L AW M A K ERS, DON ’ T W E A K EN P UBL IC REC ORDS A C T [4] BEL G AU T HE ‘ NE X T BIG T HING ’ [5] F REEDOM F OUND AT ION WA N T S N A ME S, BIR T HD AT E S [1 0]
LIVINGLIBERTY ‘WE’RE STOKED’ A PUBLICATION OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION | FEBRUARY 2020
LIFEGUARDS CHALLENGE UNIONS WITH FREEDOM FOUNDATION AT THEIR SIDE
Electronic Service Requested
Freedom Foundation PO Box 552 Olympia, WA 98507
M
ore than 20 lifeguards in Orange County and surrounding counties filed a class-action lawsuit on Jan. 6 against the California State Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA), alleging the union violated their Constitutional rights by forcing them to maintain union membership against their express wishes. The lifeguards, employed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation, have sought to leave the union by exercising their rights under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which affirmed that union dues in the public sector are tantamount to political speech and cannot be coerced. Moreover, the ruling also stressed that government employees who choose to pay dues voluntarily are waiving their First Amendment right not to. Consequently, a union membership cannot be valid unless the worker affirmatively agrees to it after being fully advised by the union of his or her rights. CSLEA, however, claims the plaintiffs must stay in the union until the end of their collective bargaining agreement with Parks and Recreation, which expires in 2023. The union’s reasoning relies on an
By JEFF RHODES Managing Editor
unconstitutional “maintenance of membership” provision in its CBA and outlined in state law to force the plaintiffs to continue paying money for another three and half years. “Their argument is absurd on its face,” said Mariah Gondeiro, an attorney with the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit public policy organization representing the lifeguards. “The California State Legislature can’t write laws that exempt its friends from the U.S. Constitution, and the union can’t rely on an unconstitutional state law to deny people their rights.” Scott Schneringer, a member of the San Clemente State Lifeguard Association, gave clear and concise reasons for why he wants his dues deduction to stop. “It’s been year after year of no transparency,” he said. “(And yet we have) no voting rights for (contract) ratification, no medical benefits and no training incentives that are commonplace in other agencies around the state and around the country. “We’re fed up with not being heard and not being listened to,” he said, “and now the law is finally on our side. We couldn’t be more stoked to have the Freedom Foundation to help us out.” The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, also names as plaintiffs California Controller Betty Yee and Attorney General Xavier Becerra because the state continues to illegally deduct dues from the workers’ paychecks. With the Freedom Foundation’s help, more than 100 lifeguards across the southern coast sent opt-out requests to CSLEA last September. The official “letter of withdrawal” stated, “(W)e will no longer pay into a union See LIFEGUARDS Page 10
VOLUME 31 | ISSUE 2
Our mission is to advance individual liberty, free enterprise, and limited, accountable government.
Publisher: Tom McCabe Editor: Jeff Rhodes
CONTACT Freedom Foundation PO Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507
(360) 956-3482 FreedomFoundation.com
“Quote”
[2]
|
LIVING LIBERTY
A PUBLI CAT I ON OF T HE FREED OM FOU NDATION
CONTENTS PAGE 3
PAGE 4
THE CASE FOR FREEDOM
LEADERSHIP MEMO
By MAXFORD NELSEN Reprinted from the SEATTLE TIMES Seattle’s Proposed Campaign Finance Laws Another Union Giveaway.
By TOM McCABE Lifeguards Provide 130 Good Reasons Why the Freedom Foundation Needs to be in California.
PAGE 5
EDITORIAL Reprinted from the SEATTLE TIMES Legislature, Don’t Weaken Public Records Laws.
What They Said & What They Meant
LITIGATING FREEDOM By JEFF RHODES Janus Softened the Unions Up, but It’s Belgau That Could End Up Finishing Them Off.
PAGES 6 & 7
~ of the month ~
State’s Best-Read Newspapers Can’t Resist Spotlighting the Freedom Foundation’s Latest Outreach Effort to Washington Teachers.
PAGE 8 OREGON UPDATE
By JASON DUDASH Teachers Sue to Leave Union on Their Own Terms.
“While proponents say they are most concerned with privacy rights and identity theft, (HB 1888) is really about a fight between public employee unions and the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank that uses public employee databases to inform employees of their option to opt out of union membership.” FRED OBEE,
Executive Director, Washington Newspaper Publishers Association, Op-ed, GoAnacortes.com Jan. 20, 2020
Nothing in this publication should be construed as an attempt to aid or hinder the election of any elected official or candidate.
the
INCREDIBLE
SHRINKING
UNION
By JASON DUDASH SEIU 503’s Political Spending Slashed by More Than 60%.
STARRING
SEIU 503
PAGE 9
SPOTLIGHT ON CALIFORNIA
Reprinted from the OPANGE COUNTY REGISTER Unions Can’t Just Decide for Themselves Which Supreme Court Rulings to Obey. By SAMUEL COLEMAN Sacremento School District’s Chumminess with Teachers’ Unions Could Sow the Seeds of Its Financial Downfall.
A Freedom Foundation Production
PAGE 10
FREEDOM IN ACTION By JIM CAMDEN Reprinted from THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW Freedom Foundation Wants Names, Birthdates of Washington Public Workers.
PAGE 11
FREEDOM IN THE NEWS
Freedom Foundation’s Friends, Foes Weigh in On Our Actions.
