Tag Archive for: public sector unions

The Role of Unions in a Perfect World

The optimal public policy regarding unions may not be realistic in states like California, but that shouldn’t prevent us from performing an occasional what-if. For anyone even slightly right-of-center, what unions have done to this state is a catastrophe. And even for those to the left-of-center, many are realizing, for example, that California’s failing system of public education is not because of inadequate funding, or due to the demographics of the students, but can be blamed primarily on a teachers union that has prioritized its political and economic agenda to the detriment of quality education.

It’s important, even if impossible to actually do anything today, to explore what might be the role of unions in California if the state legislature were ready to enact serious reform. Because not all unions are the same, and what has happened in California might happen elsewhere in the United States. We believe that preventing this is a nonpartisan imperative, and clarifying our intent may help prevent California’s plight from becoming America’s plight, and might even pave the way for eventual changes here.

This report is split into two parts, mostly to emphasize one main point, which is that public sector unions, representing government employees, are completely different from private sector unions, representing employees of private companies. It is necessary to expose once again how public sector unions, which should be illegal, have successfully pretended to face the same challenges and operate under the same constraints as private sector unions. Separately, it is necessary to explain how private sector unions have been corrupted, and have betrayed their own ideals and the aspirations of their members. We will begin with public sector unions.

Part One: Outlaw Public Sector Unions 

Money doesn’t guarantee victory in political campaigns. For proof, look no further than Meg Whitman, the California billionaire who in 2010 squandered $179 million in her futile campaign to beat Jerry Brown and become that state’s next governor.

When money is married to institutional power, however, it makes all the difference. This is why, 10 years after the Whitman debacle, Mark Zuckerberg was able to influence the presidential election outcome in an unprecedented way by spending $419 million on “get out the vote” efforts via left-leaning nonprofit organizations that go far beyond “traditional campaign finance, lobbying or other expenses.” Whitman’s money paid consultants and bought ads on television. Zuckerberg’s money went to supplement the activities of election offices in swing states – election offices that employed workers represented by unions that overwhelmingly favor Democrats over Republicans.

This is a critical distinction. Imagine if a pro-Republican billionaire had, like Zuckerberg, poured hundreds of billions of dollars into “nonpartisan” nonprofit organizations that in-turn used that money to launch get-out-the-vote campaigns in areas heavy with Republican voters. What are the chances the election offices in these cities would have cooperated?

Consider Maricopa County in Arizona, the City of Philadelphia, or the City of Detroit. Election office workers in these cities, and many others around the country, are represented by AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. In 2020, according to Open Secrets, 99.7 percent of AFSCME’s political contributions to federal election campaigns went to Democrats. Nationally, labor unions in 2020 spent a reported $1.8 billion on political campaign contributions, and of the public sector union share of that spending, 89 percent was spent to support Democrats.

Public sector unions don’t merely engage in political spending, their members occupy the bureaucracies that manage our elections. There are only five states that prohibit collective bargaining by public employees: Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The situation in Georgia exemplifies the power of these unions, because even there, while unions are not able to bargain, they are still permitted to recruit members and collect dues.

There is an inherent conflict of interest between the employees of government agencies and the interests of the general taxpaying public. When government programs fail, the natural inclination of a government employee is to protect their job security, which means they will claim not enough people were hired, not enough money was spent, and if more taxpayer dollars can get thrown at the problem, results will improve. This may or may not be true, but a taxpayer is much more likely to support programs that succeed, and to cancel programs that fail. From the perspective of a government bureaucracy, and the ambitions of the career bureaucrats that staff it, failure is an opportunity for growth and advancement.

This alone is reason enough to outlaw public sector unions. When a union agenda overlays onto what is already a built-in bias towards more government as reflected in the sentiments of government employees, that sentiment is buttressed with financial and political power, at the same time as it is corrupted further by the traditional union rhetoric that foments an adversarial relationship between employees and management. Which brings us to the next fatal flaw afflicting government unions: the fact that they elect their own bosses.

