Two Seattle branches of the Service Employees International Union have spent more than $1.8 million pushing a ballot initiative that would rewrite state disclosure laws in the labor groups’ favor.
While promoted as an effort to prevent identity theft from seniors, the initiative would stymie groups seeking to inform union members of their rights, including how to de-certify the union.
“Their motive is not to protect seniors from identity theft. It is to protect their union,” said Brian Minnich, executive vice president of the Freedom Foundation, a free-market nonprofit group opposed to the initiative.
SEIU 775 has poured about $1.4 million into the effort to promote Ballot Initiative 1501. SEIU Local 925 has contributed another $400,000. They are the only groups funding the Campaign to Prevent Fraud and Protect Seniors, the entity that sponsored the initiative, according to state records.
The initiative would increase the criminal penalties for identity theft targeting seniors. It also would prohibit “the release of certain public records that could facilitate identity theft and other financial crimes against seniors and vulnerable individuals.” The exceptions would include other state agencies, courts of law, “bonafide news organizations,” and “a representative certified or recognized under RCW 41.56.080.” The latter refers to public-sector unions.
The records in question are the names, home addresses, email addresses and other contact information of the in-home caregivers that take care of seniors and other infirm people through a state-run, Medicaid-funded program. In 2001, an SEIU-sponsored initiative declared that the caregivers were public employees. SEIU 775 and Local 925 were subsequently declared their caregivers’ exclusive representatives.
Exactly how preventing the release of the information of caregivers to prevent identity theft of care recipients is not clear. The website for Yes on 1501 cites no examples where the release of that information was tied to fraud.
The Freedom Foundation requested in 2014 that the state provide it with a list of the caregivers under public disclosure laws. It intended to inform the caregivers of their rights to challenge the union and how to legally dissolve it. SEIU 775 challenged the request but lost in the courts. It also backed legislative efforts to prohibit releasing the data but fell short there as well.
The unions are likely to fare much better with the ballot initiative, Minnich concedes. The description of it for voters will read: “This measure would increase the penalties for criminal identity theft and civil consumer fraud targeted at seniors or vulnerable individuals; and exempt certain information of vulnerable individuals and in-home caregivers from public disclosure.
“It’s like the voters are being asked whether they support mom and apple pie,” Minnich said.
The Seattle Times described the initiative as a “Trojan horse” in an editorial urging voters to oppose it. “Don’t be fooled by I-1501’s pitch to close scary loopholes and block the release of records that enable identity theft. There are no such loopholes. The state’s Public Records Act already gives sensitive records explicit protections,” it noted.
Simply telling caregivers what their options are can make a big difference, said Pamela Harris, an Illinois homemaker who opposed unions attempting to organize state-funded in-home caregivers in her state. The unions are selective in what they tell workers and leave out anything not in the labor group’s interest, she said.
When Illinois held a mail-in ballot in 2009 on whether caregivers for the mentally disabled should be unionized, Harris took it upon herself to send all of the caregivers letters informing them that they had the option to simply oppose having a union.
“We got the names and addresses of the personal support workers in the Illinois Home-Based Waiver program by submitting a request under the state Freedom of Information Act. We were told that this was how the unions obtained the list,” Harris told the Washington Examiner. “Without that list, we would not have been able to reach the personal support workers and share the information about the mail-in ballot and the ‘NO union’ option. There is no doubt; we would not have prevailed.”
Harris’ fight with the union took her to the Supreme Court, where she prevailed in the case Harris v. Quinn in 2014.
Representatives of SEIU 775, the state AFL-CIO labor fedreation and the Campaign to Prevent Fraud and Protect Seniors did not respond to a request for comment.
