreneurs beseiged by unions, greedy politicians

Electronic Service Requested

Freedom Foundation PO Box 552 Olympia, WA 98507

T

he independent entrepreneurs who’ve made Uber and Lyft a worldwide force to be reckoned with in just a few short years know intuitively they’ve succeeded not in spite of their lack of a union but because of it.

That’s why they’ve become a target of opportunity for labor unions, tax-hungry municipalities, outflanked competitors and leftist politicians now forced to make up for lost time because they weren’t nearly as nimble and innovative about bogging the industry down with incentive-killing regulations as they’d no doubt intended to be.

In response, attorneys for the Freedom Foundation last week joined forces with the Washington, D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to file a federal lawsuit to prevent the forced unionization of Uber and Lyft drivers in Seattle.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on behalf of 11 independent contractors working with the two for-hire ride-sharing services. It alleges an ordinance passed by the city of Seattle in 2015 illegally targets independent workers for compulsory representation by the International

By JEFF RHODES, Managing Editor

Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 117.

The bill authorizes unionization through the coercive and unreliable card-check system as opposed to a secret ballot vote, and allows union officials to make payment of union dues or fees mandatory, even for drivers who oppose union representation.

The drivers’ federal lawsuit argues the Seattle ordinance is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act and that imposing union representation and forced dues on them violates their First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of association.

Introduced in 2009, Uber is the poster child for the so-called “sharing economy” it largely spawned. The company relies on a sophisticated smart phone app to connect clients needing a ride with drivers willing to transport them … for a price.

And it works spectacularly well. A little too well, in fact.

Uber – and its younger competitor Lyft, which debuted in 2012 – have spread to more than 500 countries while, not coincidentally, making its developers extremely wealthy and providing a decent full-time or supplemental income for hundreds of thousands of enterprising Americans.

So what’s wrong with this picture? Nothing – unless you’re on the outside looking in.

Unions such as the Teamsters, for example, just can’t stand it when service providers and consumers enter into voluntary, mutually beneficial transactions (known in economics textbooks as “commerce”) that don’t involve them.

As sure as day follows night, where there’s a pile of money to be made, there’s also a protection See Uber Suit Page 10

VOLUME 28 | ISSUE 3

Our mission is to advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited, accountable government.

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LIVING LIBERTY

A PUBLI CAT I ON OF T HE FREED OM FOU NDATION

CONTENTS PAGE 4

PAGE 3 LEADERSHIP MEMO

IN THE NEWS SEIU, Government Unions Have Their Tactics Used Against Them.

By TOM McCABE The Plain Truth is That Unions Hate the Plain Truth.

Publisher: Tom McCabe Editor: Jeff Rhodes

Reprinted from TOWNHALL.COM

PAGE 5

LITIGATION UPDATE

CONTACT

APPEALS COURT HEARS ABOUT SEIU BATTLE TO KEEP ITS MEMBERS IN THE DARK.

Union Lie

Freedom Foundation PO Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507

of the Month

IT’S POWER, NOT DEMOCRACY UNIONS REALLY CARE ABOUT.

(360) 956-3482 myFreedomFoundation.com

“Quote” ~ of the month ~

PAGES 6-7

Reprinted from THE QUAD-CITY TIMES Don’t Sweat Union Bosses’ Promises for Retribution.

Labor Apologist Woefully Short of Proof in Debate With Freedom Foundation Attorney Over Forced Unionization.

Union

Feelings vs.

Hard

Facts PAGE 8 OREGON UPDATE

By ANNE MARIE GURNEY SEIU Asks Its Members to Approve a Rule Making It Even Less Accountable.

By AARON WITHE Outreach Effort Produces Hundreds of Defectors.

PAGE 10

PAGE 9 G OV. N I KKI H A LE Y

South Carolina, after Boeing workers there voted not to unionize.

“

We don’t need unions playing middleman between our companies and our employees.

We don’t want them forcefully inserted into our promising business climate.

”

Nothing in this publication should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder the election of any elected official or candidate.

FACES OF FREEDOM

BEST OF THE BLOG

By MAXFORD NELSEN Inslee Wants Even More Public Funding for Union Activist Training Program.

What They Said ...

What They Meant

PAGE 11 PAGE 12

By JEFF RHODES One-Time SEIU Recruiter Now Helping Caregivers Opt Out.

FREEDOM IN THE NEWS ACTION TIMELINE

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A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION

THE PLAIN TRUTH IS THAT UNIONS

HATE THE PLAIN TRUTH

U

nion leaders – and those who shill for them – lie compulsively.

That’s not exactly headline news for those who read this newsletter. After all, Living Liberty publishes a regular feature (on page 5 of this issue) devoted to a different union lie every month.

And at that rate, we’re liable to run out of months long before the unions run out of lies.

The question is why they do it.

And the answer is that they’d all be out of a job or in jail tomorrow if their “members” ever found out what they were really up to.

So they employ a variety of different misinformation strategies.

These include, but aren’t limited to:

n Denial.