PAGE 12
ACTION TIMELINE
|
A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION
3
LIFEGUARDS GIVE THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION 130 GOOD REASONS WHY
WE NEED TO BE IN CALIFORNIA
I
Wcan’t think of story in the years I’ve been leading the Freedom Foundation that more accurately depicts what we do and why we do it than the lifeguard story chronicled on page 1 of this issue. It’s got everything: real people who should have never been unionized in the first place; real people who paid their dues faithfully but received no services, no help from their union; real people who were treated unfairly; real people now being helped by the Freedom Foundation’s California team when no one else would stand up to their union oppressors; and, real people who, thanks to the Freedom Foundation, will one day be reimbursed with interest for the back wages the union stole from them. The story exposes every lie the unions tell about themselves in order to continue exploiting people who are literally charged with making life-and-death decisions every day they go to work. And for their trouble, they’re used as little more than a piggy bank for the union leaders and their cronies in elected office. Best of all, it isn’t the Freedom Foundation making these charges. It isn’t even an isolated rank-and-file member. It’s the union’s own local leaders alleging their superiors within the California State Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA) care more about playing politics than they do the workplace concerns of those they claim to represent. Brad Rollins and Jon Hernandez, leaders within the San Clemente State Lifeguards Association, first approached us with their concerns last summer when they heard that the Freedom Foundation was in the business of helping public employees fight back against the unions. Rollins and Hernandez had been pushing CSLEA — parent union of the smaller San Clemente branch — for years to advocate for paid training and other basic benefits, but the union couldn’t be bothered to actually provide service in return for the dues money it was deducting from thousands of paychecks. Fed up, the pair orchestrated a mass opt-out last summer, eventually submitting signed opt-out forms on behalf of 130 disgruntled fellow lifeguards. CSLEA, however, refused to honor them, citing a California state law that prohibits opt-outs while a union’s collective bargaining agreement with the state
agency that employs its workers remains in force. In the case of the By TOM McCABE, CEO lifeguards, CSLEA’s contract with the California State Department of Parks and Recreation isn’t due to expire until 2023, which means all these young lifeguards would be forced to pay dues for three more years.. CSLEA did, however, agree to terminate the lifeguards’ union memberships immediately, stripping them of any status or say in an organization that plans to continue garnishing their paychecks every month until then. Freedom Foundation attorneys quickly discovered the union had no signed dues-authorization forms from many of the lifeguards who were now our plaintiffs. Union bosses were illegally siphoning pay from people who had never given the union permission to do so. More critically, the unions continue to execute membership agreements with lifeguards who haven’t been fully informed that, under Janus, they now have a Constitutional right not to sign. We’ve filed a number of lawsuits making that argument, and we expect the U.S. Supreme Court will utimately invalidate hundreds of thousands of union contracts on that basis. In the meantime, within a few weeks of being contacted by the Freedom Foundation on behalf of the lifeguards, CSLEA agreed to release those who had either never signed a membership authorization at all or had signed with initials — about 100 of the 130 who had submitted opt-out forms. We filed a lawsuit last week on behalf of the rest, and we’re looking forward to prevailing. “We couldn’t be more stoked to have the Freedom Foundation help us out,” said lifeguard Scott Schneringer. Nor could we. When even the union’s own local leaders can’t defend its actions or tactics, someone needs to step in — and no one’s better qualified or stoked than the Freedom Foundation to do just that.
LEADERSHIP
MEMO
LIVING LIBERTY
“
When even the union’s own leaders can’t defend its actions or tactics, someone needs to step in — and no one’s better qualified or more stoked than the Freedom Foundation to do just that.
”
D O S O M E T H I N G F O R F R E E D O M T O D AY
SUPPORT THE FIGHT!
The Freedom Foundation is the only organization on the West Coast that
takes on the hard fights. Every day we stand up to ensure freedom for future generations. Every gift is an investment in the future.
CALL (360) 956-3482, OR VISIT WWW.FREEDOMFOUNDATION.COM
4
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON
THE CASE FOR FREEDOM SEATTLE’S PROPOSED CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW CHANGES ARE JUST ANOTHER GIVEAWAY TO UNIONS By MAXFORD NELSEN Reprinted from the SEATTLE TIMES JAN. 13, 2019
T
he Seattle City Council is close to passing several ordinances, championed by Councilmember M. Lorena González, overhauling the city’s campaign-finance rules — but not for the better. Together, the proposals would impose a potentially unconstitutional crackdown on political participation and speech by entities the City Council doesn’t like — namely, businesses — to the advantage of favored special interests like labor unions. One ordinance, inoffensively titled the “Clean Campaigns Act,” targets independent expenditures — political advertising purchased by a person or entity without coordination with a candidate. Historically, however, Washingtonians had the freedom to spend their own money on political speech as they saw fit. In 1972, voters passed Initiative 276, requiring that political contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed, thus allowing voters to evaluate whether candidates were excessively beholden to special interests. Twenty years later, voters passed Initiative 134, imposing limits on how much a person or entity could contribute to a political candidate, with the goal of preventing candidates from being influenced by large campaign contributions. Seattle subsequently adopted even stricter contribution limits, the highest currently set at $500, for city elections. With contributions to candidates limited to relatively trivial sums, the increasing costs of modern elections have taken the form of independent expenditures not subject to such limits. Ironically, this has made tracking campaign contributions far more difficult.
Often, contributions pass through several political action committees (PACs) before being spent to benefit a candidate. While political insiders still know their backers, voters have a harder time connecting specific expenditures to the original contributors. Further, as candidates lose control over campaign advertising done on their behalf, negative ads become more commonplace. Independent groups care little if negative ads are unpopular if they work, and candidates can disavow independent negative ads while still benefiting from them. These issues have, in turn, produced a steady stream of new campaign-finance regulations, both statewide and in Seattle. The increasing complexity of campaign-finance rules presents enforcement challenges and makes political participation harder for regular people, with complete compliance challenging even for sophisticated campaigns. Unfortunately, the temptation for elected officials to write rules favoring their friends and targeting their opponents, under the guise of preserving democracy and fighting corruption, is irresistible. Enter the “Clean Campaigns Act.” As written, the proposal would limit contributions to PACs making independent expenditures in city elections to $5,000. However, there are two ways to avoid this restriction. First, an entity could purchase independent expenditures on its own. Most businesses lack the resources and desire to develop in-house political operations just to navigate Seattle elections, preferring instead to contribute to PACs operated by professional consultants. Meanwhile, major unions generally already have permanent,
internal political teams and many already make political expenditures from their dues-funded general budgets. Second, PACs receiving only contributions of $100 or less from at least 100 sources — referred to as “limited contributor committees” — could purchase unlimited independent expenditures and contribute up to $10,000 to other PACs making independent expenditures, twice the limit for other entities. While it would be challenging for businesses to centrally collect the hundreds and thousands of small-dollar contributions needed to form a competitive “limited contributor committee,” many unions already have separate PACs stocked with (usually) voluntary contributions from members. Nearly every national union headquarters maintains such a fund. Unlike their business counterparts, unions’ large, automatic membership base means their PACs would have little difficulty clearing the participation threshold needed to spend unlimited sums on independent expenditures influencing city elections. Though organized labor wouldn’t gain new flexibility or resources, it would doubtless cheer the hobbling of its political competitors in private industry. Such anti-speech political favoritism isn’t just bad policy, but likely unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and subsequent federal court rulings mean restrictions on independent expenditures rest on shaky constitutional footing, as even progressive legal experts supporting such proposals grudgingly acknowledge. While independent expenditures have some drawbacks, prohibiting people from spending their own money on political speech is overly draconian. Instead, reevaluating limits on contributions to candidates could prove more productive. A second proposed ordinance would forbid American companies with even minimal foreign ownership from making political contributions or independent expenditures benefiting candidates. In today’s global economy, this could lock hometown heavyweights like Amazon and others out of city politics.
