Wall Street Journal/Fox Business cover NPRI initiative

Andy Matthews

Every week, NPRI President Andy Matthews writes a column for NPRI's week-in-review email. If you are not getting our emails, which contain our latest commentaries and news stories, you can sign up here to receive them.


Wall Street Journal/Fox Business cover NPRI initiative

When it comes to NPRI: What happens in Nevada, doesn’t stay in Nevada.

That’s what we’ve seen this week with National Employee Freedom Week (NEFW), a national effort initiated by NPRI. We started NEFW in the aftermath of our campaign last year to let Clark County teachers know they could leave the Clark County Education Association by submitting written notice to their union from July 1 to 15.

You know what happened, but it’s worth repeating — after learning what their options were, more than 800 teachers left CCEA.

That got us thinking: If 800 teachers in one school district in one smaller state want to leave their union, how many other millions of union members around the country want to leave their union, but don’t know how or when to do so?

That’s why we created National Employee Freedom Week — a national campaign running from June 23 to 29 to let union workers know that they have the ability to leave their union, even in non-Right-to-Work states. Working with the Association of American Educators, we spearheaded the campaign, which has grown to 65 organizations in 37 states! The coalition includes groups like the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and dozens of think tanks from around the country.

These groups have done an outstanding job of getting the message of employee freedom out across the nation, and I want to share with you just some of the coverage the campaign has received.

The Wall Street Journal covered NEFW, calling it “the brainchild of the Nevada Policy Research Institute.” National Review Online noted that  “National Employee Freedom Week has high potential.”

NPRI’s Victor Joecks was even on Fox Business this morning discussing NEFW, which you can watch by clicking below.


(Click here to watch)​

National Employee Freedom Week spokesmen also discussed the week on Fox & Friends and Neil Cavuto’s show.

NPRI had an op-ed run in the Washington Times, and coalition partners wrote pieces on NEFW that ran in Forbes, Investor's Business Daily, The Hill, the Tennessean, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Waterbury Republican American, the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Tacoma News Tribune and Oklahoma City Oklahoman

I could go on and on and mention that pieces also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Oregonian and Fox News, but I think you get the idea.

National Employee Freedom Week and its 65 coalition partners took the nation by storm and let millions of workers know about their options to leave their unions.

To date, this is the biggest project NPRI’s ever undertaken, and it was phenomenally successful.

I couldn’t be more proud of our staff for their hard work on this, and I also want to thank our supporters. This campaign doesn’t happen without you, and I want you to know that your donations are not only making an impact here in Nevada, but also around the country.

Thank you, and we can’t wait to make this even bigger next year!

Andy Matthews
NPRI President


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