As the Freedom Foundation has chronicled, just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 ruled that home-based healthcare and childcare workers being compensated by Medicaid couldn’t be considered full-fledged state employees and forced to support a union, the leaders of SEIU 775 and SEIU 925 met in private with Gov. Jay Inslee’s staff to figure out how not to comply.

For starters, they agreed there was no good reason to even tell the workers about their newly affirmed constitutional rights, which only reinforces what should already have been obvious – that unions don’t give a damn about what’s best for the workers.

All that really matters is making sure the dues dollars keep flowing in to fund the far-Left political agenda of the union leaders.

But not informing their own workers of their rights was the easy part. The hard part was making sure no one else did, either.

That’s why when the Freedom Foundation announced it was going door-to-door to inform the caregivers ourselves, the unions spent two years – and millions of dues dollars – fighting us in court.

Which brings us to the next technique.

n Creating a Strawman.

Rather than telling their members what Freedom Foundation canvassers are really doing and letting them decide for themselves which side deserves their support, the union propaganda machine relies heavily on guilt by association.

No website post from SEIU, WFSE, AFSME, the WEA, the Teamsters or any of their allies would be complete, for example, without the obligatory mention of the Freedom Foundation being funded by “out-of-state billionaires” intent on rolling back LGBT gains, fouling the environment, sinking the Lusitania and pretty much anything else they can throw in for good measure.

Never mind that the Freedom Foundation takes positions on none of these issues, or that all of our financing comes from individual contributors like you who give it willingly rather than having it taken

by force, as the unions must with their “donors.”

It sounds really bad, though, and perception is far more important than reality to the unions’ end game.

By TOM McCABE, CEO

n Changing the Subject.

Try as we might, the Freedom Foundation has never gotten a straight answer from union apologists to the basic question of why workers should be compelled by law to purchase a service they don’t see enough value in to purchase willingly.

Instead, they spout talking points about how wonderful unions are and how many blessings they’ve bestowed on the modern workforce.

It’s a crock, mind you, but it’s also beside the point.

In a free society, it should be up to the individual to decide what’s best for his or her unique situation, not have it decided for them by someone who stands to profit by a particular outcome.

n Misrepresentation.

LEADERSHIP

MEMO

LIVING LIBERTY

“

The unions lie because it’s literally all they have. The good news is, it isn’t working.

If it was, they wouldn’t lie with such consistency or enthusiasm.

This is, in fact, essentially the first cousin of lying. The difference is that there’s a kernel of truth to the argument, but it’s been distorted beyond the point of recognition.

For example, we’re accused of “opposing paid sick leave,” which would be rather ironic given that Freedom Foundation employees themselves enjoy that very benefit.

The truth, of course, is more nuanced. What we oppose is companies going bankrupt because they’re forced to offer a benefit they can’t afford and workers losing their jobs over something they never asked for and knew the employer didn’t offer when they were hired in the first place.

Likewise, we’re accused of opposing minimum wage increases because our big donors are anxious to raise profits by squeezing salaries.

But that ignores the fact that nearly all of the Freedom Foundation’s work involves the public sector, which doesn’t earn profits. And that the greedy management in question is taxpayers who earn less than the public servants who serve them.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

The unions lie because it’s literally all they have. The good news is, it isn’t working. And they know it or they wouldn’t lie with such consistency or enthusiasm.

”

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IN THE NEWS SEIU, GOVERNMENT UNIONS HAVING THEIR TACTICS USED AGAINST THEM

By BETH BAUMANN

Reprinted from TOWNHALL.COM

March 9, 2017 Government unions. You either love them or you hate them. There really is no in-between.

Fortunately for those of us who don’t like government corruption, there are people – and organizations – that are willing to take on the unions.

The Freedom Foundation, an organization on the west coast, has taken on the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) in the name of freedom and individual liberty.

And so far, the lefties aren’t happy about it.

“Our mission is to help people get out of government unions and reverse (the) stranglehold that government unions have on politicians and the government,” Tom McCabe, CEO of Freedom Foundation, told Townhall in an exclusive interview.

The organization launched its first major salvo at the union in 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Harris v. Quinn case that the “First Amendment prohibits the collection of an agency fee from the plaintiffs in the case, home healthcare providers who do not wish to join or support a union.”

Up until that point, SEIU was targeting home healthcare workers – the parents and family members who take care of autistic or mentally challenged family members, for example – as a means of supporting their union.

As it currently stands, family members can receive a small stipend from Medicare for taking

care of their loved one instead of relying on hospitalization or a long-term care facility.

“SEIU figured out a scheme where, in liberal states, they got the governor to deduct union dues for these home healthcare providers,” McCabe explained. “And automatically – overnight – they had money taken out of their paycheck.

And the money went to SEIU.” When the organization realized SEIU and the state governors weren’t going to inform home health workers about their ability to leave the union, the Freedom Foundation stepped in. They developed a robust ground game, in conjunction with a strong public relations effort.

“There’s no need for these workers to pay union dues,” McCabe explained.

“They’re never going to have a grievance against their employer or a workplace grievance, because their employer is their child.”

McCabe’s organization began using state lists to determine who was classified as a home healthcare worker. They then developed direct mail pieces and emails, followed up with phone calls and radio and television advertisements.

