By Matthew Hayward Originally posted Nov, 202017 on Freedomfoundation.com With news that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear  Janus vs. AFSCME  and the widely held belief that Mark Janus will win, ultimately bringing right-to-work (RTW) to public employees all across the country, we can anticipate Big Labor will not just give in and allow people to walk away from paying dues. You can bet government union leaders are organizing all across the country to concoct new scams that will allow them to continue to treat public employees as a cash cow for their ideological fantasies and political realities. In fact, I recently attended a  conference  put on by the  Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) , a small, taxpayer-subsidized outfit headquartered at South Seattle College. The title of the conference was “ Emerging Leaders Conference 2017  –  Social Justice Unionism in the Face of RTW. Saturday morning started out with a radical left-wing panel dis...

By Matthew Hayward Under current law, Washington’s governor can engage in secret, closed-door contract negotiations with more than 25 unions whose impact on taxpayers equals hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer expenses. The problem is these same unions contributed to the governor’s campaign to $5.8 million dollars. There is clearly a conflict of interest in allowing elected officials to negotiate how to spend tax dollars with their campaign contributors, especially during secret meetings. Notwithstanding the fact our current governor promised salary increases even before negotiations ever started, what kind of negotiating is that? In 2002 , a law passed under Gov. Gary Locke that exempts state negotiating sessions from the Open Public Meetings Act. This means state-level collective bargaining is not required to be done in public. On the other hand, nothing is saying they couldn't be. It’s time to turn on the cameras and microphones and hold our representative...