Thanks to the Freedom Foundation, individual provider home care aides (IPs) around Washington are hearing about their constitutional right to resign from SEIU 775 for perhaps the first time.
As the next step in that effort, the Freedom Foundation this week launched a second TV spot in King County featuring an IP sharing why she resigned from SEIU.
Caregiver Mary Jane helps make sure her Autistic grandson receives the love and care he needs. For her, caregiving isn’t a profession, but simply a service to her family.
The state reimbursements helped cover the travel costs associated with caring for her grandson, who does not live nearby. Since Mary Jane became a caregiver in 2008, however, the state automatically withheld union dues from her paycheck on behalf of SEIU 775, even though she never signed up for union membership and wanted nothing to do with SEIU.
Rather than advocating for caregivers, SEIU 775 spent at least 40 percent of the dues it collected during this period on advancing a radical political agenda Mary Jane didn’t approve of.
When she heard she could stop paying SEIU 775 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 Harris v. Quinn decision, she immediately asked the state to cease the deductions. Unfortunately, because of SEIU 775’s obstructionism, many other caregivers like Mary Jane have yet to hear about their constitutional right to keep SEIU 775 out of their paycheck.
Thankfully, that’s beginning to change. Even though SEIU 775’s continued litigation has so far prevented the state from releasing a complete list of IPs to the Freedom Foundation under the Public Records Act, we recently obtained a list of home care aides from another source and have begun actively communicating with thousands of providers about their rights.
Watch Mary Jane’s 30-second TV spot below:
Learn more about Mary Jane’s story and experience with SEIU in the video below: