Ep 20- The Freedom Foundation fight against unions and the woke agenda

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, Jack, So tonight wehave Aaron with from the Freedom Foundation joining
us and Jack, I think I'mgonna let you set this up. But
the Freedom Foundation, they're doing somegreat work and some important work right now.
They are they are Josh the FreedomFoundation. They free government union employees

(00:24):
from union bondage. And we'll talkwith Aaron about that in just a second.
But to set it up back inI think it was twenty eighteen,
the Supreme Court of the United Statesand Janis versus American Federation of State,
County and Municipal Employees decided that nonmember employees of the union can opt out

(00:49):
they don't have to pay union dues. And Aaron's going to talk to us
about why that matters. And he'sgoing to talk to us, and I
want to pitch this before we evenget gone about his book, which just
came out a couple of weeks ago, Freedom is the Foundation, How we
are defeating progressive tyranny by taking ongovernment unions. He is Aaron with Aaron.

(01:11):
Welcome to Saving Liberty Podcast. Howare you tonight, partner? Hey
guys, thank you for having meon you bet so, Hey, let's
let's start. You know you andI had a chance to talk on the
radio program not so long ago.But I want to make sure that we're
cross pollinating some of the things thatwe talked about there. So if anybody's
listening here fresh, they're getting thefull scope. So tell us the backdrop.

(01:36):
You wrote a book. The bookis a lot about why you started
the Freedom Foundation and what the FreedomFoundation is. So give us that thirty
thousand foot view and then we'll drilldown on some key topics. Yeah,
bottom line, Jack, And so, first of all, I didn't start
the Freedom Foundation was started before me. I took it over just a few
years ago. But Aaron, thankyou for clarifying. Thank you for clarifying

(01:57):
I was wrong on that. Thankyou for Claire find that. Sorry about
that. No, no, no, no problems. But the goal is
the Freedom Foundation. We figured outa while ago that government unions are the
biggest fundor of the most radical leftin America. And the scandal of this
is that they're taking this money frompublic employees, oftentimes about their knowledge,

(02:17):
and spending it on their own petpolitical projects. And in twenty eighteen,
is you referenced, the US SupremeCourt made it illegal to compel a public
employee to pay union dues. Theydon't have to do it anymore. The
big problem is no one's going totell them. The government isn't telling them,
the unions certainly isn't telling them.So it takes the Freedom Foundation to

(02:38):
go to every single public employee inAmerica and tell them, Look, union
dudes are optional. You don't haveto pay them. Is where that money
is being spent. And all youhave to do is sign one of our
opt out cards that we make availableon our website and in person, and
we'll send that to your union andyour employer and make these union dudes stop
being deducted out of your paycheck.It's about eleven hundred a Yet you know

(03:01):
I've got to I've got to stopand not Pasco, not let our listeners
collect two hundred dollars. You saidsomething there that just defies wisdom in best
practice. You basically said, so, there's this big Supreme Court decision,
right, This isn't like you know, Richland County in Ohio had this decision
handed down by a judge. Thisis the Supreme Court of the United States

(03:23):
saying it's illegal that employees have theright to opt out. But yet they're
not telling their employees that. I'msorry. The last I checked, I
thought unions were about helping their membersand about helping their employees. But you're
telling me they're getting getting eleven hundreddollars on average taken out of their paychecks,

(03:45):
and they're not even given the notice, so to speak, that they
have the opportunity to opt out.Is that what we're hearing? Yeah,
and that's part of the big problem. For decades, unions were able to
take money from every public employee,regardless of whether they wanted to belong to
union or not. So therefore theydidn't have to provide services to those employees.
It doesn't matter what they did.They could just take that money and

(04:06):
use it on whatever they want.Now that system has changed. Now these
public employees have an option, andmy hope is that these unions start operating
like trade associations and start actually providingbenefits to members. Now I'm not saying
that government unions shouldn't exist. I'msaying that they should be optional, and
if they do exist, they shouldprovide benefits to members. That's not what

(04:27):
we're seeing today. Unions are spendingliterally billions of dollars each election cycle to
get liberal politicians elected into office andthen pursue their political agenda. It's just
wrong. So, Aaron, letme ask you this since that case,
because I believe it was that Janiscase in twenty eighteen that was off the

(04:53):
backs of the Harris versus Quinn decisionright in twenty fourteen that said what day
the quasi public employee are not required. I don't even know what a quasi
public employee is. What was thedefinition of that? So yeah, prior
to the Jami's decision, every publicemployee in America had to pay Union US
except for these quote quasi public employees. And who they were. They were

(05:15):
home care providers and childcare providers thatwere providing care, oftentimes to loved ones,
so they didn't have to become institutionalized. Usually, what the situation looked
like was, let's say you havea disabled child. Rather than sending them
to an institution, the government wouldsubsidize them, usually thirteen dollars an hour

(05:38):
or something like that, to goand stay home and take care of their
kit. I mean, it's apretty good system. The problem was in
liberal states where unions controlled the legislature, they convinced these legislatures and governors to
make forcibly unionize all these people.So you look at Illinois, you look
at New York, Washington, Oregon, California, these types of states,

(05:59):
these people were all unionized. Itwas completely wrong the way it was done,
and the US Supreme Court in twentyfourteen shut down that scheme rightfully,
so, which then led us tothe Janis decision in two thousand and eighteen.
Now, when when we are talkingabout what has happened, what has
transpired since then, can you giveus some figures on just how many have

(06:24):
chosen to opt out, how manypeople have chosen freedom over being compelled to
speak for things they don't believe in. Do you have those figures? Yeah?
Sure, So we're just approaching thefive year anniversary of the Janis decision,
and it's just over seven hundred thousandpeople that have left their unions since

(06:45):
then. Put that into perspective,it's about ten percent of the population of
the big four government unions in America. Those that don't know those are the
two teachers unions, the NAA andthe AFT, and then also the APPS
MET, the AFSME, and thenSEIU. Those the big four unions in
America collectively, they now have justunder seven million workers that pay union dues

(07:10):
to them. But that's a sevenhundred thousand, seven hundred thousand person dropped
since two eighteen, which is it'sa big deal. When you lose ten
percent of your base of support,that's a big deal. Of the course
of five years. Well yeah,I mean, I can only imagine how
much money is that taken away fromthese unions to use on these left wing

(07:31):
Marxist causes. Hundreds of millions ofdollars, almost a billion dollars has been
taken away annually from these government unionsbudgets and put back in the pockets of
working people. It's a big win. It's money that these people can spend
on vacation, on gas, ongroceries, money that otherwise would have gone
to extremely leftists causes in Canada.So this is a big win for work

(07:56):
of freedom. More importantly, thoughmore impressively, if these numbers seem to
be rising each year, the amountof people that are choosing to leave that
union, plus it does not takeinto the account the fact that government has
grown in that same timeframe. Itis a net seven hundred thousand person loss,
where actually it's probably more when youconsider the fact that government has grown

(08:18):
in the same time frame. Duringmy day job as editor in chief of
the Ohio Press Network, I've hadI don't even know what to call it.
It's not the pleasure, I wouldsay the responsibility of reporting on some
things that are going on in Ohiowith respect to public schools and oftentimes behind
the curtain you find teacher unions.Now, a couple of the things that

(08:39):
we've reported on are what we wouldcall transgender activism going on in schools,
where schools are hijacking kids essentially andnot telling parents about what's going on with
gender transitioning or other types of healthcarein the list goes on, right,
and so in Ohio we've kind ofrung the bell a little bit. Are

(09:01):
you seeing a movement nationwide or inany pockets around the country where teachers unions
are being caught out on the carpetand are you doing anything specifically in Ohio
to sound the alarm bell for teachersand people enrolled in those teacher unions.
Well, first, thank you Jackfor helping expose this issue. Because you're

(09:22):
riot unions. Government unions, Imean, their agenda used to basically go
as far as taxes and that wasabout it. Nowadays, they have this
radical social agenda that they're forcing ontoour kids and our public schools today,
the unions are attempting to turn theminto liberal indoctrination centers and not preparing our

(09:43):
kids for the workforce. That's theirgoal is to is to crank out the
next generation of liberal voters. Butso what we're doing to challenge that is
we're exposing stuff like we saw inColorado two weeks ago, where the Union
hosted a drag show. We've seenthat happen in other states. In Washington
State, they lobby for a pieceof legislation that keeps parents in the dark

(10:05):
when children are transitioning. I mean, just six stuff. History is going
to look back on these guys ina dark light. They don't see that
today. So yeah, we're continuingto expose that around the country. Hell
teaches that this is happening and tellthem, look, this does not represent
yourle values and that they need toget out of that Unions. One of

(10:26):
the things that's been a little bitunnerving to me, and I can't go
too far in the weeds on this, but the previous speaker of the Ohio
House had deep ties to unions.The current Speaker of the House seems to
have deep ties to unions. Andby the way, they're both registered Republicans.
And what we're seeing in Ohio isthat Republicans are on the come too.

