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WASHINGTON STATE'S
PAYCHECK PROTECTION REPORT
ARCHIVES
HERE YOU will find archived
Evergreen Freedom Foundation Press Releases, Opinion-Editorials, and Friday Faxes
pertaining to the legal actions taken by state authorities, as well as the Foundation,
against the Washington Education Association for violations of the state's campaign
finance laws in 1996:
For Your
Information...
If you are a union employee in Washington State, the Supreme Court has made it possible
for you to have your employer protect you from unauthorized union deductions that are used
for political campaigns. As suggested by the Supreme Court in the box above, you need to
give "notice" to your employer with evidence that the union is using your
payroll deduction for political purposes. According to the court, your employer has an
obligation to investigate and may face fines of up to $10,000 for not protecting you.
Click here
to discover how.
Teacher's
Brochure
Did
you see our ad?
A Teacher's Opinion
Kim Anderson is one of over 4,100 non-union member teachers who has
been unable to recover dues illegally used by Washington Education
Association officials for campaign purposes.
School District
Authorities expecting employees to claim paycheck protection offered by Supreme Court.
WSSDA advises school officials regarding what to do when employees expect schools
to stop withholding for union electioneering.
http://www.wssda.org/News/WEA%20Summ.htm
AND
NOW FOR THE REAL TRICK -- ENFORCING PAYCHECK PROTECTION IN WASHINGTON STATE
An essay documenting how unions
managed to avoid honoring the law that requires authorization before payroll deductions
can be diverted to campaigns.
JUDGE TO
WEA:
POLITICS AS USUAL
Trial court Judge McPhee validated the WEA's extensive political activities in
1996. He ruled that expenditures of over $1 million would be insignificant in
comparison to WEA's $24 million budget. His decision describes the WEA's plan as
"ambitious and comprehensive," and details the activities undertaken to fulfill
it. Yet he allowed WEA's use of dues for politics to continue unchecked. Further
action is under consideration by EFF
Read the press
release. Read Judge McPhee's decision.
(Highlighting added by EFF to emphasize significant elements.)
October, 1999
Shred This! (Part
2)
After EFF published a link to the WEA's
instructions on shredding documents, the website with the instructions underwent an
interesting transformation. To see the original text, copied off the Seaview Education
Association's website the first week of October, click here: "When in doubt, shred!" Then go
check out the current
page, complete with expanded white space. Apparently the shredding policy has now been
extended to websites. To see the sort of documents WEA doesn't want you to see, look at
EFF's collection of WEA Internal Documents.
From January 1999
WEA'S
CAMPAIGN '98: YOUR DUES... YOUR POLITICS?
FLASHBACK... From July 1998
TEACHERS
OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT UNION'S POLITICS WELL BEFORE NOVEMBER ELECTIONS
State
and National News Comments
Paycheck
Violation
An Editorial written by a staff reporter
for the The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver Washington
SUPREME
COURT CONSIDERS TEACHERS' RIGHTS The
court heard the case November 18th, at 1:30 p.m. WEA once again argued for
its right to spend member's dues on politics without permission. For
background on the case click here. Read the Seattle Times
article.
Survey:
Teachers Want Right to Choose Endorsements
A recent survey by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution of more than
4,200 teachers nation-wide indicates 92 percent said they wanted their
teacher unions to give members a vote before issuing political endorsements
in the name of their members. Despite these facts the NEA endorsed Al Gore.
Press
Release
August 30, 2000
Teachers' Rights Protected School fined for WEA actions
Press
Release
May 18, 2000
Supreme Court
Ruling: Good News and Bad News
Paycheck Protection Upheld, But Union Off the Hook
Press
Release
April 26, 2000
WEA drops
countersuit against the Evergreen Freedom Foundation
September 24, 1999
Letter to the Editor
Teachers' union is violating free speech rights
by Jeff Leer, Teacher
September 7, 1999
Opinion-Editorial
Labor
Day marks irony for teachers, workers
by Barb Amidon, Teacher
September 2, 1999
Opinion-Editorial: Seattle
Times
Judge rewards
WEA, punishes voters
by Lynn Harsh, Executive Director
September 2, 1999
Opinion-Editorial: The News
Tribune
Ruling on WEA political spending ignores public's right to know
by Lea Conner, Director
of Communications
January 21, 1998
Education Week: Political Initiative
by Jeff Archer
March 1999
Judge rules in favor of EFF
State's Attempt to Delay Ruling on Paycheck
Protection Rejected...
