An extreme, anti-worker organization deceptively titled the Freedom Foundation (who often go by OptOutToday) is sending misleading messages to our members in an attempt to weaken our union. Shamefully, they are using the holidays as cover to attack our collective strength at work.

Why does an organization based in Washington State care if Sonoma County workers are members of our union? Because the billionaire-funded “Freedom” Foundation and others are pursuing a plan to privatize public services, gut retirement security, and drive down wages for us all. They are attacking our union because we stand for the opposite—raising wages, protecting standards, and defending public services.

Here are examples of the Freedom Foundation’s extreme agenda in action. Would their priorities help you or your family? Do they represent your values?

• In Oregon, the Freedom Foundation signed on to a state “reform” plan that called for layoffs, hiring freezes, and privatizing public jobs like ours. They made their justification for these extreme positions clear when they wrote about “protecting” taxpayers from “public employees’ handsome salaries and lavish benefits.” In recent years, their coalition lobbied to slash public employee retirement in Oregon by 40%.
   
• The Freedom Foundation has also promoted state policies that would “…cut public sector pensions, lower government worker wages, eliminate income taxes, oppose Medicaid expansion, and combat regional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.”
   
• The Freedom Foundation has vocally opposed mandatory paid sick leave policies, which play an integral role in keeping us all safe, especially in a pandemic.
   
• The Freedom Foundation employs people who proudly and openly attack women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants. They also share at least one funding source with neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s organization.

SEIU 1021 members are strongest when we stand together.

By working together as a union, we’ve fought and won contracts that help us stay safe at work, ensure we are treated fairly, and help us provide for ourselves and our loved ones.

The Freedom Foundation wants to divide working people, weaken our unions, and dismantle the important services we provide, all in the name of profit for the billionaires and wealthy corporations that fund them.

Our union stands for the opposite—we fight for dignity and respect at work, to raise wages and benefits for working people everywhere, and to build healthy communities where everyone has a chance to thrive, no matter who they are or where they come from.

Allowing the Freedom Foundation to weaken our unity is dangerous for us and our communities. That’s why we’re sticking with our union.