The Evergreen Freedom Foundation — a hard-line anti-union group that has afflicted unions in Washington state — has now opened up shop in Oregon, with an office, a lawsuit, and plans to harass public employee unions.
As Freedom Foundation mouthpiece Jeff Rhodes put it on a blog post, “making life miserable for government employee unions” is what his group does best. Evergreen Freedom Foundation has 26 staff members, a daily online radio show, and funding from an array of right-wing foundations. Its CEO, Tom McCabe, is well-known to Washingtonians as the former head of the anti-union Building Industry Association of Washington.
Its Oregon outpost incorporated July 22, filed a lawsuit against the state’s largest union Aug. 12, and opened a Salem office Aug. 13.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court against Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503, attempts to capitalize on last year’s Harris v. Quinn decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. In that 5-4 decision, the court said state-paid home care workers in Illinois who don’t want to be union members couldn’t be required to pay any “fair share” dues equivalent to cover the representational costs of the union. Harris v. Quinn created a “right-to-work” situation for unionized home care workers: They get the benefit of the union-negotiated contract terms, but can opt out of paying any of the union’s costs. Interpreting the ruling to apply to all home care workers nationwide, SEIU Local 503 asked the State of Oregon to stop collecting “fair share” fees from home care workers who chose not to be members.
But that change is not enough for the Freedom Foundation. The lawsuit seeks a retroactive refund of fees collected before the court decision for home care workers who opted out of union membership. The suit also objects to the requirement that home care workers affirmatively opt out in order to not pay, and argues that it violates the First Amendment for home care workers to be forced to work under union-negotiated policies. Similar lawsuits have been filed in Illinois and Washington.
The Oregon suit was filed by Jill Gibson, the Portland lawyer who’s also chief petitioner on a proposed ballot initiative that would make Oregon a “right-to-work” state for public employees. She’s joined by lawyers for the Freedom Foundation and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The plaintiff in the suit is Julian Brown, a home care worker in Deschutes County who doesn’t want to pay anything to the union. The defendants are SEIU Local 503, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, and four state administrative officials related to the home care program.
There’s a lot at stake. Today SEIU Local 503 represents over 20,000 home care workers in Oregon. It’s a 90 percent female workforce. They cook, clean, and bathe clients, handle catheters and colostomy bags, all so that seniors and disabled people can remain in their homes.
When Oregon’s home care workers voted to join SEIU in 2001, they earned $8.14 an hour and had no benefits of any kind, not even workers’ compensation insurance for injuries on the job. Today, they make $13.75 an hour. And they have health, vision and dental coverage, workers comp, health and safety protections, training, and other rights and benefits.
But all that was won before the union had a true adversary. Now, in print and broadcast ads — and a mailer sent to home care workers at their homes — the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is encouraging home care workers to drop out of the union. “Opt out. Save money. Lose nothing,” its fliers say.
The case is brought as a class action lawsuit, which is profoundly ironic. SEIU had the support of 92 percent of the 5,000 home care workers who cast ballots in the 2001 union election. Now, in a lawsuit objecting to “forced representation,” anti-union plaintiff Julian Brown is asking a judge to appoint him as the legal “representative” of all home care workers who haven’t consented in writing to membership in SEIU 503. They wouldn’t get to vote on him as their representative, and they’d have to affirmatively opt out if they don’t want to be part of the suit.
Of course, with Julian Brown as their representative, they don’t have to pay their own legal bills: Billionaire Charles Koch and other wealthy union foes are picking up that tab by funding the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. But there’s good reason to think it’s better for workers to pay for their own representation: Home care workers who stick with SEIU Local 503 pay union dues of 1.7 percent of gross pay plus $2.75 per month. And that support has made it possible for SEIU to turn a minimum wage job into a living wage occupation for 20,000 workers.