Public Disclosure Commission clears EFF
February 1999
Court fines WEA $15,000 for failing to disclose "smoking
gun" political plan
November 1998
AG fined $33,000 for stonewalling on settlement documents
Today in Thurston County
Superior Court, Judge Hicks fined the Attorney General’s office $33,000 for failing
to disclose public records in a timely fashion... In his decision, Hicks called the
Attorney General’s Office "negligent" in its search for Evergreen Freedom
Foundation-requested records. This award is the third time in a year that the court has
fined the state for failing to disclose public records as required under the Washington
Public Disclosure Act...
September 1998
NEA hides illegal activity behind bogus
claims
The National Education
Association has announced that it will on Wednesday, Oct. 1, issue a 100-plus page report
entitled "The Real Story Behind Paycheck Protection — The Hidden Link Between
Anti-Public Education Initiatives and the Far Right." What the NEA report fails to
address, interestingly, is the coercion that propelled paycheck protection to the
political frontlines of many states in recent years...
August 1998
AG in contempt of court order
The Washington state
Attorney General's Office and the Public Disclosure Commission failed to meet a Sept. 4
court-ordered deadline to turn over documents to Evergreen Freedom Foundation... The PDC
and the AG released by the Sept. 4 deadline only seven of the "between 50 and
100" settlement-related documents identified by Assistant Attorney General Chip
Holcomb and none of the 48 pages of similar documents identified by PDC Executive Director
Melissa Warheit, placing both the AG and the PDC in contempt of court...
July 1998
Is WEA a PAC?
Judge gives go-ahead for investigation of teachers union political involvement
As part of three
Thurston County Superior Court decisions released Friday, Judge William T. McPhee denied
to the WEA their outright contention that they are not a political action committee. The
ruling furthers the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's attempt to prove that in fact the WEA
is a PAC. The judge's decision affirms that a union is a political action committee if it
holds politics as one of its primary purposes...
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November 1998
Are State's
Election Results that Big of a Surprise?
We at the Evergreen
Freedom Foundation predicted in early 1998 that Republicans would lose -- and big -- in
the fall elections, thanks to a Washington state Attorney General decision to allow union
bosses virtually unbridled access to workers’ general union dues monies...
July 1998
WEA-PAC Donations Drying Up:
Teachers taking their political dollars elsewhere
Come fall the Washington
Education Association (WEA) will once again be a major player in the political
process—this time, spending an ever larger percentage of illegitimate money,
illegally taken from union members’ compulsory dues. In order to protect and maintain
their political clout in the state, leaders of the teachers union will not be relying on
their own members voluntary contributions to the union’s political action
committee. Instead, teachers union bosses will literally be "banking" on the
early Christmas present given them by the state’s Attorney General this February...
June 1998
Lessons from
the Front-line of Campaign Finance Reform
By Pete Wilson
On June 2nd, Big
Labor succeeded in defeating California’s Proposition 226, which would have forbade
unions and employers from spending money deducted from worker’s paychecks without
members’ permission...
It was a hard-fought
campaign, and 226’s opponents had to overcome a huge lead in the polls. How they did
it is an object lesson for those of us interested in real campaign finance reform, and for
future attempts to protect workers’ paychecks...
May 1998
Battle over Paycheck Protection Far
from Over
On Friday, May 1st ,
teachers in the state of Washington lost in another go-around with their union over the
issue of paycheck protection. A judge in Thurston County Superior Court rejected some
twenty teachers’ request to intervene in the recent settlement that the state
negotiated with their union, the Washington Education Association... But the battle to
protect union workers’ paychecks is far from over...
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