The Freedom Foundation Wants to Gut Your Pension

It’s no secret the billionaire-funded Freedom Foundation is trying to destroy unions to enact a political agenda that would cut wages, gut pensions, slash education funding, and make healthcare harder to access. It’s also no secret that they tell lies. A lot of lies. They lie to the press, they lie to the public, and they even lie to union members.

For instance, they have long been an advocate for cutting public employee pensions but now they are pretending to care about public sector workers as they try and fail to coerce them into dropping their union membership. Because they have been exposed by the Northwest Accountability Project and others, they have seemingly turned to their high-priced pollsters to concoct messaging around issues like pensions that make their platform seem less harmful and destructive to working families. Their latest refrain is that they want to get pensions “on a healthier and stronger footing.”

Make no mistake, this is coded wording for “cut pensions.” But don’t take it from us, read their own words. Their CEO, (who enjoys a quarter of a million dollar a year compensation) said: “We can’t afford the excessive pension benefits we’ve given to unions over the years” while their former Oregon Director once said that public sector workers were awarded “handsome salaries and lavish benefits.” Mind you, “public sector worker” includes firefighters, nurses, teachers, social workers, and many other public servants that help our states function.

But it’s also an official position of the Freedom Foundation. They co-wrote a report with the extremist, right-wing astroturf organization known as ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council) in which they outlined their plan to slash the wages and benefits of public sector workers including cutting their pension benefits and allowing them to be run by their Wall Street cronies.

This is shameful and wrong as many working families rely on loved ones’ pensions to live a free, dignified, and happy retirement. 

This deception is yet another reason why the Freedom Foundation’s $20 million+ campaign has been such a miserable failure.