The unions representing the nation’s public employees this week observed, but most assuredly didn’t celebrate, the 100,000th government employee to opt out of union membership and dues thanks to the determined efforts of the Freedom Foundation.
In total, it’s estimated the Freedom Foundation has already cost public-sector unions a whopping $150 million, and the number is increasing exponentially now that the organization has gone nationwide.
First, a brief history.
Almost from the moment President Kennedy put his signature to an executive order allowing federal government employees to organize — a move resisted even by liberal scion Franklin Roosevelt, by the way — public-sector unions have been among the most generous benefactors of the American Left.
With someone else’s money.
In almost half the country — the 23 states without right-to-work protections for unionized workers — the arrangement became a license to steal.
Contrary to conservative candidates who have to ask for donations from people who donate voluntarily one by one, liberals seeking office enjoy the luxury of cashing massive checks from unions where members had little control over whether or not to join.
This began to change when in 2014 the U.S. Supreme Court made it in. Harris v. Quinn, ruled that “quasi-public employees” — such as Americans collecting a modest stipend from Medicaid to provide in-home care to a low-income, disabled loved one — could no longer be required to share their income with a union whose services they didn’t need and never asked for.
Four years later, the court granted the same privilege for all employees of government. Janus v. AFSCME that mandatory union membership, dues, and fees in the public workplace are a violation of workers’ First Amendment rights.
The rulings could have freed millions more unhappy public workers, on paper. But unions like the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, Municipal and County Employees, the Teamsters, and assorted teachers’ unions, anticipating both decisions, responded with a well-coordinated campaign of misinformation, disinformation, harassment, and even criminal activity to keep their newly freed members in harness.
These actions were at their worst, involving omission of workers being informed about both the effects and how they might affect them. HarrisAnd JanusIt was. They learned the truth and tried to exercise their opt out rights. However, unions either ignored the worker’s request or dragged their feet until the worker had to file legal action.
At the extreme end of the spectrum, meanwhile, there are numerous examples currently being litigated in which a union operative clearly forged a worker’s signature on a union membership or dues authorization form and continued siphoning dues from his or her paycheck until the fraud was uncovered.
Only one group exists in the country that is entirely focused on using all the tactics necessary to get government unions to respect workers’ rights and follow the Constitution.
In Olympia, Wash., the Freedom Foundation was established as an old think tank that promoted the ideals individual liberty, freedom enterprise and limited government. It shifted its focus to 2014, focusing exclusively on government unions, which have a stranglehold on all levels of government.
Following the Supreme Court’s Harris ruling, the organization fought back against the unions’ bullying tactics by deploying an army of paid canvassers who visited Medicaid caregivers and daycare providers in their own homes to inform them about their opt-out rights.
And when they decided to exercise those rights only to be challenged by the union, the Freedom Foundation’s team of in-house attorneys provided them with pro bono representation.
It worked. It worked so well that the company opened branches in Oregon, California and later Ohio.
Earlier this year, the Freedom Foundation expanded its outreach activities to all 50 states and has become the nation’s recognized leader in the fight against government employee union oppression.
Freedom Foundation celebrated today the 100,000th member of the public who resigned from his or her union thanks to its direct assistance.
That’s money back in the pockets of public employees and out of union coffers. This money is no longer needed to support a radical Leftist, government-strengthening, high-tax agenda. It has been recently expanded to include the defunding and mandatory teaching of Critical Race Theory at public schools.
It’s been a long, tough road and there’s still a lot of fight left in the enemy, but with government unions on the defensive and more and more public employees across the nation choosing freedom with our help, the trend line is definitely moving in the right direction.
Freedom Foundation will be helping 100,000 more public employees to leave their union. But for now, we celebrate with the tens of thousands who’ve already claimed their freedom.
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