(10:50):
They seem to be getting their pocketslined by unions. And what we're
hearing is, well, hey,of course we're going to take that money.
They're going to give it away anyway, we might as well get it
into our hands. How do youfeel about that, Aaron? It's completely
wrong because that money didn't just itwasn't just given to It wasn't a gift.
The unions expect to return on thatinvestment. That return on investment is

(11:13):
making sure Ohio doesn't turn into aright to work state. The other legislation
that would not benefit unions does notget passed. We at the Freedom Foundation
just passed legislation and multiple states stoppingthe government from deducting union juice from public
employees. I mean, these areall things that should be going in Ohio.
Ohio is continuing to trend read andwhat the unions figured out is that,

(11:39):
Okay, we can't beat the Republicans, but we can buy them.
And that's what they've decided to doin Ohio. And it's sick the fact
that these Republicans have gone out andstood with the unions against the voters and
not with the people that put theminto office. So Aaron I was reading
a story out in New York involvingthe Civil Service Employees Association when and that's

(12:03):
a large New York union affiliated withthe American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees. How what kind ofwell, I'll just I'll just come right
out and say it. What kindof bullshit scummy tactics have they been using
and telling their members to keep themin the dark. Yeah. What the

(12:24):
unions do is they lie, theycheat, and they steal. They lie
by telling them that they can't optout or they're going to lose some perceived
benefit if they do. They cheatby when they cut. When a public
employee becomes a member and they signa membership card, that membership card usually
has language find print in the bottomof it that says, to paraphrase,

(12:46):
I agree, regardless of my unionmembership status, that I will pay union
dues until a ten or fifteen daywindow in the air, and they steal
by forging the signatures of public employeeson these people's on people's union membership cards.
I've we've caught the unions and atleast fifteen instances do this on the
West Coast, and we've sued themfor it. That's what the unions are

(13:09):
doing. That's how desperate they areto take eleven hundred dollars from your everyday
a teacher or state worker, orcounty or city worker. That's the kind
of level of these unions will goto to take this money from them and
put it into politics. I knowthat to be true because we've published some
reports on lawsuits in the state ofOhio where government employees ie workers at schools

(13:31):
have sued the district have sued theunion actually and they've won because of Janis.
But the reality is they're not makingit easy. They're obfuskating, they're
they're denying, they're making it hard, and as you just said, it's
hard for people to believe they're actuallylying there they're forging signatures. But you
know, here's the other thing.Let's you and I talked about this.

(13:56):
I can hear it. I havea lot of friends in education, by
the way, and I can hearthem. And by the way, my
grandpa was a union president when Iwas growing up. He was president of
the union at the Mansfield Tire inMansfield, Ohio. And you know,
I think the common refrain is,but we're here to protect the teachers.
We're here to protect and represent them. You shared a statistic that I think

(14:18):
burns that up in smoke. Talkto us about the NAA statistic that you
shared. Yeah, so the NationalEducation and Association, we did, they're
the largest union in America. Wedid a report on them a few months
back that each year they have toshow where their expenditures go. In twenty
twenty one, the NIA spent sevenpoint five percent of its budget on representational

(14:41):
services. This is stuff that goesdirectly to benefit teachers. Over fifty percent
of that budget got spent on politics, lobbying, and gifts to leftist nonprofits.
So their agenda is not to representteachers. If you're any private sect
of business, you spend your moneyon what your agenda is to do.
That's not the case. Yeah,these unions are spending out on politics,

(15:01):
are spending out politics over fifty percentof the time, and they're spending very
little of that money on actually representingteachers. I would haste to think that
a public employee today could opt out, take that eleven hundred dollars ago and
represent themselves a lot better than theseunions could. And just a general reminder

(15:22):
at the unions at least in Ohio. These are the folks who wanted to
make sure that kids stayed home anddidn't get to go to school to be
educated because they were claiming that kidswere vectors spreading COVID. These are the
people who wanted to make sure thatthe kids were masked, despite the fact
that industrial hygienas said, masks aren'tdoing squat to stop the spread. These