However, the Freedom Foundation attributes its success to a door-to-door campaign, in which they would hire young people, train them on the issue and send them to home health workers to

“Fortunately for those of us who don’t like government corruption, there are people – and organizations – that are willing to take on the unions.”

discuss the workers’ options.

The Freedom Foundation initially started its campaign in Washington, where there are 50,000 home health workers across the state, shortly after the SCOTUS decision.

On average, each person was forced to contribute $500 to $1,000 per year, giving SEIU around $25 million in forced union dues.

Since the organization stepped in, 62 percent of the home healthcare workers have left their union.

And that’s just in the Evergreen State.

According to McCabe, SEIU in Washington state sends between $7 million and $14 million per election cycle to other SEIU chapters, a large portion of which was coming from people who never wanted to support the union.

After seeing its success in Washington, the Freedom Foundation began applying the same principles in Oregon in 2015. They started in California last year.

It will be interesting to see the impact the Freedom Foundation has in California, which has 375,000 home healthcare workers whose dues to SEIU are similar to what their counterparts in Washington once paid.

“SEIU hasn’t gone quietly into the night,” McCabe said. “They’re fighting to shut down our effort. Effort takes courage – and maybe a bit of stupidity – to take them (SEIU) on.”

The Freedom Foundation has received many threats. SEIU has sent a series of inflammatory brochures and letters to McCabe’s neighbors.

They have canvassed the entire city, warning neighbors to watch out for McCabe, because he’s “anti-worker.”

They have even produced and deployed robo calls with the same messaging.

The organization’s business-owning board members have been harassed at their offices with people standing outside the business, protesting and picketing. Whenever the organization holds any kind of public event, SEIU members show up en masse to cause a disruption.

Currently, the Freedom Foundation has six full-time lawyers who are dedicated to the 36 on-going cases against the SEIU and other government unions.

DON’T SWEAT UNION BOSSES PROMISE FOR RETRIBUTION

By TOM MCcCABE

Reprinted from the QUAD-CITIES (IOWA) TIMES

March 1, 2017

A

s predictably as the sun rising in the East, the bosses for Iowa’s government unions and their liberal allies are warning of the sky falling and promising political retribution after Republicans passed collective bargaining reform.

As they do whenever the power of union leadership is threatened, they insist the reformers are anti-worker, which is an odd argument to make given the new law will prohibit unions from automatically deducting dues out of worker paychecks and will give workers more rights to decide whether or not to be represented by a union at all.

Worker choice is always opposed by unions that claim to represent the interests of these same workers because this new freedom inevitably leads to workers choosing to stop paying union dues.

This diminishes the political clout of union leadership which uses about 40 percent of member dues to support Democratic political candidates and left-wing causes that many, if not most, union members oppose.

Contrary to the political threats issued by union bosses against supporters of reform,

taxpayers, including many union workers, tend to reward politicians who take a stand against compulsory union membership.

At the Freedom Foundation, we know from our personal conversations with workers at their doorstep that most would prefer to keep the money they currently pay to their union rather than let the leadership spend it in support of politicians and causes with whom they disagree.

Since we began informing workers in Washington state of their right to opt out of union dues, over 10,000 have chosen to do just that, costing the local SEIU more than $10 million that would otherwise be spent largely on partisan politicking.

Look no further than Wisconsin to witness the hollowness of the political threats made by the union bosses.

Shortly after taking office with Republican majorities in 2011, Gov. Scott Walker set out to address the state’s budget crisis by reforming a major cost driver of the state’s enormous deficit – exploding public employee compensation, pensions and health care costs which

was the inevitable result of collective bargaining between powerful government unions and the politicians they helped elect.

Liberals claimed Walker and his GOP allies had given them a political gift that would mobilize their base and return Democrats to power in Madison, so they attempted to send Walker packing in a recall election.

But a funny thing happened: Walker was reelected by a margin greater than his original victory. In the meantime, newly-empowered government employees chose to abandon the unions in droves.

Private-sector workers followed suit after Walker and Republicans passed right-to-work legislation in 2015.

Similar scenes were repeated in Michigan.

With their dues-financed political war chests decimated, union boss clout withered and Donald Trump became the first Republican since Reagan to win both states. And it was relatively strong support from union households that helped deliver those victories to Trump.

There’s a saying that good policy makes good politics. If that holds true in Iowa, Republican reformers can expect to be rewarded politically for standing up to union bosses who have for decades taken advantage of their members and the taxpayers in order to accumulate power in Des Moines.

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LITIGATION UPDATE APPEALS COURT HEARS ABOUT SEIU’S

FIGHT TO KEEP MEMBERS IN DARK

By JEFF RHODES, Managing Editor

S

on every level.”

EIU 775 came a step closer to And even if the collective bargaining exhausting its last legal maneulaws did exempt public records, would simvers in March as an appellate ply disclosing the dates and times of public judge in Tacoma heard the union meetings interfere with anyone’s rights? once more try to explain why it And lastly, how exactly is it coercive would be disastrous if the Freedom for the Freedom Foundation to tell people Foundation were permitted to tell about their constitutional rights? its members the truth about their “We’re actually correcting a union constitutional rights. problem,” Olson said. “The Foundation’s The case involves the Freedom mission is to inform workers of their Foundation’s attempts for more than constitutional rights—information the a year to obtain the contracting union repeatedly refuses to share with its schedules used by the Washington bargaining unit.”

