OLYMPIA, Wash.—Washington’s government employee unions suffered a pair of devastating losses at the hands of the Freedom Foundation last week in their desperate quest to ensure the workers they represent never know they have the right to opt out of union participation.
“Either development by itself would have been a major rebuke of the unions,” said Freedom Foundation CEO Tom McCabe, “but the combination of both was a one-two punch the likes of which they’ve never experienced in this state. Friday, July 29 was one of the best days in the history of the Freedom Foundation.”
On Thursday, a Seattle appellate court allowed a temporary restraining order to expire, allowing the Freedom Foundation to resume informing thousands of Washington union-represented home healthcare workers of their First Amendment right to stop paying union dues.
A day later, in a group of five cases filed by unions against the Freedom Foundation, a Thurston County judge ruled that the state must release the names of state workers, as it expands its plan to inform all publicly funded workers of their constitutional rights. The court rejected the unions’ argument that the disclosure would violate workers’ privacy.
Both cases deal with the Freedom Foundation’s commitment to informing every taxpayer-funded worker in the state of their First Amendment rights not to support their unions’ political speech.
“The unions could have saved everyone a lot of trouble by being honest with these workers in the first place,” McCabe said. “But they understand that when people are given a choice, they opt out. And every worker who does so costs the union hundreds of dollars every year.”
“Faced with the prospect of losing millions of dollars in guaranteed revenue every year, they’re pulling no punches to make sure no one can get to these workers and tell them the truth,” he said. “But it isn’t working.”
In the first case, SEIU 775—which represents thousands of home healthcare providers—argued the Freedom Foundation was interfering with its contracts with the workers.
The Commissioner of Washington’s Division 1 Court of Appeals, Masako Kanazawa, noted that the trial court had already held that the “requested injunction would constitute a prior restraint on defendant Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s freedom of speech in violation of the First Amendment and the Washington Constitution,” and that the weakness of SEIU’s arguments did not merit overturning the earlier ruling.
In all, SEIU 775’s attorneys filed 30 separate motions to prevent release of the information. King County Superior Court Judge Patrick Oishi rejected the merits of SEIU 775’s case but agreed to leave a temporary injunction in place until July 28 to allow the union time to appeal.
That temporary restraining order dissolved Thursday night at midnight, allowing the Freedom Foundation to continue speaking to home healthcare workers about their constitutional rights thereafter.
In the second case, a group of unions headed by the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) and the Brotherhood of Teamsters insisted it would be a violation of the workers’ rights if their contact information was surrendered to the Freedom Foundation.
But Thurston County Judge Mary Sue Wilson ruled there was nothing in existing state law that exempted this particular group workers from Public Records Act standards that apply to all public employees.
“It was perfectly all right for a private organization to have the workers’ information when the unions were first trying to organize them in 2002,” McCabe pointed out.
“Back then, they simply filed an information request and the names were handed over without objection. But now that they have it, they want to be the only ones who can contact these people.
“This isn’t about protecting anyone’s privacy,” he continued. “It’s about protecting the unions’ monopoly over the flow of information to their funding source. It’s great that the courts have overwhelmingly sided with our efforts to tell these workers the truth, but on a personal level, it’s also extremely gratifying to see them completely expose the unions’ rhetoric for the lie it is.”