(15:43):
are the same people who said,look, if we're going to come back
to school, we want to makesure everybody's vaccinated, and by Gala,
we better get these kids vaccinated.The reality is that most kids, you
know, the Bell curve, unlessthey have a significant amount of comorbidities,
have a greater chance of being sickor dying from the flu than they do
COVID. These are the same peopleright who are now saying, oh,

(16:07):
and by the way, we thinkthat it's important that Johnny and Susie understand
that if Johnny comes up to Susieand says you're going to call me Joan,
that Susie better say okay, Joan, because if Susie says, no,
you're john And if you have genderdysphoria issues, that's your issue,
not mine. All of a sudden, Susie gets called into the title nine
officer and you know she may getin trouble and the parents may get in

(16:30):
trouble. That we're talking about thesame teacher's union, by the way,
So I just want to remind everyoneof that. But I digress, Josh,
I think you have a question.Well no, I'm glad. This
is a great jumping off point.I mean, for God's sakes, we
just saw this must be qu quopro you know, pay for play whatever,
being a good loyal soldier. Butfor my god, Randy Weingarten,

(16:55):
she got appointed to us place onthe Department of Homeland Security. For God's
so with the school safety something oranother. I mean is that what this
is? Is it like, thanksfor being a good soldier. Now we're
going to reward you with a spotin the Department of Homeland Security. Oh,
it's the next best step, don'tyou think? I mean she she

(17:17):
basically wiped out two years of educationfor our kids, and a civili affected
the health and education. So what'sthe next step? National security? Right
shall take care of that country?Administration? Is it just I don't know,
it just it doesn't seem to stop. And I guess you know,

(17:37):
education is the key, But gettingthe word out. I think that the
more people recognize and realize exactly whattheir civil rights are under the Supreme Court
ruling, I think people will bemore apt to do it. Because even
in California now, California, likeI believe, is losing record numbers of

(18:00):
public employees. It's just simply amatter when people realize they have the choice,
shock they prefer freedom. That's exactlyright. That's what we see every
day when we go visit these teachersand other public employees at their homes,
when we go to their offices,when we send them mail, emails,
digital marketing, all the rest ofit. When people learn that they can

(18:21):
get this money back in their pockets, when they learn where that money is
being spent, if they would continueto give it to a union, they
opt out. In droves, thebiggest issue that we have at the Freedom
Foundation, frankly is scalability. Ittakes a lot of time and resources to
contact and get in touch with allseven million plus union members that belong to
the Big four unions. But unionsare on the wrong side of history.

(18:42):
We're telling more, helping more publicemployees every single day to get out of
their unions. It used to bekind of a taboo topic. Now it's
become mainstream. Now people are talkingabout it in the classrooms. We're hosting
a massive conference this summer for teachersthat want to do more, that want
to fight their unions, and they'regoing to gather in Denver, Colorado this

(19:03):
summer and we're going to teach themhow to run opt out campaigns in their
school district, how to sue theirunions, all that type of stuff.
We're doing each and every day tomake sure that these people know and that
we're spreading the word. I wantto stop you right there. I'm going
to wrap a couple of questions intoone. Where can listeners go if they
are teachers, if they want tofind out about this teacher's conference in Colorado,

(19:26):
and we have civilians and government employeesthat they're listening where each of those
folks need to go to learn moreabout the Freedom Foundation. So I encourage
everybody listening to go to Freedom Foundationdot com, sign up to our emails,
follow us on social media, buya copy of my book. Freedom
is the Foundation. Spread the wordbecause this message needs to spread like wildfire,

(19:47):
and it takes people like you Jackon your listeners to go and do
that. If you're a public employeelistening and you want to learn how to
get out of your union, We'vecreated a special website, a separate website
called opt out today dot com thathas all the resources that one can need
when it comes to your union andhow to get out of that. So
tell us, tell us about yourbook. What inspired you to finally write

(20:11):
the book. I mean, obviouslyI have an idea, and what kind
of comprehensive ideas and thoughts do youshare in that and what do you hope
at the end of the day,what do you want the reader to really
truly take from your book. Yeah, So a couple of years ago,
I was meeting with a friend ofmine and we were talking about work and

(20:33):
he said, Man, Aaron,You've got to write a book about this.
People need to know if people readthis book, they will support the
Freedom Foundation and what you do.And I kind of mulled that over for
a couple of months and then Idecided eventually just to do it. Basically,
the premise of the book is thatfreedom is the foundation that makes America
the greatest country on earth. However, the left and in particular government unions

