SEIU 503, Oregon’s largest public employee union, has launched its latest campaign — not in the legislature or at the bargaining table, but on the sidewalks asking its own dues-paying members to inform on their neighbors for engaging in the political process.
And for doing so in a way that threatens SEIU 503’s political and financial interests.
In a recent email, the union effectively instructed its members to spy on their fellow Oregonians gathering signatures for a statewide referendum aimed at overturning Gov. Tina Kotek’s $4.3 billion transportation tax hike, House Bill (HB) 3991.
SEIU 503’s email implied, without evidence, that signatures were being obtained illegally and told members to “(W)atch how volunteers handle the petition forms” and to use a link provided by SEIU 503 to “report any problems.”
SEIU 503 also urged them not to sign and to discourage their friends and family from signing.
The email was first reported last week by the Oregon Roundup, in an article that also featured one of SEIU 503’s own local leaders going on the record to call the union’s tactics “deplorable.”
It’s easy to see why it’s caused such outrage. The link included in SEIU 503’s email does not route to any neutral election authority. Instead, it sends members to a Google form titled Transportation Referendum Petition Observation that states, “When you encounter petitioners, OBSERVE & RECORD, ASK, and REPORT BACK.”
The form further encourages union members to inform on the specific location of petitioners and to “OBSERVE & RECORD (with cell phone camera),” specifying, “If you see someone signing the petition without the circulator present, please take a photo.”
It also asks for details about what color paper the circulators are using and whether the circulator is wearing a name badge.
On paper, the language is couched as a way to ensure compliance with Oregon’s initiative petition rules. In practice, SEIU 503 is soliciting its members to build a photo-and-location file on fellow citizens exercising a constitutional right.
Most revealing of all, however, is just exactly who SEIU 503 wants its members to trust as Big Brother.
The bottom of the form says it was “created inside of Our Oregon.”
Our Oregon is not some disinterested civic watchdog that happened to offer technical support. It is a union-aligned, political nonprofit almost exclusively funded by SEIU 503 and the state’s other government unions, including AFSCME Council 75 and the Oregon Education Association (OEA).
The group’s IRS 990 tax returns list multiple current and former SEIU 503 leaders, including SEIU 503’s current executive director, Melissa Unger, among Our Oregon’s officers and board members.
Meanwhile, Unger’s own brother formerly served as Our Oregon’s executive director. And Our Oregon even operates out of SEIU 503’s Portland headquarters.
In other words, SEIU 503 isn’t handing petition reports to a neutral referee. It is routing them to its own political operation.
This isn’t the first time Our Oregon has been in the middle of a campaign-law controversy. In 2020, the Freedom Foundation filed a complaint with the Oregon Secretary of State alleging the group had committed record-breaking campaign finance violations by failing to register properly and report millions in political activity.
The case was never fully investigated, but the underlying facts have never been refuted.
And in 2019, a PAC operated by Our Oregon was fined nearly $95,000 for violating elections law 96 separate times — one of the largest such penalties in state history. Specifically, the group’s violations stemmed from its mishandling of voters’ ballots, which the Secretary of State called “more severe than any other violation of election law.”
It’s supremely ironic that SEIU 503 is now asking its members to trust that same organization as the “watchdog” over petition compliance.
SEIU 503’s political motiviations are also painfully clear. As the union’s own board member bluntly put it, “Everything I hear from Tina Kotek’s mouth is exactly what I hear at SEIU,” and “SEIU is money in Tina Kotek’s pocket.”
Ultimately, SEIU 503’s “deplorable” tactics are nothing new. In fact, the very same mentality drove the union-backed HB 3789 passed earlier this year. Just as that bill used the guise of “transparency” to arm government unions with a new legal weapon to use against the Freedom Foundation, SEIU 503’s latest move to ostensibly hold the referendum petitioners accountable to Oregon’s election laws is really just a fishing expedition to accuse petition circulators of rule breaking in the field.
In both cases, the goal is not honest disagreement. It is to make opposition costly.
Oregonians can make their own decision about whether to support or oppose the petition, just as public employees can make their own decisions about union membership. SEIU 503 just doesn’t want to accept either — and now, it’s using its members’ voluntary dues and a political front group it effectively controls to surveil, catalog, and potentially intimidate Oregonians who simply want to put a law on the ballot.
This is exactly why it matters that SEIU 503 members have the right to say no to funding union politics they don’t agree with.
We won’t stop our mission of helping public employees understand their rights to opt out of union membership and stop paying their hard-earned money to organizations that don’t have their members’ best interests at heart.
To these members, along with millions of disaffected public employees in America: You don’t have to keep funding politics in your government union.
Take your paycheck and your freedom back by visiting OptOutToday.com.
