THE CASE FOR FREEDOM FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE FREEDOM FIGHTER PROFILE

When did you join the Freedom Foundation?

May 1, 2021.

What were you doing before?

Before coming to work at the Freedom Foundation, I worked on multiple outreach efforts, including the 2020 U.S. Census, nonpartisan candidate campaigns, and executive director and founder of Slavic Vote, an organization focused on helping the Russian, Ukrainian and Slavic communities get out and vote. And every year I take time to go to the White House and help with different events in Washington, D.C.

Where are you from originally?

I was born in Novokubansk, Russia. Moved to Portland, Ore., with my family in 1997 and been here ever since. Graduated from David Douglas High School.

What makes you conservative?

Growing up, we often heard stories from my parents, grandparents and their friends of the life under Soviet Union and the communist governments tyrannical iron hammer. They could not think or do anything freely. Government had full control over everyone. I strongly believe in small government and in many ways that makes me a conservative.

What does an Oregon outreach director do?

I oversee the daily outreach operations of the Freedom Foundation’s Oregon office --- including recruiting and onboarding canvassers, processing opt outs, design of mail, answering phones and making sure we have are doing everything we can to educate public employees of their constitutional rights and every Oregon taxpayer.

What’s the best thing about working for the Freedom Foundation?

I love working with a great, hard-working team of freedom fighters who share my core values. Do you have any special hobbies or talents?

In his free time, I love cooking and entertaining friends and family, practicing with my band.

OnMarch 16, the Florida Legislature made good on its promises to hold government unions accountable to the taxpayers who fund them by passing out of committee two companion bills that would curtail the influence of Big Labor over the state’s public workorce and, by extension, government at every level.

Senate Bill 256, authored by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, and House Bill 1445, sponsored by Rep. Dean Black, both Republicans, have now passed their first committee hearings and continue on their way to the governor’s desk, sending a strong statement that public employee unions cannot command control over government employee paychecks and the politics the unions support with those union dues dollars.

The proposals, collectively dubbed the “Paycheck Protection Bill,” include language that would, among other things: n prevent the state from deducting dues on behalf of unions from public employees’ paychecks, forcing unions to do their own billing and collections; n require audits of unions representing public employees; n require union membership cards to include wording echoing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which recognized the right of public employees to decline union membership, due and fees with no loss of representation or benefits; n limit the compensation of union officers to no more than their highest-paid member; and, n close the legal loopholes unions use to prevent members from voting to decertify them.

Both bills exempt law enforcement and firefighter unions from the proposed changes.

Florida lawmakers have considered similar bills in the past without success, but the GOP currently holds decisive advantages in both the House and Senate.

Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, issued a statement characterizing the bill as “…an attack, pure and simple, on

By RUSTY BROWN, Southen Director

educators’ basic freedoms and rights.” Baloney.

The law would do nothing to prevent state, county and local workers from organizing and bargaining collectively for better wages, benefits and working conditions the rightful role of unions.

It would simply make them more transparent and accountable, which is only a problem if you have something to hide.”

For generations, states without right-to-work protections could compel public employees to either become dues-paying union members or charge nonmembers a so-called “agency fee.”

The Supreme Court, in Janus, affirmed that mandatory union participation violates the workers’ First Amendment rights to free speech and association, but the ruling has been difficult to enforce.

These measures in Florida are nothing more than a way to scale back long-entrenched protections to which unions were never entitled under the Constitution in the first place.

If workers want to be in a union, this bill would do nothing to stop them. It just protects the rights of those who don’t.”

“This is a bad bill,” Gretchen Robinson, a Florida Education Association member, told Orlando Weekly. “It’s a mean bill. It’s going to hurt families, and it’s going to hurt all educators’ families and especially it’s going to hurt working-class families.”

In fact, the only thing the bill could conceivably damage is the continued viability of the FEA, which currently only has a 54 percent membership rate a number that could easily drop even further once a safeguard is implemented to verify union membership data.

“These bills are pro-worker because they make it easier for state employees to do what’s in their best interest rather than what’s in the best interest of their union,” Brown said. “Even better, it makes the state government accountable to the residents of Florida rather than a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Labor, the way it is in too many other states.”