Union Leaders Furious Over Door-to-Door Tactic Targeting Their Members

Jeff Rhodes
August 4, 2016

Furious? You bet they’re furious. You would be, too, if the dam had just burst and all you had to mop up a tidal wave of truth was a tissue of lies.

A pair of court decisions last week cleared away the last obstacles standing in between the Freedom Foundation and tens of thousands of home healthcare providers forcibly unionized all over Washington state. On Wednesday, the day of reckoning arrived as the Freedom Foundation staff—supplemented by a reliable corps of paid canvassers—fanned out across King County to inform as many providers as possible that they now have a right to tell the union to take a hike.

In all, the teams knocked on more than 1000 doors and spoke face to face with hundreds of caregivers, many of whom didn’t even know they were union members and almost none of whom bore any great love for the union.

A TV crew from Q-13 Fox accompanied one team of canvassers and put together an excellent feature explaining the nature of the victory and showing on camera at least one caregiver who was delighted by the prospect of breaking free from her union.

In response, a flummoxed union spokesperson could only mouth the same, tired talking points about the Freedom Foundation’s donors and “true” motives.

But it didn’t wash. Effective this week, the order of the day is truth—which the Freedom Foundation has on its side in spades.

- Labor

Jeff Rhodes

Vice President for News and Information

Jeff is a native of West Virginia and a graduate of West Virginia University with a degree in journalism. He served in the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis, Wash., as a broadcast journalist and has worked at a number of newspapers in West Virginia and Washington. Most recently, he spent 11 years as editor of the Port Orchard (Wash.) Independent, which earned the 2011 Washington Newspaper Publishers’ Association’s General Excellence Award as the top community newspaper in Washington. Previously, he was editor of the Business Examiner newspaper in Tacoma, Wash., for seven years. Jeff lives in Lacey; he and his wife have grown twin daughters.