For years, the Olympia-headquartered anti-union group Freedom Foundation has filed public records requests to get names, addresses and even birthdays of public employee union members in Oregon, Washington and California — in order to contact them about dropping their union membership.
Now the union-funded group Northwest Accountability Project is turning the tables, publishing the names, pictures, and in some cases addresses of Freedom Foundation employees, including canvassers who knock on workers’ doors to try to talk them out of financial support for their union. They’re posting their findings at FreedomFoundationCanvassers.com and are calling on union members to report Freedom Foundation canvassers when they’re spotted — at nwaccountabilityproject.com/report-ff.
[UPDATE: Northwest Accountability Project says Freedom Foundation complained to the company hosting the web site, and the site was taken down. But it’s back up as of Aug. 20. UPDATE 2: The site is now at a revised web address freedomfoundationscanvassers.com.]
But if the experience of one OPB News reporter is any indication, the Freedom Foundation canvass is no great threat to unions.
“The union-busting business doesn’t seem to be going great” concluded reporter Dirk Vanderhart after he tagged along with Freedom Foundation canvasser Ben Straka and encountered locked doors, wrong addresses, and disinterested union members. [Hear the whole segment here.]
Unfortunately, FreedomFoundationCanvassers.com is offline again as of my clicking the link.
Hi Harold. They’ve changed the URL slightly. It’s now https://freedomfoundationscanvassers.com/