SUIT ALLEGES FERGUSON, UNIONS COLLUDED [5] CAMPAIGN FINANCE CASE CAN CONTINUE [5] COUNT Y EMPLOYEE DOING UNION BUSINESS [9]
LIVINGLIBERTY A PUBLICATION OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION | APRIL 2019
Melissa Unger
Will lie for dues!
CASH-STRAPPED SEIU 503 PUTS ITS LONG-TIME HOME ON THE MARKET
Electronic Service Requested
Freedom Foundation PO Box 552 Olympia, WA 98507
T
here’s no disputing SEIU 503 has been squarely in the Freedom Foundation’s crosshairs since the organization expanded into Oregon in 2015. The two combatants offered starkly different accounts, however, about how much damage had been inflicted. The question was answered definitively during March when a “For Sale” sign went up out front of the headquarters building in Salem the union has called home for more than 20 years. After spending millions during the 2018 election cycle while simultaneously losing millions in membership dues, SEIU 503 was forced to vacate a building worth almost $3 million. Sources inside the union report its leaders are currently in the process of purchasing a new building in Salem. But SEIU 503 only plans to occupy one floor of the structure. The rest of the space would be sublet to a paying tenant. This is how SEIU 503 is attempting to deal with its devastating membership losses — by taking in boarders. What’s next? Mowing lawns? A bake sale? More seriously, the other floor’s current tenant is the state of Oregon. Will taxpayers still be paying at the same rate when their landlord is SEIU 503, or will the state find itself funneling even more money into the union’s coffers in the form
By BOAZ DILLON, Labor Policy Analyst
of higher rent? The Freedom Foundation has launched an investigation to look into this shady transaction and will hold union leaders accountable if any laws are being broken. When the Freedom Foundation came to town four years ago, it immediately launched a full-scale messaging campaign to once-forcibly-unionized home healthcare providers who had recently been freed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Harris v. Quinn. The ruling characterized SEIU’s dues-skimming operation as a “scheme” and, to date, the Freedom Foundation has helped more than 40 percent of SEIU 503-represented care providers come to the same conclusion. By our calculations, their defections are costing the union more than $540,000 a month in lost revenue. And the total just keeps getting larger. But the real body blow came on June 27, 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME recognized the optout rights of all public employees. The Freedom Foundation responded by dramatically expanding its campaign messaging to the wider audience. The combination of door-to-door canvassing, mailers, emails, billboards and TV and radio ads has caused SEIU 503 to experience a 26 percent drop in membership just eight months after Janus, blowing an estimated $8.7 million-a-year hole in it finances. These cataclysmic losses of revenue and membership expose the grim reality faced by SEIU 503 and the state’s other government employee unions – which exSee MOVING Page 10