In its lead editorial this morning, the Wall Street Journal chronicled SEIU 925’s membership collapse in a piece headlined, “Dumping the Union Label. In Washington state, workers drop out when told that they can.“
The editorial highlighted the Freedom Foundation’s successful efforts to notify family childcare workers of their right to opt out of their union—which led to an unprecedented loss of 51 percent of the union’s members in just the past year.
“Following the Supreme Court’s ruling,” the editorial noted, “the Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank in Washington, put in a public records request for the contact information of workers who had the right to opt out. The Freedom Foundation then informed the childcare workers that they have the right not to join the union. Workers have opted out in droves.”
For the past year, the Freedom Foundation has embarked on an aggressive campaign to inform family childcare providers of their constitutional right to leave the union. The Freedom Foundation contacted providers with emails, direct mail, phone calls, social media and cable TV advertising, and even went door to door to personally explain that SEIU can no longer force them to stay in the union.
The door-to-door program alone has been a tremendous success in reaching providers. Freedom Foundation paid canvassers and volunteers have personally spoken to more than 2,500 childcare providers over the past five months.
The Freedom Foundation’s Union Transparency and Reform Project is working. Freeing individuals from the tyranny and immorality of forced unionization is a just cause.
SEIU 925 is just the beginning as we expand our efforts to educate workers who are trapped in other government unions.
“The Freedom Foundation is fighting back in court,” the editorial concludes, “but the episode is another lesson that public unions don’t prosper without political coercion.”
