Today, the Freedom Foundation released its latest video telling the story of family childcare providers Shannon and Tim Benn, whose experience starkly demonstrates the hypocrisy of SEIU 925 in harassing its own forcibly unionized “members.”

During April, the union filed a lawsuit in Thurston County Superior Court against the state’s Department of Early Learning (DEL) and Shannon Benn, seeking an injunction to prevent the agency from releasing contact information about the state’s other family childcare providers – information Benn has been routinely obtaining since 2012.

The Benns own and operate Little Precious Ones Daycare from their Spokane home, and have long believed the state’s Department of Early Learning was far too heavy-handed in its regulations. The Benns know other daycare operators who share their concerns, and since 2011 they have been publishing a newsletter for family childcare providers that included legislative updates, articles about prospective regulatory changes and advice on running their business.

And to make sure it was being mailed to the right people, the Benns requested from DEL a comprehensive list of the 10,000 or so providers in the state on a somewhat routine basis.

Since the names were public information, DEL willingly complied.

Last summer, however, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Harris v. Quinn ruling, in essence declaring that contractors like the Benns cannot be considered full-fledged state employees and, thus, cannot be required to pay union dues.

In the months since, the unions representing not only daycare workers but also home healthcare workers like the Benns have done little or nothing to advise their dues-payers of their newly affirmed right to opt out.

The Benns, who have opted out of paying dues to SEIU 925 but are still forced by law to be represented by the union, in January made their standard request to DEL for an updated mailing list. This time, the union intervened by suing to prevent its disclosure.

Incredibly, DEL had not only notified SEIU 925 of the request but also provided the union with detailed instructions on how to sue the Benns – and the agency itself – to keep the contact list out of their hands, even though DEL gives the same information, and more, to SEIU 925 every month.

Backed into a corner and bullied by SEIU, the Benns sought assistance from the Freedom Foundation’s legal team. Freedom Foundation attorneys immediately responded to SEIU 925’s lawsuit by contacting SEIU’s attorney, who attempted to get the Benns to either limit their use of the information or withdraw the request altogether, but the Benns stood strong.

If SEIU 925 was going to prevent the Benns from communicating with fellow providers, SEIU would have to fight for it by going up against the Freedom Foundation’s attorneys in court—something unions have a track record of doing and losing. SEIU didn’t. SEIU attorneys contacted the Freedom Foundation within only a few days and said they were dropping the case.

“The union cited all sorts of calamities that could happen if the names are released,” said James Abernathy, general counsel for the Freedom Foundation, which is representing the Benns. “In the legal world we call it a ‘parade of horribles.’ Mostly, they claimed it would put kids who stay at these daycare centers at risk of being kidnapped or abused if it were possible for the average citizen to find out who owns the facility.”

But apparently the union is exempt from such concerns, since SEIU 925 requested – and was given – the very same information in 2006 when it sought to unionize the care providers in the first place. And having been certified by the state, it now has access to even greater detail about the providers than what the Benns are seeking.

“All the union leaders care about is keeping the dues money flowing in,” Abernathy said. “Family childcare providers are an $8 million-a-year goldmine for the union, and they’re not going to give it up without a fight.”

At the end of the day, he said, what the union wants most is to suppress is the truth.

“We knew we couldn’t go to the union for help, because they were the ones suing us,” Tim Benn says in the video. “So the Freedom Foundation stepped in and it was amazing how quickly the union pulled back and realized they had overstepped their bounds in attacking their own membership.”

This video tells this courageous family’s remarkable story of standing up to a powerful government union.