Freedom Foundation

with state employee union members to try to keep them from learning what their rights are in the wake of the Supreme Court's Janus decision.

Joining us now, Aaron Withe, CEO of the Freedom Foundation, an organization that has helped hundreds of thousands of government employees exercise their rights to leave unions.

Aaron, welcome to the show.

First...

And I know together you guys have liberated like a million and a half workers from these government unions.

But what I want to talk about today, and I learned about this Saturday night.

I was with you out in Oregon at the Freedom Foundation dinner, and thanks for the invite.

I learned from you about these efforts at the state level to essentially silence you, to keep you from talking to these union members about what their rights actually are.

Wanna start off with this clip that was sent to me, uh, from a guy named Aaron Wythe.

Uh, he's the CEO of, uh, the euphemistically named Freedom Foundation, and well, Aaron goes on this rant about how, you know, we don't need unions anymore.

Maybe they were good in the past.

Uh, here he is.

Unions are a relic of the past, you know, like the rotary phone or the 8-track.

And I gotta tell you, I know I look at the guy who's selling this, and then I look at what he's getting paid to sell it, and I gotta tell you, uh, it's, it, it's hard to, it's hard to balance.

Uh, he runs the, this euphemistically na- named group, the Freedom Foundation, uh, which calls itself a battle tank against unions and says, uh, they only want to plunder their paychecks.

Uh, look, a strong charge from a guy whose, whose own paycheck is a public record.

We're gonna get into that.

And then the Freedom Foundation is suing the State of New York over a targeting, they think, of them to basically say you cannot go after union workers and inform them of their rights to opt out.

We'll jump into that.

And then finally, attorneys for a Puyallup wrestler who's been at the center of what's become now a national and international story, um, have gone to the US Supreme Court, asked them for an expedited review of a case.

We're gonna be following this in the weeks and the months to come as to what they adopt.

But interesting that the mayor's budget does not propose any additional taxes on businesses in the city of Seattle, so maybe she's hearing some of this, maybe paying a bit of attention to that.

Okay, now the Freedom Foundation is suing the State of New York over a new law that targets watchdog groups like the Freedom Foundation, um, going after them, investigating, saying that we will potentially issue hefty fines for the crime of informing someone who works for a union that you have the right to opt out.

That is the crime [laughs] that they would issue fines for.

So we're keeping, uh, we're keeping busy.

Do work with the Freedom Foundation as well.

Great group that's, that's helping out both teachers looking to break the grip of teachers unions.

So busy in the private sector, but also busily hopefully influencing in the public arena.

Granger, for the ones who get it done.

The Freedom Foundation went to Michigan, and a whole lot more happened than just what we covered in our video on Labor Day.

If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to like and subscribe to The Freedom Foundation to never miss an episode.

[upbeat music] As you likely know, for several weeks between August and September, we had a big crew of freedom fighters out in Michigan to canvas and speak to public workers in the greater Grand Rapids area.

The Center Square actually wrote a piece on our canvassing efforts, and I will link it below if anyone wants to read it.

It makes no sense.

Actually, our CEO Aaron Wythe explained this very well in an interview he did a few weeks ago for The Center Square, and I'll play it here.

Uh, 15 lawsuits that we filed at The Freedom Foundation against unions because we've caught unions, uh, signing these documents on behalf of these people, and when they try to leave their union, they use those forms as, uh, contracts to block their ability to leave.

I think it's an important issue to get to.

In the third block of the show, Aaron Whiff, who runs the Freedom Foundation, is going to bring us up to speed on some new developments in the effort to get new competition among teachers and schools, particularly a...

the impact of the NEA, the National Education Association on schools.

He's got some late new intelligence on that.

States where unions are stronger are significantly underperforming when it comes to literacy, and they're slower to do the sort of reforms that might improve the score.

That's a really scary thing, but it is something that we're now seeing on a daily basis.

The man who brought this to my attention, as he has for so many things for years and years, is the chief executive officer of the Freedom Foundation.

He's a good friend.

But we've got the peace of mind part covered.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has put a hit out on free speech, workers' rights, and the Freedom Foundation.

Let's talk about it.

So there has been a lot of chatter and discourse online about this new law that New York has taken upon itself to copy from Oregon.

Previously, you know, it was a bill, obviously.

Now it's a full law, which stinks because it's a very blatantly false picture of what the Freedom Foundation does.

But what this law is, is it makes it illegal to falsely impersonate a union representative And it gives the state attorney general's office broad powers to investigate, subpoena and fine any personal organization, including out of state groups like the Freedom Foundation, like ours, for communications that are deemed to be impersonations.

Fox News and a couple of the news outlets, many other at this point, have reported on it.