LEGISLATURE, DON’T WEAKEN THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT Reprinted from the SEATTLE TIMES JAN. 10, 2019
W
ashingtonians should be celebrating a new level of hard-won transparency as the Legislature convenes on Monday. But some lawmakers are still angling to weaken the state’s Public Records Act. Legislators tried for years to evade the act’s disclosure requirements. Last month, the state Supreme Court affirmed legislators themselves are subject to the act, in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of media organizations. During the lawsuit, legislators passed a bill exempting themselves from the law. Outraged, more than 20,000 citizens asked the governor to veto the bill, which he did. This ought to be settled. Legislative leaders on Thursday pledged to disclose public records and said they aren’t planning another attempt to weasel out of the rules. Nevertheless, several legislators have plans to gouge a massive new hole in the records act that would make it vastly more difficult for the public to hold public employees accountable. This is being done under the guise of protecting people from identity theft, exploiting fears of cybercrime. House Bill 1888, proposed by Reps. Zack
Hudgins, D-Tukwila, and Javier Valdez, D-Seattle, would prevent disclosure of state employee birth dates. That sounds innocuous, but birth dates are essential to identifying individuals. Truly sensitive personal information, such as Social Security numbers, cannot be disclosed. Birth dates are routinely disclosed by the state — they’re on widely disseminated voter rolls. If exposing a birth date opened the door to thievery, virtually everyone could be victimized at this point. Yet rates of identity theft are declining nationally and have fallen since 2015 in Washington. Fraud is a legitimate concern, but in this case it’s a smoke screen to hide public employees from the public. This is being done at the behest of unions feuding with the conservative Freedom Foundation over what information public employees receive about union options. The Freedom Foundation is aggressively notifying public employees they have no obligation to pay union fees, a right affirmed by
the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus ruling. Unions are pressing legislators and voters to obscure the identity of public employees so the foundation can’t reach them. All sides should stand down. State leadership should defuse the situation by ensuring every employee receives clear, unbiased information about their options. This matters because the public and press must know who the public employs to hold them accountable. Birth dates were essential for this newspaper to identify 159 school coaches fired or reprimanded for sexual misconduct from harassment to rape, at least 98 of whom were still coaching or teaching. The Coaches Who Prey series also found school officials failing to investigate or report them, enabling some to continue coaching elsewhere. Because birth dates are public records, The Times could also identify at least 40 public university and college employees exploiting a loophole in state retirement laws. They were “double dipping,” with some collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars, at a time when lean budgets were forcing universities to cut programs and raise tuition. Great progress has been made to bring transparency to Washington government. Don’t backslide with HB 1888.
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION
LITIGATING FREEDOM JANUS SOFTENED UNIONS UP, BUT IT’S BELGAU THAT COULD FINISH THEM OFF
T
o use a boxing metaphor, Janus v. AFSCME — the landmark 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which mandatory union dues or fees for government employees were recognized as a violation of their First Amendment rights — delivered a body blow to the nation’s powerful public-sector unions and the liberal politicians who’ve grown accustomed to gorging themselves on someone else’s money. But it was no lucky punch. Janus was made possible by a string of preceding decisions that wore down the unions’ resistance and exposed their soft underbelly. With any luck, Belgau v. Inslee — heard on Dec. 10 by the reliably activist 9th Circuit Court in Seattle and a cinch to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court no matter which side prevails — could be a knockout punch for the unions because it has the potential to invalidate millions of existing union membership agreements simply by enforcing Janus as its author intended. Legal historians trace the genesis of this string of union disappointments to 1977, when SCOTUS first recognized in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that compulsory union membership for government employees was unconstitutional because their dues money was frequently funneled without their permission to political candidates and causes they didn’t support. But rather than simply making union dues optional altogether, the justices — citing the need to preserve “labor peace” — stitched together a union-centric compromise under which workers could symbolically opt out of membership but still be required to pay the union for negotiating a collective bargaining agreement that might also benefit nonmembers. Under the scheme, newly freed government employees were compelled instead to pay an “agency fee” calculated by subtracting only the cost of the union’s political activity from what the worker had been paying in normal dues. But since it was the union doing the calculating, the two sums were typically so similar that opting out was rarely worth the trouble for most workers — particularly since it also meant giving up what little voice they had in the union’s actions to begin with. Even though the court conceded it violated the First Amendment, unions were allowed to continue writing checks on the bank accounts of every public employee who didn’t want to lose his or her job. In the ensuing years, a number of cases (Davenport
5
What They
&
What They
By JEFF RHODES, Managing Editor
What he said: “The Freedom Foundation and conservatives are corrupt and only want to ensure rich, white people are in power so they can rape and destroy people who aren’t like them.”
v. Washington Education Association, Knox v. SEIU, etc.) chipped away at the union’s monopoly over the public workforce and kept the issue from disappearing altogether, but things began to heat up in earnest when the Supreme Court in 2014 issued a 5-4 ruling in Harris v. Quinn that made union participation voluntary for thousands of Medicaid-compensated childcare and homecare providers. Although Harris itself was a narrow decision affecting only a relatively small subset of the total public work force, Justice Samuel Alito, in his majority opinion, signaled the court might consider extending the same opt-out rights to all government employees when he wrote: “(It is a) bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party.” Sure enough, two years later, the justices heard arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association — in which a California teacher challenged the state’s right to compel her association with a labor union — and appeared poised to finally overturn the Abood compromise when conservative Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died, leaving the court deadlocked. It took another two years before the seat was filled by Justice Neil Gorsuch and a ruling could be issued in Janus affirming the right of all public employees to eschew both dues and agency fees. But much to the unions’ chagrin, Janus went even further. Again writing for the majority, Alito emphasized: “Neither an agency fee nor any other payment to the union may be deducted from a nonmember’s wages, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.” In plain English, this means a union cannot simply assume workers want to be union members — and pay dues for the privilege. It must first ask their permission. Further, Alito also noted: “By agreeing to pay, nonmembers are waiving their First Amendment rights, and such a waiver cannot be presumed.”
