Public Employee Press
DC 37 News
The union killing machine
Manhattan.
When more people join together in a union, they have more power to negotiate with management for things like good pay, stable hours, fair treatment and benefits. And because the union is required by law to represent and negotiate on behalf of all employees equally — members and nonmembers alike — every person who opts to drop out of the union and receive those benefits for free actually weakens the union.
To dupe working people into weakening their own unions, an umbrella organization for more than 100 anti-union, anti-worker affiliates across the country called the State Policy Network (SPN) has been spreading misinformation about unions.
Aggressive and deceptive tactics
SPN affiliates and their allies use a variety of aggressive and deceptive tactics to swindle public service workers out of union-negotiated protections and the pay and benefits their families depend on. The network funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into a broad assault on working people.
It spreads misinformation to workers on the ground and online. Its affiliate groups back state and local measures designed to curtail workers’ rights. They also block worker- and community-friendly policies, such as paid sick leave and minimum wage increases, and promote dangerous ideas like outsourcing and privatization.
Groups within the network include the Freedom Foundation and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, among others.
Here are some of the network’s activities that aim to convince members to leave their union:
- In Orange County, California, representatives of a State Policy Network affiliate showed up uninvited outside an orientation session for new home-care providers. Home-care worker Toni Monique Taloa, a member of United Domestic Workers/AFSCME Local 3930, said, “They were speaking to the (home-care) providers, telling them that they did not need to pay union dues — that they could put that money back in their pockets, and that they would still receive the same benefits, which is a very untrue statement.”
- In Oregon, the Freedom Foundation submitted public-records requests for the home addresses and contact information — including dates of birth — of union members. And in numerous counties on the West Coast, the Freedom Foundation has made similar requests for information on unionized child-care and home-care workers.
- In Washington and Oregon, according to The Guardian newspaper, the Freedom Foundation “dispatched activists to visit the homes of more than 10,000 child-care and home-care workers.” The union-busters also aim to sow chaos as they invade privacy, urging union members to turn over membership lists containing personal data. Several union members expressed concerns for their personal safety if their records were released to the Freedom Foundation, according to Portland Senior Deputy City Attorney Heidi Brown.
Soon, you may hear from representatives of these groups who will try to trick you into giving up your rights and hurting your pay. They may send mail, call you, come to your home, or turn up — unannounced — outside your workplace. A $10 million online disinformation campaign aimed at public service workers called “My Pay, My Say” was recently launched by the Mackinac Center.
The network’s plan is to weaken your bargaining power — and your right to due process in the workplace — by thinning union membership rolls. Representatives of the network will tell you that if you leave the union, you’ll be giving yourself a raise when, actually, you’ll be hurting your chances for getting one in your next contract.
What the spinmeisters from the network won’t tell you is how dropping your union membership threatens the pay and benefits your family depends on.
“We need to stand together so that we will have strength together. When we are under attack by a predator, we need to be in a pack, together,” said Taloa of Local 3930.
Ultimately, SPN donors want to take our country back to the days when public service workers earned low wages with few benefits, their career prospects subject to the political whims of whichever party held power.
The end goal of SPN and its funders is to virtually eliminate collective bargaining, as they and their allies did in Wisconsin with the help of Gov. Scott Walker in 2011. Since then, Wisconsin state employees across all job classifications have paid nearly $5,000 a year for their health insurance. At the same time, public school teachers’ pay in the state has declined by 8.6 percent, according to a 2017 report by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Working people only have power in numbers. The more people stick with our union, the more power we have to negotiate good pay, benefits and working conditions. If people quit, that power goes away. United we bargain, divided we beg. It’s that simple.
No working person would willingly give up job security or give back pay raises and benefits, such as health insurance or a pension. That’s why the network and its allies rely on dirty tricks, lies and, most of all, withhold a key fact: Dropping your union membership weakens your union, which also weakens the community you serve.
This article is based on an investigation of the anti-union network by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, DC 37’s national union. To learn more about protecting your rights, visit AFSCME’s website (afscme.org).
