Freedom Foundation Misrepresents the Facts

Washington state’s Freedom Foundation (FF) misrepresents the facts in a TV ad it ran recently. In so doing, FF establishes that it is incapable of dealing responsibly with union issues.

First, the teacher featured in the ad comments that he has to pay dues to a union. As he puts it, “A lot of dues.” WA teachers are required by state statute to join a teachers’ union. That much is quite true. State statute, however, also requires the union to represent all teachers, whether they are full members or not. What the Freedom Foundation carefully avoids saying is that it’s a trade off. ’We must represent you and you must belong to us.’ Allowing eligible members to avoid paying dues, while reaping the benefits of dues paying members would clearly be unfair to dues paying members. So far, a truth and a carefully misrepresented allegation.

Next, the narrator says, “Just like most teachers in Washington, Todd Hausman is forced to be in a union, which means paying for someone else’s political agenda.” Again a truth followed by carefully crafted misrepresentations. Why are they misrepresentations?

FF knows very well that there is an ’agency fee’ level membership for teachers who object to the union’s political agenda and which gives those members a discount on their union dues. But they avoid any mention of that fact. FF also knows that union dues are not used to support candidates, which would be unprofessional, but they can be used to support issues programs like initiatives, referendums, and lobbying. Again, FF carefully avoids any mention of these facts.

In this ad, FF makes a great deal about “someone else’s political agenda”, as if members were prevented from participating in decisions. Yet, because of numerous law suits filed by FF, it is fully aware of the union’s governance structure and that all political decisions are made by elected governance representatives. WEA makes decisions with which I and many of my colleagues disagree. However, we can be involved in those decisions at any level we wish, providing we can get ourselves elected to that level. To provide dissenting members with the power FF demands, the union would have to give virtual ‘veto power‘ to any and every single member who objected to a governance decision. No social organization would function under those circumstances.

Finally, the teacher says, ““They took my dues and used that money to fund and support a different candidate and I had absolutely nothing to say about it and no influence what-so-ever in how that money was being spent.” No mention is ever made that this teacher was an elected governance representative for his school building, that as a representative, he attended local union representative council meetings and voted, or that he participated in at least one annual Representative Assembly as a delegate for that local, and that in so doing he had the same ’say about it’ as any other member on that assembly floor. This is the most blatant of the misrepresentations in this ad.

These carefully crafted misrepresentations provide proof that the FF is incapable of dealing responsibly with issues about unions.