Political spending by government unions inevitably favors the candidates who will advocate for bigger government: more laws, rules, regulations, fines, fees, and taxes. That fulfills the ambitions of the union and its members: more money, more staff, more programs, translating into growth in membership dues and public employee compensation. When government unions negotiate for better pay and benefits, the politician sitting across the table knows that if they resist, they will be targeted for defeat in the next election. In any close race, and even in races where the incumbent would ordinarily have an advantage, the injection of union money will make the difference. There is no comparison in the private sector, where management is appointed by shareholders, and is retained or dismissed based on the success of the company, not the preferences of the unions representing its employees.

Unions in the public sector differ from private sector unions in another critical respect, which is that in their negotiations for better pay and benefits, they are not constrained by market realities. In the private sector, unions know that if they ask for too much, it will leave the company unable to compete, and this has a self-limiting effect on what they ask for. There is no such constraint on public sector unions. When they ask for increased pay and benefits, they know that the politicians they have elected will either raise taxes to grant these demands, or face defeat in the next election.

The consequences of allowing public sector unions to completely dominate a state can be seen in California, where public sector unions now collect and spend nearly one billion dollars per year in membership dues. The control this brings is easily verified. To fund the 2020 campaign to elect the Speaker of the California State Senate, Toni Atkins, every one of the top 10 contributors was a public sector union. For the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Robert Rivas, every one of the top 20 contributors was a public sector union. This dominance is seen across every elected office in the state.

In California, public sector union money is used either explicitly to fund political campaigns all the way from the governor and U.S. Senators down to every local elected position including school boards, city councils, county supervisors, water agencies, public utility commissions, transit districts, judgeships, etc., or is used to fund “nonpolitical” public education campaigns and “nonpartisan” get-out-the-vote campaigns. The result? California has the highest taxes, the highest cost-of-living, and the highest rate of poverty and homelessness in the nation. But for government unions, failure is success.

California is also the epicenter of high tech, and the ability of Google and Facebook to manipulate public opinion and voter turnout in elections is well documented, as is the propensity of these companies to support Democrats. But this behavior, decisive as it may be, would not be a match for the power of union-controlled government if it were out of alignment. Just as the unionized, overwhelmingly Democrat federal bureaucrats during the Trump administration actively thwarted his policy agenda and executive actions, if big tech were using its power to promote Republican candidates and causes, agencies, regulators, judges and politicians would swiftly find a way to stop them cold.

There is an innate incentive for government employees to want to grow government. This makes any political party or politician that is devoted to the principle of limited government automatically their enemy. To add to that inevitable and perennial conflict, the power of organized unions tilts the balance and rigs the game.

Public sector unions are one of the root causes of government overreach and inefficiency in America today. As long as these unions can use their financial and political power to serve the interests of government bureaucrats, proponents of limited government are fighting a nearly impossible battle. They should be outlawed.

Part Two: Reform Private Sector Unions

Unlike public sector unions, private sector unions have a vital role to play in American society. But these unions have become coopted by the same special interests they were originally formed to oppose. The political agenda of America’s unions is almost exclusively leftist, and being part of America’s institutional “Left” is not what it used to be.

For this reason, pressure from the outside, for example to require right-to-work protection for those workers who don’t want to be compelled to join a union, is not sufficient. Private sector union reform has to also come from within, and most likely from the grassroots members themselves demanding changes at the top. These members must recognize that the politics of unions in America today are not in their best interests.

The biggest misconception in American politics today is that the political Left is fighting corporate power. Leftists may still attack corporate profits and demand corporations pay their “fair share,” but on every major issue affecting the economic freedom and prosperity of working families in America, these presumed antagonists are actually in perfect alignment.

Labor unions, originally formed to defend the interests of workers, are no exception. Their decades of de-facto support for unrestricted immigration is a prime example. From the SEIU, “Stay strong against Trump’s wall!;” from the AFL-CIO, “oppose H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023.” Rather than protect the interests of American workers by controlling the borders, unions demand something that is impossible to achieve when borders are overrun with millions of immigrants, a “universal social insurance safety net and strong worker protections that bolster the health, welfare and economic security of all working families.”