JON TERPAC
What he meant: Program Coordinator, “I am the face Interpreter Services Harborview Med Center of modern Seattle, Wash. liberalism. I Email, Dec. 16, 2019 hate everyone who doesn’t agree with me. I’m obsessed with race and, worst of all, I’m absolutely convinced my despicable views make me a better, more tolerant person than those I despise and would gladly persecute if only I could.” n n n
Thus, before a union can begin deducting dues from a worker’s paycheck, it must not only have the worker’s written consent, but it also must be able to show he or she fully understands that by paying dues they are waiving their right not to. This standard is at the heart of Belgau, whose plaintiff is a Washington state employee suing his union and Gov. Jay Inslee over artificial barriers erected by the state and the union to make the opt-out process more complicated in the aftermath of Janus. The Supreme Court didn’t create a new right in Janus; it affirmed a right that has always existed but had been violated for generations. That distinction could have potentially wide-ranging ramifications for government employee unions going forward because it impacts all public employees, regardless of when they signed their membership agreement. The burden of proof has shifted. Because the unions have never informed employees of their right not to join or pay dues — and still dispute whether they need to — virtually every union card authorizing state deductions is null and void. Judges at the trial court didn’t accept that reasoning, but the appeal is now in the hands of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And should Belgau reach the U.S. Supreme Court, it will be heard by the justices who possess a far greater insight into what Janus actually requires. As they should, because they wrote it.
She said: “The Freedom Foundation is nothing about freedom but more about enslavement.” She meant: “Did slaves have a choice about where they worked or on what CHRISTINE terms? No, JOHNSON Sedro Wooley, Wash. and neither Facebook post, did public Sept. 30, 2019 employees when union membership and dues was mandatory — as they used to be and and we want them to become again.” n n n
Shee said: “The Freedom Foundation is a hateful group with nothing to do with freedom. They want to steal jobs, benefits away from workers. She meant: “To accuse someone of ‘stealing,’ you first have to assume the person who KATHLEEN MANCE has it taken Enumclaw, Wash. from them Retired Proofreader owned it. This Facebook post is how social- Dec. 24, 2019 ists think. In fact, government jobs belong to the taxpayers, and they — not union thugs — are the ones with the right to decide who fills them and on what terms.
6
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON
MAILER URGES TEACHERS TO STOP PAYING DUES AND ‘SAVE UP TO $1,200’ By DAHLIA BUZZAZZ Reprinted from the SEATTLE TIMES JAN. 2, 2020
I
f people don’t know their rights, they can’t exercise them. And that’s exactly what government unions want for publicsector employees in Ohio. When Seattle teacher Alice Lippitt checked the mail last week, she was puzzled by a flyer she found. “What the heck?” she said she remembers thinking. “How did they find my address?” At first glance, the flyer, sent to thousands of Washington teachers over the holidays, looks like a lastchance sale advertisement from a department store. It was actually an invitation from a conservative think tank to “save up to $1,200” by opting out of paying membership dues to the Washington Education Association (WEA), the statewide teacher’s union. “Give yourself a raise this Christmas and every Christmas to come!” it reads. The mailers are part of a wider and litigious political battle between the state’s labor unions and the Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based conservative think tank, whose website says the group is “working to reverse the stranglehold government unions have” on state and local policy. Using information gleaned from public records requests, the Freedom Foundation has also knocked on doors and sent emails to public employees notifying them of their right to opt out of paying dues under a 2018 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME. Reached by phone last week, Jami Lund, the Freedom Foundation’s senior policy analyst, said the communications are intended to place a check on the power of unions, keep them accountable and prevent them from “overcharging” their members. He added that some public employees, including those who are conservative, don’t want to fund union activities they don’t agree with and feel pressured to be “in lockstep.” WEA, a formidable lobbying force with close to 100,000 members, has been aware of the group’s efforts for years. A post on the union’s blog advises members to ignore the Foundation’s “annoying tactics.” “We see it as nothing but an attempt to harass and intimidate school employees,” said Rich Wood, a WEA spokesman. The Freedom Foundation is a nonprofit and member of the State Policy Network, an alliance of conservative think tanks, some of which
are engaged in similar anti-union marketing campaigns, The Guardian and The Intercept reported. One mailer from the Freedom Foundation obtained by The Guardian said, “The consequences of a favorable ruling (in the Janus case) are huge. Imagine tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars currently used to push damaging leftwing causes and candidates … vanishing.” Unions have traditionally been a reliable funding source for Democrats, and WEA, with close to 100,000 members, has the largest political action committee in the state. Union members pay a combination of dues that fund local, state, regional and national union associations. WEA’s dues this year are $511 for full-time certificated teachers. The D.C.-based National Education Association’s dues this year are $196. Local dues are different for each district. “It does make sense to have access to an advocate,” Lund said. But do you have to send money to Washington, D.C., “when the actual work is going to be done by local folks?” It’s unclear how effective the Foundation’s outreach has been with teachers. Lund said it’s hard to get an accurate estimate, and WEA declined to reveal comparisons of its membership numbers before and after the Janus ruling. Anti-union messaging can be a hard sell in Washington state — especially among teachers, many of whom belong to unions that secured double-digit raises for their members in the years following a court-ordered state education funding overhaul in 2017. Nearly 20 percent of the working population here are union members, the third-highest rate in the country after New York and Hawaii, according to USA Today. “I just throw their stuff away,” said Sarah Ard, a teacher in the Kennewick School District who said she’s been receiving the Foundation’s messages to her personal email and mailing address for years. “The great part about unions is solidarity and that you stand with each other,” said Shraddha Shirude, a math teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle. “It becomes a very individualistic thing to say, ‘I’m gonna pull my money.’ “ Shirude, a second-year teacher, said the flyer appeared to be targeted at those who may be concerned about making ends meet. She said the dues could be adjusted to ease those concerns for beginner teachers, but, “I’m not going to give up on the union because of that. You join the union so you can communicate your needs.”