Department of Social and Health As the workers’ representative, SEIU Services when the agency sets up 775 should be the ones telling caregivers meetings between SEIU 775 and what their rights are, she noted, including newly certified home healthcare their right to opt out of union membership. providers represented by the union.

“It doesn’t hurt anyone to tell them the The Freedom Foundation retruth,” Olson said, “but it could hurt them quested the schedules – which were to keep the truth from them.” undisputedly public records – in Litigation Counsel Stephanie Olson at the Court of Appeals.

Freedom Foundation photo Olson said she fully expects the appeals January 2016 in the hopes of sending court to mirror the lower court’s decision, canvassers to the location of the state although it could take several months. Because the dation litigation counsel. offices where the meetings occurred to inform the Freedom Foundation won at the trial court level, “Quite frankly, their argument is meritless,” she caregivers of their rights under a 2014 U.S. Suit’s seeking that the trial court’s ruling be affirmed, said. preme Court decision to decline to pay union dues and that the contracting schedules are not exempt A Superior Court judge rejected SEIU 775’s or representation fees. from disclosure. arguments and ruled in the Freedom Foundation’s The union, knowing that potentially thousands “The unions think it benefits them to simply favor last spring. On Tuesday, the union raised the of caregivers might opt out of union membership delay this as long as possible,” Olson said. “But same losing arguments at the appeals court level. and dues payments upon learning that they had the they’re wrong.”

According to Olson, the Freedom Foundation’s right to do so, filed suit against both the Freedom “For one thing, it’s costing them a fortune to defense rests on three key questions: Foundation and DSHS last March claiming the keep their members in the dark,” she said. “But Do the state’s collective bargaining laws permit state would be committing an unfair labor practice even more importantly, how does it look to the an exception to the Public Records Act? by disclosing public contracting schedules to the members? Eventually they have to ask themselves, “Absolutely not,” Olson said. “There are strict Freedom Foundation.

‘What is it the union doesn’t want me to know? requirements that statutes have to meet to exempt “Their argument is that it would interfere with Why are they going to this much trouble trying to the disclosure of public records. The collective the existing relationship between the members and keep me from hearing the truth?’ “ bargaining statutes fail to meet those requirements the union,” said Stephanie Olson, Freedom Foun-

IT’S POWER, NOT DEMOCRACY, UNIONS CARE ABOUT Union Lie Y ou’d almost think they were working from the same talking points.

When University of Nevada-Las Vegas School of Law Professor Rueben Garcia, speaking at a Freedom Foundation-sponsored debate held during March in Salem, Ore., was asked why workers who don’t want to be in a union should be forced into one, he argued it was the democratic thing to do.

After all, the union wouldn’t be the recognized bargaining agent for the workers if a majority hadn’t approved the arrangement during a certification election held once upon a time.

“Elections have consequences,” Garcia pronounced.

Washington State Sen. Steve Conway (D-Tacoma) – a retired business agent for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 81, mouthed the same empty platitudes two weeks earlier in a noisy hearing on the question of right-to-work legislation before the Washington State Senate’s Commerce, Labor and Sports Committee.

“I think this whole thing undermines the principle of democracy in this country,” he preened. “That’s something I take very seriously.”

Dozens of union members bused to the proceedings for just this purpose erupted in applause, notwithstanding the willful ignorance expressed in Conway’s comment.

Simply put, it’s hard to imagine anything less democratic than the bully-boy tactics for which government employee unions are renowned.

Take the elections Garcia and Conway refer to, for example.

In the case of SEIU 775, the state’s largest pub-

of the Month

lic employee union, it’s technically true there was an election back in 2002. This happened just after current 775 President David Rolf was defeated in his bid for the presidency of SEIU 6.

Undaunted by the results, SEIU’s national headquarters simply created a new union, SEIU 775, out of thin air and installed Rolf as its president.

The two unions were later consolidated under, you guessed it, Rolf ’s leadership and SEIU 6 was never heard from again.

A subsequent election, whose legitimacy even the reliably compliant Public Employment Review Commission questioned, saw SEIU 775 approved by around 5,000 of the 30,000 eligible voters.

From then until now, there hasn’t been a recertification election. Unlike what happens in real democracies rather than the Banana Republic variant preferred by Garcia, Conway and their cohorts, unions only have to pass muster once, in an election only publicized to hard-core union partisans.

After that, it’s technically possible to hold a referendum, but only within the same sort of union-imposed guidelines that ensured Cuba’s Fidel Castro 90 percent majorities for more than 50 years.

But even if you can look past the sham elections,

there’s still one small flaw in the approved union reasoning. When Garcia and Conway bray about the principles of democracy and how the will of the majority must be respected, they overlook the fact that unions aren’t governments.

They think they are, sure, but they’re not.