America’s unions deny one of the most basic of economic truths, that increasing the supply of workers will result in lower wages.

There’s another basic economic truth that eludes America’s union leadership, which is that there are two ways to secure the “economic security of all working families.” The first is to collectively bargain and when necessary strike for higher wages and benefits. But the other, which truly will benefit all workers, is to support policies that lower the cost-of-living. Towards this second goal, unions have been actively hostile, because they have accepted the “climate crisis” narrative.

There is irony in the SEIU’s official position, which states that “climate change is real and poses significant threats to people’s health and livelihood, and disproportionately affects working people, the poor and people of color.” They’re sort of right. But it isn’t climate change, but the policies implemented to supposedly mitigate it, which disproportionately harm working people and the poor.

The position taken by the AFL-CIO on climate change exemplifies how opportunism has replaced a concern for the welfare of all workers. A June 2022 convention resolution states, “In every forum, we will demand that clean energy technologies be mined, produced, constructed and operated under union contracts.” Just a month earlier, in May 2022, the AFL-CIO announced, “We’re here for the signing of the Project Labor Agreement between NABTU and Ørsted—the culmination of years of hard work on a game-changing partnership that will change the trajectory of the entire offshore wind industry.”

The trajectory, overall, goes something like this: We will negotiate project labor agreements that guarantee our members well paying jobs working on projects that will greatly increase the cost of energy in America. In the case of offshore wind, that cost became prohibitive, when in November 2023, Orsted, the largest offshore wind farm company in the world, ditched its two planned offshore wind projects along the south coast of New Jersey.

Earlier this year, in August, another giant wind farm company, Equinor, pulled out of the Trollvind project in the North Sea because of unforeseen challenges including “technology availability, time constraints, and rising costs that made the project commercially unsustainable.” Also in August, Equinor sought “a 54 percent increase for the price of power produced at three planned U.S. wind farms” off the coast of New York. In the face of a likely denial, Equinor announced it could cancel U.S. offshore wind projects. In November 2021, Equinor abandoned a 1.4 GW floating wind farm off the shores of Ireland.

Wind farm developments, costing hundreds of billions to build at scale, only make financial sense to developers if they’re awarded massive government subsidies. But for big labor interests, fleecing taxpayers and punishing ratepayers so multinational corporations can make billions in profits on offshore wind is of secondary concern, as long as union jobs are created. Offshore wind projects typify the synergy between government subsidies, mega-corporations, and big labor that is the true motivating force behind climate crisis policies.

In California, a state that has completely succumbed to climate crisis panic, the High Speed Rail project fulfills all these criteria. The state is well on the way to spending over $130 billion on a system with ridership projections that aren’t more than a rounding error in total air and vehicle miles traveled each year by Californians, but it delivers thousands of high paying jobs to unions and lucrative contracts to the corporations they work for.

If unions don’t start fighting for practical infrastructure projects that lower the cost-of-living, expect more of these boondoggles. Another union supported project that will squander hundreds of billions in subsidies and raise prices to consumers is “carbon capture.” In a nation where production of natural gas and hydraulic fracking are under relentless assault, and nuclear waste is the boogeyman of the century, the consensus between government, corporations, and big labor is that we need to pump literally gigatons of CO2 exhaust into underground caverns every year. Go figure.

The only explanation for what is an otherwise inexplicable alliance between big labor and big corporations is a shared preference for economic centralization. Corporations in America stopped believing in competition a long time ago, if they ever did. But the innate corporate drive to expand and monopolize markets was challenged and limited by the power of the American Left. Today that balance has been lost. After the anti-globalization marches of 2000, and the Occupy Movement starting in 2011, corporations realized they could coopt the Left by assimilating their agenda on the broad issues of diversity and the climate crisis. And as they must have known, this has actually worked to their advantage.

