The story of the Freedom Foundation’s battle to liberate public-sector workers from the yoke of union oppression has gone international.

Two weeks after a visit from a reporter from The Guardian, the Manchester, England-based media heavyweight, a lengthy story appeared on its website headlined, “The Door-to-Door Union Killers: Right-wing Foundation Takes Labor Fight to the Streets.”

The Guardian article accurately depicts the Freedom Foundation’s efforts to educate union members regarding their constitutional rights and clearly demonstrates that public-sector unions are concerned this will spill over into other states.

Some highlights:

• “A conservative group, the Freedom Foundation, has dispatched activists to visit the homes of more than 10,000 childcare and homecare workers in Washington and Oregon to advise them that under a two-year-old Supreme Court decision, they can opt out of paying union dues.”
• “Labor leaders say never before have they seen a foundation undertake such an aggressive, multi-pronged campaign against unions; nor have they ever seen such canvassing to advise workers about quitting their unions.  Labor unions predict that if the foundation succeeds in weakening public-sector unions in Washington and Oregon, conservatives will roll out similar campaigns in Illinois and Pennsylvania.“
•  “I have to give them credit, they’re pretty nimble,” said Greg Devereux, executive director of the Washington Federation of State Employees, part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). ‘They get to attack all day long. They don’t have to be for anything. It’s fun for them to go after SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the Washington Education Association and AFSCME. We’re three of the major political players in the state, and they get to attack 24/7, 365 days a year.”
• “McCabe says, ‘The focus that we have is on helping union members, informing union members that they have a constitutional right to leave their union if they wish,’ he said. McCabe was referring to a 2014 Supreme Court decision, Harris v Quinn, which ruled that it violates the first amendment to require partial public employees, like home-care aides and home-based childcare workers, to pay union dues.
• “Unions are so concerned about the foundation’s efforts that they have created a new organization, the Northwest Accountability Project, that seeks to expose and discredit the foundation.”
• “Kathy Miller, a childcare provider, said she opted out of paying dues ‘because I didn’t appreciate having the union strongly suggest whom I should vote for in every election.”

The article can be read in its entirety here.