Pension Cuts, Lay Offs, and Less Benefits: the Freedom Foundation’s Wish List for Workers

Behind their “Opt Out Today” smoke screen, the Freedom Foundation is deceiving public employees about their true intentions. Opt Out Today propaganda boasts about liberating workers from unions, using the same tired rhetoric that the billionaire class has been using for decades. The real story can be found in one of their publications, “State Budget Reform Toolkit.”

Published in conjunction with the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the so-called “Toolkit” is a step-by-step manual of how to paralyze governments, eliminate public sector jobs, and decimate worker pay and benefits.

The Toolkit is explicit about how to lay off public employees in a chapter called “Embrace the Expanded Use of Privatization and Competitive Contracting.” They even offer a hit list of jobs they think could be better run by big corporations. Administrative assistants, Corrections staff, and highway maintenance workers are just a few of the dozens of positions that the Freedom Foundation (Opt Out Today) would like to see erased from public roles.

We’ve created an infographic exposing the full list of public jobs that they suggest be privatized or contracted out (aka eliminated). If you are a public employee, you should check this list for your job type, and know that if the Freedom Foundation (Opt Out Today) gets their way, your days on that job may be numbered.

Click here to download and share this infographic.

Meanwhile, cutting pensions, raising the retirement age, and delaying raises are just three of the other recommendations they offer for attacking public services. We’ve built a second infographic that exposes the full “to-do list” the Freedom Foundation (Opt Out Today) has in mind for public services and public employees.

Click here to download and share this infographic.

So why is Opt Out Today trying to badger public workers with thousands of SPAM emails about union membership? Freedom Foundation CEO Tom McCabe explained it very simply in 2014, “we want smaller government, and you’re never going to get those things with unions in the way.”

Toolkits like this are a big reason why the Freedom Foundation (Opt Out Today’s) campaign has been such a monumental failure. They have worked for decades to try to destroy public services and eliminate good jobs for working families. Now they are pulling a 180 and pretending to be on the side of workers. People just aren’t buying it.

It is essential that all public employees know the truth – the Freedom Foundation (Opt Out Today’s) secret agenda is to scrap thousands of family-wage jobs in the public sector. And today, we offer you the proof in their own words.