NEWSPAPERS IN STATE’S 2 BIGGEST CITIES INFORM THEIR READERS ABOUT OUR TEACHER OUTREACH By JEFF RHODES, Managing Editor
JAN. 9, 2020
N
ewspapers in Washington’s two largest cities published features during January about the Freedom Foundation’s latest outreach effort to the state’s teachers. And while neither was particularly flattering on its face, the appearance of both within days of each other simply proves the Freedom Foundation story is too big to ignore. The Seattle Times’ piece ran first, on Jan. 2, under the headline, “Mailer urges Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and save up to $1,200,” and accompanied, helpfully by, a photo of the flyer. No doubt with the help of the Washington Education Association — whose toxic spokesman, Rich Wood, is also quoted — reporter Dahlia Bazzazz has no trouble finding union shills to trash the mailers but no one to represent the 43 teachers statewide who took our advice and opted out within days of its arrival in their mailbox. The Freedom Foundation wasn’t entirely unrepresented, though. “Reached by phone last week, Jami Lund, the (Freedom) Foundation’s senior policy analyst, said the communications are intended to place a check on the power of unions, keep them accountable and prevent them from ‘overcharging’ their members. He added that some public employees, including those who are conservative, don’t want to fund union activities they don’t agree with and feel pressured to be ‘in lockstep.’ ” Bazzazz noted the mailing piece wasn’t the organization’s first effort to contact teachers in particular or public employees in general: “The mailers are part of a wider and litigious political battle between the state’s labor unions and the Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based conservative think tank, whose website says the group is ‘working to reverse the stranglehold government unions have’ on state and local policy. Using information gleaned from public records requests, the (Freedom) Foundation has also knocked on doors and sent emails to public employees notifying them of their right to opt out of paying dues under a 2018 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME.” Meanwhile, a story headlined, “Flyers urge teachers in Spokane, statewide to opt out of union,” was published a week later in Spokane’s Spokesman-Journal and mostly covered the same ground, including referencing the Seattle Times story and rehashing the same half-quotes from Lund. Reporter Jim Allen, however, did manage to track down Spokane Education President Jeremy Shay, who said, as a teacher, he usually simply tosses the mailers in the trash but, as leader of his union, “fields occasional questions from new teachers about the flyers.” As always, it isn’t so much what they write about the Freedom Foundation that matters. It’s that our activities are so consequential they must be acknowledged even when they aren’t celebrated.
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION
FLYERS URGE TEACHERS TO OPT OUT OF UNION By JIM ALLEN Reprinted from the SPOKESMAN-REVIEW JAN. 9, 2020
T
he flyers, tens of thousands of them, arrived during the holidays at the homes of educators in Spokane and throughout the state. “Give yourself a raise this Christmas and every Christmas to come!” they read. At first glance, the brightly-colored flyer looks like a last-chance sale advertisement from a retailer, including a chance to “save up to $1,200.” A website, optouttoday.com, shows you how. Actually, it’s an invitation from an Olympia-based conservative think tank to save that money by opting out of paying membership dues to the Washington Education Association, the statewide teacher’s union. “They’ve been doing this every year, so I wasn’t surprised,” said Jeremy Shay, who as a teacher simply tossed them in the trash. Now, as president of the Spokane Education Association, he fields occasional questions from new teachers about the flyers. They are part of an intensifying battle between the state’s labor unions and the Freedom Foundation, which states on its website that it’s “working to reduce the stranglehold unions have” on state and local laws and policies. Following a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Janus vs.
Spokane Education Association President Jeremy Shay. AFSCME case, public employees are free to opt out of paying dues to their unions. Using information gleaned from public records requests, the group has supplemented the flyers by going doorto-door. Jami Lund, senior policy analyst with the Foundation, told the Seattle Times last week that the flyers are intended to prevent them from “overcharging” their members.
Lund added that some public employees don’t want to fund union activities they don’t agree with and feel pressured to be “in lockstep.” However, the WEA sees the flyers as “nothing but an attempt to harass and intimidate school employees,” said Rich Wood, a spokesman for the 100,000-member union. In Spokane, Shay said Tuesday that “Our members know that the Freedom Foundation is anti-public education. They work against what we work for.” “We want high-quality public education, but their mission is to undermine that,” said Shay, who noted that the Freedom Foundation is funded primarily by out-of-state corporations. A nonprofit, the foundation is member of the State Policy Network, an alliance of conservative think tanks. WEA members pay a combination of dues to local, state, regional and national union associations. This year, WEA dues this year are $511 for full-time certificated teachers, who also pay $196 annually to the D.C.-based National Education Association. Local dues vary by district. “It does make sense to have access to an advocate,” Lund said. “But do you have to send money to Washington, D.C., “when the actual work is going to be done by local folks?” It’s unclear how effective the campaign has been in eroding financial support for unions, both sides say. However, Shay said the effect in Spokane has been minimal.
7
8
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON
TEACHERS SUE TO LEAVE UNION ON THEIR TERMS
F
our Hillsboro school employees sued their union and school district on Dec. 5, in federal court, arguing the union slow-walks requests from employees who want to quit their unions, in violation of their rights under the U.S. Constitution. The Freedom Foundation, a Northwest organization that urges public employees to quit their unions, is backing the lawsuit. The four workers sued the American Federation of Teachers, the Oregon chapter of the federation, and Hillsboro Classified United, AFT Local 4671, as well as the Hillsboro Unified School District in Portland’s U.S. District Court. In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court said in Janus v. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees that requiring public sector workers to pay dues to a union when they didn’t want to be members is
By JASON DUDASH, Oregon Director
unconstitutional. If the Hillsboro case is successful, it would do more damage to public labor union membership across Oregon. The Freedom Foundation argues that the unions are violating the employees’ rights under the First Amendment by enforcing the “restrictive language” in the cards union members sign when they sign up for the union, limiting the plaintiffs’ freedoms of speech and association. Plaintiffs claim the process is burdensome and confusing and can keep workers on the union’s membership rolls much longer than they want to be. The lawsuit alleges that the American Federation of Teachers Local 4671 requires its members to stay in the
Oregon Update
A closer look at the successes being achieved by the Freedom Foundation’s office in the Beaver State.