Unions are, in fact, nothing more or less than private, independent contractors selling a service – representation – to government workers.

As such, the will of the majority may be interesting but it’s no more binding than a poll of what kind of breakfast cereal consumers prefer. Even if 90 percent prefer corn flakes, the remaining 10 percent have every right to eat oatmeal.

It’s no different in the labor market. In fact, the standards are even more unequivocal for anyone but a union shill getting paid to bend the truth.

The United States, lest we forget, doesn’t have a purely democratic form of government anyway. It never did, and was never intended to.

We live in a constitutional republic, which means that while certain questions – like the identity of our political leaders – are decided by the will of the majority, we also have a Constitution that sets forth a series of bedrock guarantees that can’t be ignored by a majority of any size.

Among these are the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association – not concidentally the rights unions want to run roughshod over when it comes to workers in the public sector.

The unions may own their share of fuzzy academics and ethically challenged politicians, but it hasn’t co-opted the Constitution just yet.

But don’t think they’re not trying.

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A crowd of more than 100 attended a debate on March 15 at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., sponsored by the Freedom Foundation and the Federa

Union

Feeli vs.

Hard

Facts David Dewhirst represented the right-to-work position, relying on the Freedom Foundation’s real experiences rather than made-up scenarios.

Jeff Rhodes photo

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alist Society on the subject of forced unionization.

Boaz Crawford photo

ings

Reuben Garcia, a law professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, represented the union position in the debate, and made a passionate case for why he believed unionization benefited workers but couldn’t quite explain why it isn’t a violation of workers’ First Amendment rights to be forced into a union when they don’t share Garcia’s enthusiasm.

Jeff Rhodes photo

Labor apologist woefully short of proof in debate over forced representation

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SEIU ASKS MEMBERS TO LET UNION BE EVEN

LESS ACCOUNTABLE TO THEM

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EIU 503 union leaders were forced to call for a special meeting on March 23 at SEIU 503 locations around Oregon “(t)o discuss, debate and vote on modifications to our corporate structure and amendments to our articles of incorporation.”

Not surprisingly, the proposed changes were designed to prevent members from accessing the union’s membership list and eliminate the need for annual meetings.

SEIU 503 is, in effect, asking its members to shut off the lifeline by which they share information among themselves and rely only on the word of the union – which, as we all know, would never dream of misleading those who pump millions of dollars’ worth of dues money into its coffers annually.

Difficult though the idea may be for the union to grasp, members and leadership sometimes disagree – or at least they might if the members actually

By ANNE MARIE GURNEY, Oregon Director

knew what their leaders were up to. But how is that supposed to happen when the union’s bylaws are written specifically to prevent members from communicating with each other either by mail or in person?

When it was caught red-handed three years ago scheming to exclude its own members from the decision-making process concerning a merger they didn’t want, Service Employee International Union (SEIU) 503’s knee-jerk response was to ask the Legislature to kill the very laws it was shown in court to have broken.

And having failed at that, the union has now thrown itself on the mercy of its

Oregon Update

Highlighting the successes being realized by the Freedom Foundation’s newly opened branch office.

own members, asking them to disenfranchise themselves.

Good luck with that.

In 2013, SEIU 503 proposed consolidating with Portland-based SEIU 49. Former 503 President Joe DiNicola, however, opposed the move and requested the contact information for every member of the local so he could contact them and explain why a merger was not in their best interests.

When SEIU 503 refused to turn over the mailing list, DiNicola filed a lawsuit alleging it was not only a matter of public information, but that SEIU 503, as a member-based organization, had an obligation to share it with him.

A Marion County Circuit Court judge last summer agreed, and while he was at it, he also cited the union for a laundry list of other violations, including not holding annual meetings as registered nonprofits must.

In the meantime, when DiNicola informed the membership about what was going on behind their backs, they voted to reject the merger.

In response, union operatives introduced a bill, HB-2609, during the current legislative session that would have completely rewritten the laws applying to Oregon nonprofit corporations to eliminate the requirement that they … wait for it … disclose contact information to fellow members and hold annual meetings.

The measure was subsequently killed largely due to the efforts of the Freedom Foundation, which exposed its true intentions to the public. When labor policy analyst Ben Straka testified about the bill in committee hearings at the Oregon Legislature, even lawmakers known for being lapdogs for labor were too embarrassed to support it.

Don’t be fooled by the spin emanating from the bowels of a corrupt and desperate organization that knows the game is just about up.

The union couldn’t care less about protecting its members. All it really wants is to protect itself from alternate opinions and inconvenient truths.

But it won’t work. This election does nothing but forces SEIU 503 to accept one of two options when it likes neither.

All it can do now is choose how to lose.

OUTREACH EFFORT PRODUCES HUNDREDS OF DEFECTORS

O

ver the past couple of months, the Freedom Foundation’s Oregon staff has been carrying out a major outreach effort to state employees.

During the holiday season, we had one of our canvassers dress up as Santa and inform them that they can give themselves a raise for Christmas by opting out of union dues and fees.

