SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. – Documents recently made public by San Bernardino County, Calif., officials detail the creation by Teamsters Local 1932 of a committee whose sole aim is to prevent the Freedom Foundation from informing county employees of their constitutional right to opt out of union dues and still keep their jobs.
The documents were released in response to a public records request made by the Freedom Foundation after learning the union had been refusing to honor the opt-out requests of county workers.
“Teamsters 1932 and its president, Kathleen Brennan, understand we are a direct threat to their unconstitutional, anti-worker, dues-skimming monopoly,” said Sam Coleman, the Freedom Foundation’s California outreach director. “Since last October, our canvassers have been working each week to inform county workers of rights Kathleen Brennan evidently wants to suppress.”
The committee’ mission statement makes no pretense about its motives. It reads:
“(The) Freedom Foundation is paying people to stand outside county buildings to ‘educate’ our members on how to opt out. We need our own committee to fight this.”
“In addition to Ms. Brennan, other members of this anti-freedom committee include (Teamsters 1932 officers) Abraham Gallegos and Tizoc Arenas,” noted Coleman. “This committee reports to business agent Carlos Gonzales and, unlike other Teamsters 1932 committees we’ve learned about through our public records request, this one is ongoing with no set end-date.”
Government unions like Teamsters 1932 understand once workers become aware of labor’s destructive agenda and indifference to worker concerns, they’re no longer willing to have their dues money used to pay for it.
The only way these unions – and union leaders like Kathleen Brennan – know to prevent workers from opting out is to keep them in the dark. And government employers are complicit with the unions in withholding information about workers’ rights under last summer’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus vs. AFSCME – declaring union membership is no longer a condition of employment for public employees.
“The Freedom Foundation is the only organization that elicits this kind of a response from government unions because we use the union’s own tactics against them to free workers from forced unionization,” said Coleman. “Unfortunately for Kathleen Brennan and Teamsters 1932,we’re not a group that can be bullied away – and we’re not going anywhere.”