union and pay monthly dues for at least a year after joining, and only allows them to resign their membership during the month of June. Claudia Strickland, a plaintiff in the suit, joined the union in November 2018, the lawsuit claims. Strickland notified the union in July that she wanted to stop being a member. But the union denied her request because she hadn’t been a member for at least a year. Under the union’s rules, she has to keep paying dues until June 2020. “So first of all, it’s extremely confusing,” said Rebekah Millard, a lawyer for the Freedom Foundation. “Second of all, they’re choosing to enforce it in the most onerous way possible.” Strickland, and another plaintiff, Linda Newton, who signed up after the Janus decision was issued, weren’t informed of their right to decline joining the union in the first place, Millard said. The other two plaintiffs joined in April 2018, about three months before the Supreme Court’s decision. Neither the AFT-Oregon nor the AFT Local 4671 could be reached for comment. The Freedom Foundation, which has offices in Ohio, Oregon, California and Washington, is backing similar lawsuits in the west. And there are roughly 30 to 50 similar lawsuits across the country, Millard said. A spokeswoman for the Hillsboro Unified School District said that the district was not prepared to comment on the lawsuit Dec. 5. The Freedom Foundation faces criticism from labor groups as a bad faith actor, motivated not by workers’ constitutional rights but by a desire to defund unions, who frequently donate to and share their organizing might with liberal campaigns. The number of state workers choosing to pay dues to their union has declined since the Janus decision, state data show.
SEIU 503 CUTS ITS POLITICAL SPENDING BY OVER 60%
S
ervice Employees International Union Local 503 (SEIU 503) has been a major focus of the Freedom Foundation since the organization expanded into Oregon in 2015, and as one of the state’s biggest government unions and political spenders it’s certainly earned all the love. Since the landmark Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME in June 2018 – which recognized the right all public employees to opt out of union membership and dues without penalty — members of SEIU 503 have received hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail, emails and texts, as well as visits to their homes and offices, all designed to inform them of their newly affirmed rights and highlight the union’s hypocrisy and deceptive tactics. Payroll data from the state of Oregon quickly validated our efforts. Public records requests showcased that a whopping 33 percent of state employees and over 40 percent of homecare workers represented by the union have exercised their right to opt out of union dues within the first year of Janus. The release of their 2019 LM-2 report further highlights the extent of our successes by showcasing the damage done to their pocketbooks. In addition to the now-expected lower membership numbers — even as government continues to grow at an alarming rate — and collecting more
comfortable six-figure salaries on the By JASON DUDASH, Oregon Director
than $2 million less in members’ dues from the previous year, 503’s political spending has dropped by more than 60 percent since we began pre-Janus outreach. In its 2017 report the hyper-partisan union spent more than $4.1 million of its members’ dues dollars on liberal political activities and lobbying in Oregon. By 2018. SEIU 503’s political spending had dropped sharply to $2.2 million, and the newest report shows the even further decline to just $1.6 million. This is not only a victory for the Freedom Foundation; it is a victory for all Oregonians and particularly a victory for public employees who were once forced against their will to fund political causes for which they objected. SEIU’s better days are clearly behind them. SEIU 503 is a fading organization struggling to maintain credibility and relevance by: n denying members their constitutional right to opt out by holding them hostage to so called annual “opt-out windows”; n forging workers’ signatures on membership cards, all so it can continue to pay its union bosses very
the
INCREDIBLE
SHRINKING
UNION STARRING
SEIU 503 A Freedom Foundation Production
back of working Oregonians while pushing their ultra-liberal political agenda. Until SEIU starts following the law, they can certainly expect to continue to receive our unwavering attention.
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION
UNIONS CAN’T JUST CHOOSE WHICH SUPREME COURT RULINGS TO OBEY Reprinted from the ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER Dec. 10, 2019
A
federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Nov. 19 heard oral arguments on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by several California teachers against their union, which is desperately hoping it never has to address the core issues in the case. California’s powerful public-sector unions are used to getting their way as they rack up legislative and court victories on everything from pensions to school reform. Some unions seem to struggle, though, on those rare occasions when they don’t prevail. We’ve seen this following the Supreme Court’s landmark Janus decision from June 2018. In recently filed challenges, several California public employees argue that unions are violating that decision by making it inordinately difficult for employees to withhold their dues payments. In Janus, the court ruled that unions can no longer force employees to pay any
form of dues. Previously, they could withhold the portion that unions used for politics, but still were required to pay that portion used for collective bargaining. The court declared it a First Amendment violation to force people to support organizations whose views they might not share. Unions had seen this decision coming, given the conservative tilt of the court. In California, the Legislature passed several laws designed to help unions withstand Janus, including one that lets union organizers provide onthe-job orientations to public employees. Our state’s unions have received plenty of special privileges but, ultimately, they still need to follow the court. In one case, a University of California Davis Medical Center employee has alleged in federal court that the union restricted his ability to end his
membership and continues to collect fees. “The legal complaint describes an involved process” when plaintiffs tried to leave the union, the Sacramento Bee reported. There are several other similar cases. Even before Janus, unions were known to put roadblocks in the way of
SACRAMENTO SCHOOL DISTRICT’S CHUMMINESS WITH TEACHERS’ UNION COULD WIND UP DRIVING IT STRAIGHT INTO FINANCIAL DISASTER
employees who wanted refunds on the political dues portion. That’s why states should follow Alaska’s post-Janus model and replace a unioncontrolled opt-out system with an employee-controlled opt-in process. In the meantime, various organizations (including the Freedom Foundation and the California Policy Center) are helping union employees exert their rights. We get it. California unions lose so infrequently that this is new territory for them. Nevertheless, the courts need to require unions to play by rules — just like everybody else.
Spotlight on
California A closer look at the successes being achieved by the Freedom Foundation’s office in the Golden State.
