Labor unions in California are up in arms over the latest attempt to squash unions’ political voice and it comes, yet again, in the uplifting guise of a taxpayer protection proposition.
At the recent Women Building California and the Nation conference in Sacramento, a session called “The Political Fight in the States: Stopping the War on Workers,” Naomi Walker, director of state government relations for the AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C., presented a long list of proposed laws that would affect the building trades unions nationwide, including prevailing wage, project labor agreements, independent contractor status controversies, right to work, voter suppression and public sector collective bargaining rights.
But it was Walker’s co-host Bryan Blum, political director at the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, Sacramento, who brought the whole anti-worker issue to the local conscience. Blum went over the particulars of a measure on this November’s ballot in California called the “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act,” which, although it sounds worthy, is really “an anti-union dues measure and does not affect corporate super PACs and billionaires,” he says.
Republican sponsors have twice before attempted to stop union payroll deductions for political purposes: Proposition 226 in 1998 and Proposition 75 in 2005. Both were defeated.
“It seems they are on a seven-year cycle for this kind of deceptively-worded initiative,” says Blum.
The “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act” states, “No corporation, labor union, public employee labor union, government contractor or government employee shall deduct from an employee’s wages, earnings or compensation any amount of money to be used for political purposes.”
Sounds fair enough. Except do you know of any “corporations” that deduct money from your wages to fund their political fights?
Even though “corporations” are included in the wording, guess who’s really exempt from this law since they don't actually do what's being prohibited? “Corporate interests and billionaires,” says Blum.
The proposition is sponsored by a group called Californians Against Special Interests, which is composed of various anti-union groups such as the extreme right-wing Lincoln Club of Orange County, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and a billionaire by the name of A. Jerrold Perenchio, who made his fortune in Hollywood and is – quietly and with a known press aversion – funding conservative causes.
We’ll see how this plays out and how the rest of the initiatives and propositions fare nationally this year. But one thing seems perfectly clear: Some of the very wealthy, thanks to Citizens United, are not afraid to spend untold amounts of money defeating the middle class.
At the recent Women Building California and the Nation conference in Sacramento, a session called “The Political Fight in the States: Stopping the War on Workers,” Naomi Walker, director of state government relations for the AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C., presented a long list of proposed laws that would affect the building trades unions nationwide, including prevailing wage, project labor agreements, independent contractor status controversies, right to work, voter suppression and public sector collective bargaining rights.
But it was Walker’s co-host Bryan Blum, political director at the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, Sacramento, who brought the whole anti-worker issue to the local conscience. Blum went over the particulars of a measure on this November’s ballot in California called the “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act,” which, although it sounds worthy, is really “an anti-union dues measure and does not affect corporate super PACs and billionaires,” he says.
Republican sponsors have twice before attempted to stop union payroll deductions for political purposes: Proposition 226 in 1998 and Proposition 75 in 2005. Both were defeated.
“It seems they are on a seven-year cycle for this kind of deceptively-worded initiative,” says Blum.
The “Stop Special Interest Money Now Act” states, “No corporation, labor union, public employee labor union, government contractor or government employee shall deduct from an employee’s wages, earnings or compensation any amount of money to be used for political purposes.”
Sounds fair enough. Except do you know of any “corporations” that deduct money from your wages to fund their political fights?
Even though “corporations” are included in the wording, guess who’s really exempt from this law since they don't actually do what's being prohibited? “Corporate interests and billionaires,” says Blum.
The proposition is sponsored by a group called Californians Against Special Interests, which is composed of various anti-union groups such as the extreme right-wing Lincoln Club of Orange County, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and a billionaire by the name of A. Jerrold Perenchio, who made his fortune in Hollywood and is – quietly and with a known press aversion – funding conservative causes.
We’ll see how this plays out and how the rest of the initiatives and propositions fare nationally this year. But one thing seems perfectly clear: Some of the very wealthy, thanks to Citizens United, are not afraid to spend untold amounts of money defeating the middle class.
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