(20:55):
are trying to go They're trying todestroy that foundation each and every day and
turn America into a socialist country.I learned that from my growing up in
the UK. It's basically a socialistcountry. I basically came over here and
realized that this is the land ofopportunity and that we need to defend that.
And the way that you do thatis you remove the government union's influence

(21:18):
from politics. And the thing thatI would hope that people take away from
this is how bad the unions are, but more importantly, what we can
do to fight them and what wecan do to win. Conservatives are always
seems like it's complaining on Fox Newsor Newsmax or whatever about some big back
topic and how we're losing this andlosing that. This is an area that

(21:41):
we're winning every single day. Andsomething that we can take excitement. I
have blind spots, and what Imean by that is, oftentimes I'll go
home and I'll listen to the podcastand I go, oh, why didn't
I ask this? So, youknow, let's fill in that gap,
Aaron, what would you want ourlisteners to know that we didn't ask about?
Sure? I mean, I lovetalking about a teacher conference right now.

(22:03):
I mean, honestly, I mightbe the CEO of the Freedom Foundation,
but as Stafford so talented and smart, and they've figured out that this
was a good idea, so Idecided to let them engage in it.
And what we're doing is we're puttingtogether this conference for conservative teachers. There
are going to be about two hundred, two hundred and fifty of them that
assemble in Denver, Colorado in justa couple of weeks. And while there,

(22:26):
we're trying to do something that combatthe teacher union conferences. The teacher
union conferences each year they put togetherthese meetings where they teach them basically how
to indoctrinate kids with liberal talking points. I mean, that's the basics of
it. So we're going to bethe count to that. We're going to
show teachers how to fight their unions. We're not going to teach you how
to teach. We're going to assumethat they know how to do that,

(22:48):
they went to school to do that, and that we are not experts in
that. But we're going to showthem what the unions are doing and how
they can stop their agenda leaking intoour classrooms. So I'm really excited about
that conference coming up in a coupleweeks. Hey, I know one last
question I want to ask you,which can't if you were advising for everyone
listening to these podcasts, because youmentioned about what they're doing with these Republican

(23:10):
politicians in Ohio. Let's expand thisnow on the national level. Are there
any currently declared GOP candidates that peopleshould be leery about right now because they
can easily and have been in thepast, bought and sold by these unions.

(23:32):
Good question, Not that I'm awareof. This is a problem that
happens more so in red and purplestates, the politicians of the unions of
buying the Republicans this I'd say thisissue is most prominent in Ohio. I've
seen it in a couple of otherplaces, Oklahoma kind of being one of

(23:55):
the others. But yeah, Ohio, unfortunately, this is a big problem
over there. And I'll also saythis. You know, you probably spend
a lot of time bashing Democrats,and as do I probably a lot of
the time. But what I haveseen is there are some Democrats that don't
take union money. Kennedy, who'srunning for president, I assume that he

(24:18):
won't take union money. There areothers out there. I think Josha Piro
in Pennsylvania. He's big and badin a lot of different areas, but
he's actually advocating to school choice rightnow. I know that he took a
lot of money from union, sohe's actually going against their agenda on that
issue. Well, it is fascinating, Aaron, and I just thank you

(24:38):
for your work and the Freedom Foundation'swork. I think this conference is going
to be important. Hopefully it's justthe first of numerous you can have all
over the country, and certainly fromour listeners standpoint, this is as much
a part of what it takes tosave our libert as anything else, because

(25:02):
I think when we think of liberty, we think of it from a strictly
legal constitutional standpoint. What you areand are not allowed to do so to
speak. But you know what financialliberty is at the heart of personal liberty,
isn't it. Yeah, that's exactlyright, and that's why that's why

(25:22):
the US Supreme Court said that allthese public employees can leave their unions.
When you when your money is beingtaken from you forcibly and being spent on
a political agenda, that is aviolation of the First Amendment. And that's
why these people should put their moneyback in their pockets. Especially in today's
Biden economy. It's it might bemore important now than any other time.

(25:45):
So, Aaron, thank you somuch. We really appreciate this has been
an incredibly enlightening conversation and keep keepfighting the good fight. Brother. Thank
you. Guys appreciate you having meon. Thanks Aaron. See ye the