JAN. 17, 2020
L
et’s say you want to buy a new flatscreen television but don’t have the money to do it today. You could wait a month or two until you’ve saved up enough to pay cash, or you could buy it on credit and hope you can come up with the money later. Are you making a sound fiscal choice? Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) administrators are asking themselves the same question today after an audit performed by the California State Auditors Office in December made it clear the district is in big trouble. SCUSD has been crawling toward fiscal insolvency for the past decade, but recently it’s been more of a sprint toward the bankruptcy finish line. Cheering it on is the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA), identified as one of the primary reasons the district is in such poor shape. While SCUSD has had problems for years, its current woes can be traced back to a 2017 collective bargaining agreement with SCTA. According to the report, the labor contract cost the district more than $31 million per year. With total expenditures in 2018 adding up to just over $528 million, this contract alone represents a 5.8 percent increase in spending. This contract included a 7.5 percent raise over the life of the contract, an adjustment of the salary schedule for midcareer staff and reduced student-to-teacher classroom ratios (increasing the need for more teachers). According to SCUSD, employee salaries and
By SAMUEL COLEMAN, California Outreach Director
benefits make up 81.50 percent of its entire budget. Unlike most other school districts, or employers for that matter, the district pays the entire cost of its employees’ healthcare. Teachers in this district don’t pay a penny for their employer-provided healthcare. Frankly, you can’t blame the teachers for this sweet deal. Good pay, a strong pension and incredible healthcare would cause anyone to simply accept the deal and not ask too many questions about how the district could possibly afford to pay it out. The simple answer is the district can’t afford it, and SCTA is to blame for the current situation the district finds themselves in. In May of 2019, the first wake up call came in the form of pink slips handed out to more than 100 staff members of SCUSD. According to Jorge Aguilar, the current superintendent of SCUSD, the cuts were a direct result of their current financial situation. If SCTA thought the budget crisis was simply a bargaining tool, they now know it’s all too real. SCTA gave the district several suggestions on how the district could ‘save’ money in the long term and avert the crisis, however the auditor’s report tells a different story. “In fact, several of the teacher’s union’s suggestions would increase the district’s costs dramatically,” says the State Auditor’s
report Completely blind to the district impending financial doom, SCTA has demanded the district hire even more staff. “Implementing the union’s staffing proposals would increase ongoing district expenditures by at least $36.7 million — the cost of hiring the additional staff to meet the class size reduction goals plus rehiring classified staff not covered by the class size goals.” In other words, SCTA’s grand plan was to double the district’s current deficit. SCUSD is on the verge of state takeover. While bankrupt school districts don’t close or cease to teach students, a takeover would mean firings, layoffs, salary reductions and a wide range of other negative actions that would directly impact teachers and their students. Thankfully, teachers don’t have to go along with a union that isn’t looking out for their best interest. Ever since June 2018, teachers have had the option to cease their dues payments under Janus v. AFSCME. For those teachers in Sacramento, it might be time to consider their options.
9
10
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A P U BL IC AT I ON OF T HE FREEDOM FOUNDAT I ON
FREEDOM IN ACTION We can’t Just hand out the Names and Dates of Public Employees’ birth to any taxpayer who Asks for it, You know.
We Have Rules about these things.
FAN MAIL “I am not the only one at Employment Security who was scammed by my union like this. I do not want to pay $80plus per month for one more year to these people. They cannot be trusted, and I just want out. I am a supervisor at ESD and I just cannot believe they can do these things with no recourse. I need my job as I am the breadwinner for my household (my husband is on disability). I just do not feel their tactics are right. I did send this request to them certified but never did get the signature card back from them. I was going to send this back to the Freedom Foundation anyway, since it said on the website that if they refused to send the information to you guys. I have also included my response back to them where again I request a copy of the card I signed. I had also requested that when the original opt out letter was sent, and I still did not receive a copy of the form. I asked my HR why they were withholding the 1.50 percent and they sent me an unreadable copy of the card and said they were given that card to show I should be at the higher rate. They are using the 4575 code that says maintenance fee. Please let me know if there is anything I can do. Thanks so much.” MICHELE
LIFEGUARDS Continued from page 1
that continually refuses to provide any benefits, career advancement opportunities, monetary pay incentives or career-oriented seasonal lifeguards.” CSLEA won’t let the plaintiffs leave the union, though. The union’s membership coordinator responded on Oct. 17 that she could not honor their
FREEDOM FOUNDATION WANTS NAMES, BIRTHDATES OF PUBLIC EMPLOYEES By JIM CAMDEN Reprinted from the SPOKANE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW DEC. 15, 2019 An anti-union organization is seeking public record information about hundreds of thousands of state and local public employees as part of its ongoing efforts to convince union government workers they should drop their memberships and stop paying dues. Workers for government agencies as well as public colleges and universities are being notified by their human resource offices or other administrators they have until Jan. 2 to go to court try to block the pending Public Records Act request from the Freedom Foundation. Maxford Nelsen, the foundation’s director of labor policy, called it a routine request to update employee records the organization keeps. “We regularly make requests for public employee information,” Nelsen said. The foundation uses the records to locate union employees and send them information on how to opt out of their unions. But some public employees are upset, particularly about the request for birthdates, which they say can be used to get other personal information on the internet.
request because the “window has closed.” The lawsuit seeks declaratory judgments recognizing the state’s maintenance of membership law is unconstitutional, as are the union’s attempts to continue collecting dues because of it. Freedom Foundation attorneys are also demanding an injunction halting the scheme in addition to unspecified damages and the return of all illegally withheld dues.
“I don’t think, just because I work for the state of Washington, that I surrender my privacy,” said Brenda Martinson, a shop steward at Spokane Community College. “A few of my co-workers are survivors of domestic violence” and are worried that information could allow a former abuser to find them. In this particular request, the foundation is seeking the full name, employer, annual compensation, birthdate and retirement system in which each worker currently participates from the state Department of Retirement Systems. The department handles pensions for state workers and many city and county public employees, which means the foundation can avoid making individual requests for information from the various departments and agencies. The foundation has made previous requests for the names and other public information about government employees after court decisions that allow public employees in jobs covered by a union to opt out of membership and not be forced to pay “agency fees” for certain services the union provides. Last fall, the state Supreme Court ruled narrowly in a case pitting the foundation against the state’s public employees unions that the full birthdates held in government records are not automatically exempt from disclosure. The five-member majority ruled birthdates are public and must be released unless they involve employees exempted because of certain occupations, such as law enforcement. In those cases, only the day of birth is released. A four-member minority criticized the decision as making it easy to get information used by identity thieves. The foundation regularly files new requests for public employee information found in govern-
ment records as a way of updating its lists. Some of the data is from requests that resulted in court battles and take years to resolve, Nelsen said. The information was current for the time the public records request was filed, but may be two or three years old by the time it is released. The request for records from the Department of Retirement Systems covers at least 200,000 employees and maybe as many 300,000, he said. It will also include managers and supervisors who aren’t in unions, and the foundation will try to separate them based on job titles or descriptions. In the end, the records will be used for the same thing the foundation has done for several years: trying to get members of public employee unions to drop their membership. It’s one of the foundation’s key objectives, and a person on hold after calling the organization’s Olympia office gets a pitch to leave the union while waiting for a staff member to pick up. Martinson said she has received multiple emails from the foundation telling her how she can opt out her dues and quit the union. “Most of that stuff goes into spam,” she said. Some of it is sent to her work email, she added. “As a taxpayer, that irritates me, because it’s not something we should be spending our time on.” Most information, like the names, positions and salaries of government employees, has long been considered a releasable public record. The Office of Financial Management compiles a searchable list with that information and posts it online every year. But the recent Supreme Court ruling on birthdates could prompt legislation for a special exemption to block that information from public employee lists. Both Nelsen and public employees union officials said they expect that to come up in the 2020 legislative session.