We’ve also sent out numerous mailers exposing SEIU 503’s antics and its insistence on funding left-wing candidates and policies that inevitably harms the workers, as well as sending out informative pieces on how they can opt out of the political portion of their union dues.

We’ve had fantastic conversations with hundreds of state employees who wanted more information about how they could opt out of their political portion of their union dues.

When speaking to these employees, there was one question that came up more than any other: “Why has no one else told us this before?”

To answer the question, ask yourself who was in a position to inform them.

The state won’t do it because every single public agency is dominated either by

By AARON WITHE, Oregon Outreach Coordinator

union officials with everything to lose and nothing to gain if the truth were known, or politicians dependent on the graft they collect from the unions to do their bidding.

The union could also tell its “members” about their rights, but that would be tantamount to cutting their own throat.

But that’s changing rapidly. During our outreach drive, the Freedom Foundation contacted more than 1,400 unionized providers and more than 250 have since sent in their opt-out forms – with more rolling in every day.

These forms, specially prepared by the Freedom Foundation, express that the worker object to the refundable portion of his or her dues and demand they be reimbursed around 20 percent of their overall dues.

We then forward them all to the union for them to process. If they decide to do the ethical thing and process their member’s requests, fine. If not, we fight for the worker’s rights.

Becoming an agency fee payer is a constitutional right following U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as “Abood v.

Detroit Board of Education.” But SEIU 503 has consistently undermined workers’ rights by ignoring the forms turned in to them.

Some workers recall making these requests in the past and either hearing no response from the union or having their requests denied. At the Freedom Foundation, we work with any employees who exercise their rights to get those forms processed.

This includes, when necessary, taking legal action against the union to get them processed.

The dirty, little secret behind all this is that SEIU 503 is far more interested in the employee’s money more than they are about constitutional rights.

We at the Freedom Foundation are the only group out there informing workers in Oregon of their rights when it comes to their union membership, and we pledge to help them every step of the way to help them opt out of the tyranny of SEIU and keep their hard-earned dollars in their pockets rather than going to causes that they may not support.

LIVING LIBERTY

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[February]

YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT FOR TONIGHT IS TO START LYING ABOUT WHAT WE DO IN CLASS.

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What They

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What They He said: “(Right-to-work) sounds good until you check into who funded the Freedom Foundation’s study.

These people somehow believe that Washington will prosper if we turn it into another Mississippi.”

INSLEE WANTS MORE PUBLIC FUNDING FOR

UNION ACTIVIST TRAINING PROGRAM

Feb. 27, 2017

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ov. Jay Inslee’s proposed budget for the 2017-19 biennium seeks to allocate an additional $778,000 for the Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) at South Seattle College, an increase of nearly 250 percent over its current state funding of about $160,000 per year.

As the Freedom Foundation has extensively documented, LERC functions as little more than a taxpayer-subsidized labor activist group, though it prefers to describe itself in the language of higher education.

Public records requests have indicated that LERC performs research work for groups like the Washington State Labor Council and participates in protests with labor activist groups like Working Washington.

Formerly based at The Evergreen State College, LERC moved to South Seattle in 2010 after an internal TESC audit found LERC to be engaged in ethically questionable activity and the legislature cut back its funding.

Since at least 2013, LERC staff have been working to get the Legislature to boost its funding. Budget proposals from Inslee and Democrats in the state Legislature now consistently propose dramatic increases in LERC’s budget though, so far, the Freedom Foundation’s documentation of LERC’s activity has helped prevent any such increases from making it into the final budget.

Based on the material uncovered by its public records request, the Freedom Foundation filed two formal complaints against LERC in early 2015, one with the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) alleging LERC staff failed to report their lobbying efforts to get the state legislature to increase its funding, and one with the Executive Ethics Board (“the board”) alleging LERC

By MAXFORD NELSEN, Labor Policy Director

inappropriately used state funds for political activity in support of the 2013 minimum wage initiative in SeaTac. In December 2015, the PDC concluded LERC had, indeed, engaged in unregistered lobbying and broken the state’s campaign disclosure laws.

In September 2016, however, the board dismissed the Freedom Foundation complaint. The dismissal prompted Sarah Laslett, the former LERC-director, to pen an article posted on the Washington State Labor Council’s website deriding the Foundation’s complaint.

Laslett spends most of her article on the ethics complaint, which the board ultimately dismissed. The complaint alleged that LERC bused dozens of participants in its Summer Institute for Union Women (SIUW) to SeaTac to participate in a rally in support of Proposition 1—the $15 minimum wage initiative that went on to pass narrowly in Nov. 2013— and, in so doing, had violated RCW 42.52.180, which provides: “No state officer or state employee may use or authorize the use of facilities of an agency, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of a person to an office or for the promotion of or opposition to a ballot proposition.”

Laslett’s defense of LERC’s activity consists of two prongs. First, she contends, “…when SIUW participants went to Sea-Tac Airport in June 2013, the ballot initiative had not yet been certified, let alone any campaign in support of it having

been publicly initiated… The timing of the action and the initiative certification was obvious to anyone who bothered to look. Clearly, the Freedom Foundation was willing to ignore the timeline.”

