I-1501 isn’t about privacy; it’s about protecting the unions’ monopoly over public information

I-1501 isn’t about privacy; it’s about protecting the unions’ monopoly over public information
what-is-I-1501-FEATURED.jpeg

I-1501 isn’t about privacy; it’s about protecting the unions’ monopoly over public information

In 2001, Washington voters were deceived when they voted for Initiative 775. Now the same brain trust is back to bring you I-1501.

Voters were told Initiative 775 would create a ‘homecare quality authority’ to establish qualifications, standards, accountability, training, referral and employment relations for publicly funded individual providers of in-home care services to elderly and disabled adults.”

In fact, the measure cooked up by the AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was little more than a path to forced unionization for thousands of home healthcare providers.

Understand, these aren’t people who go to work in a government building every day with hundreds of other government employees who share the same interests. In most cases, these are ordinary citizens voluntarily caring for a loved one in their homes so they won’t have to be institutionalized, and the stipend they receive from Medicaid simply helps defray the costs of that care.

But to the unions, any pile of money is a target of opportunity.

Now flash ahead to 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in Harris v. Quinn, ruled that IPs cannot be considered full-fledged state employees and, thus, cannot be forced to pay any dues or fees to a union.

The unions, not surprisingly, were reluctant to inform workers they no longer had to hand over their hard-earned money, so the Freedom Foundation—an Olympia-based free-market think tank—created a program in which paid canvassers would crisscross Washington, informing the IPs of their newly affirmed rights to opt out.

In response, the unions filed countless bogus lawsuits, smeared their opponents in the media and tried to pass legislation that would have exempted the workers’ contact information from public records requests.

None of it worked, and within a year, SEIU 925, whose members the Freedom Foundation was able to inform, saw its paid membership cut in half.

That’s where Initiative 1501 comes in.

I-1501 is a thinly veiled attempt to deny everyone else access to the same names, addresses and phone numbers SEIU was given when it filed its own Public Information Request back in 2002 pursuant to forming a new union.

At the end of the day, this measure has nothing to do with protecting anyone’s privacy, and there are already laws on the books ensuring one’s personal information cannot be used for commercial or inappropriate purposes.

The real problem is that, from the unions’ point of view, nothing could be more “inappropriate” than having tens of thousands of hardworking home healthcare providers informed that they have the right to keep every dollar set aside by Medicaid for themselves and their clients rather than letting the unions wet their beaks by means of a Mafia-like protection racket.

I-1501 is a fraud and it deserves to be exposed for what it is.

Vice President for News and Information
jrhodes@freedomfoundation.com
Jeff is a native of West Virginia and a graduate of West Virginia University with a degree in journalism. He served in the U.S. Army at Fort Lewis, Wash., as a broadcast journalist and has worked at a number of newspapers in West Virginia and Washington. Most recently, he spent 11 years as editor of the Port Orchard (Wash.) Independent, which earned the 2011 Washington Newspaper Publishers’ Association’s General Excellence Award as the top community newspaper in Washington. Previously, he was editor of the Business Examiner newspaper in Tacoma, Wash., for seven years. Jeff lives in Lacey; he and his wife have grown twin daughters.