LIVING LIBERTY
|
A PUBLI CATION OF THE FREED OM FOU NDATION
11
FREEDOM IN THE NEWS IN PRINT
Jan. 15, 2029
ON LINE
Jan. 13, 2019
PUBLIC RECORDS ACT COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST ALL WASHINGTON SCHOOL DISTRICTS
SEATTLE REINS IN SPENDING BY ‘FOREIGN-INFLUENCED’ COMPANIES “Critic Maxford Nelsen, director of labor policy at the libertarian Freedom Foundation, called the effort a way for the council to disadvantage companies that oppose its progressive agenda. ‘I don’t think anybody disagrees with the idea that foreign entities should not be influencing U.S. elections,’ Nelsen said. ‘But it’s pretty clear this would lock out many large, predominantly American companies with large payroll in the Seattle area from having a say in local politics in their own hometown.’ ” IN PRINT
ON
Jan. 15, 2019
“A lawsuit filed last month challenged the Freedom Foundation’s recent Public Records Act requests to many government entities demanding certain employee information. A Dec. 27 preliminary injunction prohibits the defendants identified in that lawsuit (none of which were school districts) from disclosing the name, birthdate, duty station/location, or work email of any employee until March 31, 2020, and prohibits those defendants from disclosing such information after March 31 if the employee (or family member) is a domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking victim.” IN PRINT
Jan. 15, 2019
5 ISSUES WASHINGTON LEGISLATURE WILL DEBATE “One exemption that might be debated, however, is a request from public employees to exempt their birthdates from certain state records that can be released under the law. The Freedom Foundation routinely requests those records in an ongoing effort to persuade state employees to withdraw from their union and stop paying dues, and the court has said they are subject to the law at this point.”
PUBLIC WORKERS’ BIRTHDATES NEED TO STAY PUBLIC “Much concern also centers on the Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank that has been using public data — including dates of birth — in a campaign to contact public employees and tell them they have no obligation to pay union dues. Public unions will always have supporters and detractors, but this is just a sidebar to our concern regarding this bill.”
12
LIVING LIBERTY
|
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 DEC. 10 California’s Orange County Register publishes an op-ed chastising the state’s public employee unions for resisting compliance with Janus v. AFSCME. Headlined, “Unions Must Follow Court’s Ruling,” the editorial says the Freedom Foundation is “...helping employees exert their rights.” JAN. 2 Newspapers in Washington’s two largest cities published features during January about the Freedom Foundation’s latest outreach effort to the state’s teachers, and the appearance of both within days of each other simply proves the Freedom Foundation story is too big to ignore. The Seattle Times’ piece ran first, on Jan. 2, under the headline, “Mailer urges Washington state teachers to stop paying their union dues and save up to $1,200,” and accompanied, helpfully by, a photo of the flyer. a story headlined, “Flyers urge teachers in Spokane, statewide to opt out of union,” was published a week later in Spokane’s Spokesman-Journal, referencing the Seattle Times story and Lund’s comments. JAN. 7 The Freedom Foundation holds a press conference in Huntington Beach, Calif., to announce
the filing of its latest lawsuit — this time on behalf of more than two dozen California lifeguards whose union is all too eager to play politics with their dues money but absent when it comes to representing their workplace concerns. California State Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA), the union representing the lifeguards, refused to free more than two dozen lifeguards, arguing they had to remain in the union until the end of its collective bargaining agreement with the California Department of Parks & Recreation, which expires in 2023. JAN. 10 Starting with an editorial in the Seattle Times on Jan. 10, at least a half dozen newspapers in Washington ultimately trash a bill, HB 1888, intruduced in the current legislative session whose purpose is to make it impossible for individuals to obtain the birthdates of public employees in an information request. Although presented as a way to fight identy theft, the papers universally acknowledge the bill is really public employee unions trying to prevent the Freedom Foundation from informing their members of their opt-out rights. JAN. 13 The Seattle Times publishes a guest opinion written by Freedom Foundation Labor Policy Director Max Nelsen critical of a plan by the
BY THE NUMBERS Thanks to the Freedom Foundation’s aggressive outreach program, the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE/AFSCME), the largest state employee union, has dropped 28 percent of its union members. Seattle City Council t`o limit the ability of most big donors to affect municipal elections while leaving unions free to do as they always have. The article, headlined “Labor Unions Would be the Winners of Seattle’s Proposed Campaign Finance Rules,” notes that “Though organized labor wouldn’t gain new flexibility or resources, it would doubtless cheer the hobbling of its political competitors in private industry.” JAN. 20 The Freedom Foundation files a class-action lawsuit on behalf of several University of Washington employees whose attempts to exercise their Constitutionally protected rights to opt out of union membership and dues are being thwarted by the school and the union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 925.The Freedom Foundation is arguing the dues are being seized under a law that gives the union sole discretion over who the university — a state actor — is and isn’t authorized to deduct dues from. The Freedom Foundation further alleges a union cannot impose an irrevocability provision, containing a narrow opt-out window, on union nonmembers without a knowing First Amendment waiver.
OK THEN, WE’RE AGREED. THIS THING FREES EVERYONE, and WE’RE NOT EXCLUDING GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES JUST TO make UNIONS happy, RIGHT?