Despite the bluster, Laslett is flat out wrong on this point. The Freedom Foundation complaint alleged that Proposition 1 was formally a “ballot proposition” no later than June 20, 2013.

The protest took place exactly one week later, on June 27. The board’s investigator confirmed that “SeaTac proposition 1 would be considered a ballot proposition as of June 5, 2013…”

Clearly, timing wasn’t the issue.

Unfortunately, the board took the extraordinary position that the statute preventing state employees from using public resources for political activities doesn’t prevent LERC from using tax resources for union politics precisely because this is part of LERC’s “normal and regular conduct.”

In effect, the board recognized what the Freedom Foundation has argued from the beginning—that LERC is simply a tax-funded union activist group.

The past two years have proven LERC views itself as the taxpayer-funded servant of Washington’s labor unions and that it is willing to bend and occasionally break state laws in pursuit of its agenda.

At the same time, state entities tasked with preventing this kind of behavior either give LERC a pass or, at best, a slap on the wrist.

Ultimately, the solution lies with the state Legislature, which should end taxpayer-funding for LERC once and for all.

Labor unions benefit from enough special privileges and exemptions in state law as it is.

There’s no reason Washington taxpayers should have to fund labor’s political activism directly.

CHUCK BOLLAND He meant: Olympia, Wash., “Whether or Facebook post not a state Feb. 28, 2017 passes rightto-work protections has so little to do with its economic well-being that it’s an absolutely pointless exercise to compare.

The absence of right-to-work, however, guarantees a continued license to steal for the union, which is my primary concern.” n n n

He said: “Let’s be clear: Our union is pursuing all possible legal avenues to protect your personal information from the Free dom Foundation. The bottom line is that everyone should STEVE DEMAREST have the President, right to keep SEIU Local 503 their private Letter to Members information March 2017 private.”

He meant: “Present company excepted, of course. It’s perfectly fine if the union knows everything about you, but it’s unthinkable that another private organization should have the same right. Think of where it could all lead. First thing you know, you wouldn’t believe any of our lies anymore.” n n n

She said: “The Freedom Foundation is not about freedom for ‘We The People.’ This group is solely for the freedoms of corporate interests.”

He meant: “Actually, all of its work concerns government unions, VERLE STEELE whose Salem, Ore. Facebook post members don’t get paid March 1, 2017 out of profits or work for corporations. Never mind.”

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A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON

FREEDOM IN ACTION

ONE-TIME SEIU RECRUITER NOW HELPS

CAREGIVERS ESCAPE UNION

B

enjamin Olson has seen the issue from both sides and he knows which is telling the truth.

That’s why these days he’s working to inform other home-based healthcare providers like himself of their right to opt out of union dues and fees.

Olson, featured in a new series of television ads running on local cable systems in the Seattle and Puget Sound region starting this week, used to see things differently. In fact, the Camas resident was such an enthusiastic supporter of SEIU 775, which represents Washington homecare providers in collective bargaining talks with the governor, that the union deployed him all over the state to persuade other providers to sign their membership cards.

That all changed, however, when SEIU 775 included him on a bus trip to Olympia to lobby Washington state lawmakers on behalf of the union’s political agenda.

He was struck by how little of what the union spends its time doing had anything to do with the issues he and his wife Tammy faced every day caring for their son Sean.

Then he heard from the Freedom Foundation about a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said home-based healthcare and childcare providers were not state employees in the conventional sense and could no longer be compelled to join a labor union.

With the Freedom Foundation’s help, the Olsons opted out immediately … then started helping others do the same.

The move saved the family $2,000 a year in dues.

“Having the union take our money was a real hardship on us,” Tammy Olson says during the TV spot.

“Now we use it for things that are more

important,” Benjamin Olson explains, “like groceries, gas and medical bills.”

“The union hasn’t helped us, and we’re better off without them,” Tammy Olson said.

“Benjamin and Tammy’s story is so powerful, and yet it’s typical of what we hear from these people every day,” said Freedom Foundation CEO Tom McCabe.

“All they want to do is take care of their loved one,” he said, “and under Medicaid, the state allocates a bit of money to money to help defray their costs. But when the union sees a pile of cash, it doesn’t care what it was intended for. All that matters is how they can cut themselves in for a piece of it.”

Since 2014, more than 10,000 caregivers in Washington and Oregon have opted out of the union, and that number grows every day as more and more of the barriers erected between the unions and their members are eliminated.

“When people hear the truth, they want no part of the union,” McCabe said. “That’s why the union is so desperate to keep these people in the dark, and why Benjamin Olson – and the Freedom Foundation – so determined to tell them the truth.”

UBER: SUIT TARGETS SEATTLE’S FORCED UNIONIZATION SCHEME Continued from page 1 racket – legal or otherwise, and often both – ready to wet its beak.

Speaking of which, let’s not forget state and local governments demanding their pound of flesh in the form of tax revenues, or the vast, ever-churning regulatory machinery that exists for no other purpose than expand to its scope and influence into areas doing perfectly fine by themselves.

