Scenes from the Class Struggle in California

SACRAMENTO, CA – Only 16.5 percent of California workers are now in unions, according to the figures for 2006 released January 25 by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The new numbers also show that unions now represent only 12 percent of all workers, seven percent of private-sector workers and 36.2 percent of public-sector workers – down from 36.5 percent. The ongoing decline places current activity by the governor in a strange light.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has been telling reporters that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will guarantee "permanent" funding for the Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE) at UC Berkeley and UCLA, whose $6 million tab was "inadvertently" left out of the governor’s new budget. Arnold has been back and forth on funding the ILE, which began during the administration of Gray Davis with a grant of $6 million for a "Multi-Campus Research Unit for Labor Studies."

That took place with little or no attention from the press, Republicans or business and taxpayer groups. Soon the ILE was deploying leftist academics and activists in tasks that failed to draw the press attention they deserved.

The ILE produced material such as "Making People Pro-Union: Organizing Workers in the Culture of Capitalism," and curriculum materials for distribution in California public schools.

The ILE promoted Laboring to Learn, a project with a clearly stated  goal: “To understand how adult educators can conduct popular education and critical pedagogy to help build a multi-racial, gender-balanced, anti-imperialist and working class political movement that is capable of negating labor defined as exploitation.”

In 2003, when voters moved to recall Gray Davis, the ILE launched WAR, Workers Against the Recall, not exactly legitimate activity for a publicly funded group that postures as a neutral University of California think tank. In December of 2003 the governor eliminated $2 million of the $4 million appropriated to the ILE in the 2003-04 budget. The governor’s proposed budget for 2004-05 eliminated all funding for the program, but he struck a deal with Democrats to restore $3.8 million. All told, the ILE had received $22.8 million in direct taxpayer funding.  Without budget cuts, the amount would have been $28.6 million. This taxpayer funding is for a group that does not represent the vast majority of California workers.

To look at the new Bureau of Labor Statistics figures another way, a full 83.5 percent of California workers are not in unions. Neither are 88 percent of all workers, and 93 percent of private-sector workers. Most of them, in other words. Further, a full 63.8 percent of public-sector workers, nearly two thirds, are not in unions. Yet this steadily dwindling minority retains incredible power and privilege, backed by the state.

The Davis-Bacon Act, a racist measure against black workers, reserves public projects for union labor, as do PLAs or project labor agreements. Both drive up costs for taxpayers. Under agency-fee rules, unions can even confiscate money from non-members, and there is little to stop them from using it for political purposes, even those ad odds with their own members. The powerful public-sector unions have elected the same people with whom they negotiate, and who give them what they want.

A ballpark figure for public funds the ILE deserves is zero. Nothing stops the ILE from raising its own money, and unions have lots of it. But Speaker Nunez not only wants taxpayers to pay the bills in perpetuity, but he has renamed the ILE after the late Los Angeles labor boss Miguel Contreras, one of his own militant mentors. The UC regents have approved the name change, a clever move that will personalize any attempt to cut public funding for the ILE. At present, however, there seems little cause for worry.

According to the speaker, the governor is on board with a perpetual shakedown of taxpayers to fund the propaganda gambits of a highly politicized and militant group, not elected by the voting public, and which represents a distinct minority of California workers.