Union retaliates against contractor for workers’ rights Facebook post

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Harris vs. Quinn. The Court decided that “partial public employees”—which includes home healthcare workers and other independent workers receiving state subsidies to provide services to benefit eligible low-income populations—could “no longer be compelled to pay union dues as a condition of employment.”  And, since then, unions in Washington State have done everything in their power to keep information of the ruling from their members/new members.

As Shift reported, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 775 has made attempts to prevent the approximately 33,000 individual providers it represents from learning of their constitutional rights. The union has limited its obedience to the law by ceasing to automatically deduct dues from the paychecks of only those providers who specifically ask them to do so—otherwise it continues business as usual. SEIU 775 refuses to mention providers’ right to decline association on its website or Facebook page. Making matters worse, SEIU 775 deceptively worked to persuade individual providers to sign away their constitutional rights via a letter campaign.

A new report reveals that SEIU 925 has reached a new low in its attempt to block information from its members—the union has retaliated against a contractor that dared post workers’ rights information on Facebook. The Freedom Foundation,

“Cassandra Clemans has represented family child care providers in administrative proceedings before the Department of Early Learning (DEL) for years. Her work was valuable enough that SEIU 925, the union representing Washington’s family child care providers, began contracting with her to represent union members in DEL proceedings in 2010.

After five years of service, SEIU 925 recently informed Clemans it was terminating its $20,000-per-year contract with her business, Childcare Advocates Resource and Education (CARE). The reason? Clemans dared to post a link to a Freedom Foundation article on CARE’s Facebook page explaining that family child care providers can opt out of paying union dues thanks to a recent Supreme Court ruling.”

SEIU 925 is the same union that attempted to sue the Freedom Foundation to block its use of state-paid family child care providers contact information—the union sought to prevent the Freedom Foundation from using the information to inform providers of their rights. Unions love to expound on workers’ rights, yet all too often unions like SEIU 775 and 925 seek to deny citizens their most basic rights, leaving their members fearful of speaking freely least they be punished.