Last but not least, consider the position of Uber and Lyft’s more conventional competitors. Taxi cab companies have spent decades – and paid millions of dollars’ in tribute to local governments in the form of taxes and licensing fees – with the expectation their government-provided monopoly will be preserved.

Likewise, dozens of government jurisdictions (including some created especially for the purpose) can hardly be expected to stand still while ungrateful consumers snub the billions of dollars invested on their behalf in mass transit infrastructure and opt instead for something that actually works – and for a tiny fraction of the price.

No, indeed. That’s why this whole free enterprise thing needs to be nipped in the bud, and the deathby-union scheme never fails. Or at least it hasn’t yet.

But there’s always a first time.

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A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION

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FREEDOM IN THE NEWS IN PRINT

March 6, 2017

SNOHOMISH COUNTY IN DISPUTE WITH LANDOWNER OVER CONDEMNED PROPERTY “Kohler views the county’s actions as an unlawful taking of her property. She believes the process has been stacked against her. Her fight against the government made her the subject of broadcast news stories and a cause for the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank with offices in Washington and Oregon.”

ONLINE

March1, 2017

ONLINE

March 5, 2017

PROTECT OUR CARE “Congress is threatening to make cuts to our health care and home care while anti-home care groups like the Freedom Foundation are trying to weaken our union.”

IN PRINT

March 8, 2017

WSDCC MEETING NOTES – 34TH DEMOCRATS “But our workers’ rights are threatened by an exponentially expanding Olympia think tank known as the Freedom Foundation. Their modus operandi is to “educate – activate – legislate – litigate.” They aim their propaganda directly at workers and unions. Much of their current focus is on public sector unions, with a new campaign to defund these unions.”

THEY THINK YOU’RE STUPID “Please don’t forget the Tea Party was supported by the Freedom Foundation and Koch brothers.”

2017 SCHEDULE May 4 - Bellevue/Eastside June 22 - Portland, Oregon Sept. 21 - Spokane, Washington This is the 14th year Freedom Foundation has presented this complimentary workshop around the state. It is our gift to our members for supporting our work. Nothing is sold at the workshops. And you’ll have a good time and enjoy a beautiful, hot buffet!

We encourage you to choose a workshop nearest your home. If you have to drive a bit, it will be worth it. Do it for your family—you will be glad you came.

Give us a call if you have questions or to reserve your spot

360-956-3482

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A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON

ACTION TIMELINE SPOTLIGHTING SOME OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION’S NOTEWORTHY ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF THE PAST MONTH March 17 New numbers show SEIU membership continues to erode. Two and a half years ago, 100 percent of state-reimbursed home childcare providers in Washington were members of SEIU 925. In March, that number dropped to 37 percent, thanks to the Freedom Foundation’s outreach efforts.

SEIU 775, which represents home healthcare providers in Washington, has been much more aggressive about keeping its membership lists out of Freedom Foundation hands so that we can’t tell them about their rights to opt out. Still, the union has lost 11 percent of its membership in just over two years.

March 8 Attorneys for the Freedom Foundation joined forces with the Washington, D.C.based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to file a federal lawsuit to prevent the forced unionization of Uber and Lyft drivers in Seattle. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on behalf of 11 independent contractors working with the two for-hire ride-sharing services. It alleges an ordinance passed by the city of Seattle in 2015 illegally targets independent workers for compulsory representation by the United Brotherhood of Teamsters.

March 15 Freedom Foundation Litigation Counsel David Dewhirst faced off against Reuben Garcia, a law professor from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, in a debate over mandatory unionization. The event, sponsored by the Federalist Society and held on the campus of Willamette University in Salem, Ore., attracted more than 100 guests and onlookers – though no union protests.

The debate was live-streamed to Freedom Foundation members and supporters, and was a one-sided win for Dewhirst – and the Constitution – and Garcia was forced to try and defend an indefensible position.

Union Reform Project:

LEGISLATE LITIGATE EDUCATE ACTIVATE We’ve built a site dedicated to educating and informing union members of their constitutional right to opt out of their union.

OptOutToday.com

Them.” “Fortunately for those of us who don’t like government corruption,” writes author Beth Baumann, “there are people – and organizations – that are willing to take on the unions.”

March 8 The Freedom Foundation continues to make a splash, and the unions’ strength continues to erode, as national media focus on our efforts to free government workers from the shackles of organized labor. The latest example came this morning, when the TownHall.com website published a feature headlined “SEIU and Government Unions Are Now Having Their Tactics Used Against

March 1 Litigation Counsel Stephanie Olson explained to an appellate court in Tacoma why SEIU 775 was mistaken in its contention that the world would end if the Freedom Foundation were permitted to tell the union’s members the truth about their constitutional rights. The case involves the Freedom Foundation’s attempts for more than a year to obtain the schedule used by the state for caregiver orientation. At these mandatory meetings, SEIU 775 is given time to pressure new home healthcare providers into locking themselves into nearly irrevocable payroll deductions to the union. The Freedom Foundation wants to use these schedules to offer information outside the meeting. Caregivers are nearly always appreciative to learn about the Supreme Court ruling declaring that paying extraordinarily high union dues to SEIU is purely voluntary.