Nothing proves the effectiveness of an outreach campaign — or gratifies its organizers — more than an unhinged response from its union targets.
When you touch the nerve of truth, Big Labor will always react irrationally, spewing nonsense about the Freedom Foundation to its members. They clearly don’t want those whose paychecks they plunder to know they have options when it comes to paying union dues.
Unions would love nothing more than to keep workers in the dark indefinitely.
What they can’t seem to grasp is that their histrionics always backfire on them. If they weren’t worried about the Freedom Foundation, they’d ignore us. But they know they can’t, so they issue dire warnings about our ulterior motives and instruct their members to disregard our messaging.
The problem (for the unions) is that they have no credibility anymore with their members. The workers have been lied to and betrayed for so long nothing the union tells them can be taken on faith. Just the opposite, in fact. When a union tells its members the Freedom Foundation can’t be trusted, they make a beeline for us.
They may not be sure what we do, but they know for certain what the union isn’t doing.
The Washington State Nurses Association, for example, is an affiliate of American Federation of Teachers and its loathsome president, Randi Weingarten. The union, horrified by inroads we’ve been making in this state, last month gave our outreach efforts rave (raving?) reviews in The Stand, the house organ of the Washington State Labor Council (WSLC).
WSNA purports to represent nurses working in various University of Washington medical centers across Washington state. According to recent filings, WSNA collected $10.5 million from its members and is currently sitting on nearly $10 million in cash reserves.
Meanwhile, Washington nurses are handing over up to $1,150 in dues a year to WSNA. They’re feeding the Big Labor beast so it can pay its officers six-figure incomes and divert a portion of that money to the AFT to be spent on divisive political candidates and lobbying.
What was it about the Freedom Foundation’s email that worked WSNA into a froth? It simply asked workers, “Is WSNA meeting your needs?”
The email went on to commiserate with the members who may be feeling ignored, abandoned or taken advantage of by the union — and many do, as WSNA knows all too well.
But rather than leave well enough alone, the union doubled down on stupid by showing its members it has ample reason to be worried about us. As always, their denials rang hollow and drove even more members to the Freedom Foundation than we could have mustered without the union’s invaluable assistance.
We have a lot of tools in our outreach toolbox, but none so productive as the unions’ own bungling.
