By Peter Starzynski, NW Accountability Project director
The anti-worker Freedom Foundation (aka Opt Out Today) is up to its old tricks. The group has been blasting out thousands of unsolicited emails to public workers, harassing them about their union membership. These are teachers, nurses and social workers — your friends, family and neighbors (or maybe you) — being bombarded by a torrent of SPAM. Freedom Foundation is not only interrupting the workday of public workers across Washington and Oregon, but also wasting taxpayers’ money, which pays for the email service the group is abusing.
This is just the latest in a long line of deceptive and unethical tactics by the extremist, anti-worker front group.
Union members have reported incidents of harassment. We’ve even heard of the Freedom Foundation attempting to mimic union representatives.
Obviously, public employees receiving SPAM from the Freedom Foundation are not happy about it. They’ve sent complaints in droves to their state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission. They’ve also flagged the harassment to Freedom Foundation’s email service provider, Vervemail, which said in response to one complaint that it’s in discussion with the group about its sending practices.
The Freedom Foundation’s SPAM campaign, like the rest of their so-called “opt out” campaign, has been a massive failure as unions are becoming more and more popular in the northwest. The only thing the Freedom Foundation seems to be accomplishing is widespread irritation.
If an anti-worker group like the Freedom Foundation (aka OptOutToday) sends you an email without your permission, they may be violating their email provider’s terms of service, and maybe even the law.
Follow these simple steps to report the SPAM. First, forward the email to these three addresses all in one email: (Choose the Washington or Oregon attorney general, depending your state.)
- [email protected] Freedom Foundation’s email provider
- [email protected] The Federal Trade Commission
- Oregon: [email protected] Oregon Attorney General
- Washington: [email protected] Washington Atty. General
Write: “The Freedom Foundation/Opt Out Today spammed me at work without my permission. Please take appropriate action and ask them to stop sending unsolicited emails.”
Then, just mark the email as “SPAM” or “JUNK.” In most cases, this automatically sends a warning message to their email provider.
NW Accountability Project is a union-backed non-profit that aims to expose moneyed special interests that are trying to bring an anti-union agenda to Washington and Oregon.