In both cases, new barriers have been erected to exclude emerging smaller competitors. In every industry, the burden of hiring based on race and gender quotas instead of competence, and the expense of operating an expanded human resources department to enforce these quotas and fulfill the new reporting requirements, has given very large companies a decisive advantage. Unlike smaller companies, they can spread the expense over a much larger base of revenue.

This is equally true with environmental regulations, where the overhead and investment and additional operating costs necessary to comply will destroy the financial viability of smaller companies, at the same time as the big corporations easily have the resources not only to comply, but to buy up the smaller companies and further grow their market share. As for “renewables,” the more they cost and the more access to conventional energy is restricted, the more money pours into the industry from customers forced to pay the higher prices. The idea that major energy companies oppose renewables is ridiculous. It is in their economic interests to see the price of energy go as high as possible.

Unions support corporate consolidation and centralization of economic power because higher wages and benefits for their members become part of the overhead that drives smaller, non-union companies out of business. Big companies with captive markets are able to offer the highest compensation packages to union workers, because they have eliminated their competitors and can therefore pass the increased costs to their customers.

For unions in the United States to once again fight for the interests of all American workers, they will have to recognize hard economic realities. An unlimited supply of new residents in America will either drive down wages or overwhelm the welfare state; both of these outcomes are undesirable. Current environmentalist policies are too extreme, and while they benefit corporations, government, and labor unions representing workers in certain heavily subsidized industries, they are driving the cost-of-living out of reach for the vast majority of American workers.

Delivering an optimal standard of living to all Americans is only possible with controlled immigration, practical infrastructure investments, merit-based hiring, a regulatory environment that doesn’t wipe out competition between corporations, and policies with respect to energy and the environment that don’t inflict economic harm on working families. Unions might also recognize that most “renewables,” certainly including wind energy, biofuel, and battery manufacturing, are devastating to the environment.

These are facts that unions must face, and the agenda that unions should adopt. Such a reform is unlikely, but possible if they return to their founding principles. If unions were to adopt these principles, it would not only benefit all Americans. It would also restore America’s strength and enhance America’s standing as an example and an inspiration to the rest of the world, and offer again a model for other nations to follow.

This article was originally published by the California Policy Center.

Outlaw Public Sector Unions

Money doesn’t guarantee victory in political campaigns. For proof, look no further than Meg Whitman, the California billionaire who in 2010 squandered $179 million in her futile campaign to beat Jerry Brown and become that state’s next governor.

When money is married to institutional power, however, it makes all the difference. This is why, 10 years after the Whitman debacle, Mark Zuckerberg was able to purchase the presidential election outcome in 2020 for $419 million. Whitman’s money paid consultants and bought ads on television. Zuckerberg’s money went to supplement the activities of election offices in swing states – election offices that employed workers represented by unions that overwhelmingly favor Democrats over Republicans.

This is a critical distinction. Imagine if a pro-Republican billionaire had, like Zuckerberg, poured hundreds of billions of dollars into “nonpartisan” nonprofit organizations that in-turn used that money to launch get-out-the-vote campaigns in areas heavy with Republican voters. What are the chances the election offices in these cities would have cooperated?

Consider Maricopa County in Arizona, the City of Philadelphia, or the City of Detroit. Election office workers in these cities, and many others around the country, are represented by AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. In 2020, according to Open Secrets, 99.7 percent of AFSCME’s political contributions to federal election campaigns went to Democrats. Nationally, labor unions in 2020 spent a reported $1.8 billion on political campaign contributions, and of the public sector union share of that spending, 89 percent was spent to support Democrats.

Public sector unions don’t merely engage in political spending, their members occupy the bureaucracies that manage our elections. There are only five states that prohibit collective bargaining by public employees, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The situation in Georgia exemplifies the power of these unions, because even there, while unions are not able to bargain, they still are still permitted to recruit members and collect dues.

There is an inherent conflict of interest between the employees of government agencies and the interests of the general taxpaying public. When government programs fail, the natural inclination of a government employee is to protect their job security, which means they will claim not enough people were hired, not enough money was spent, and if more taxpayer dollars can get thrown at the problem, results will improve. This may or may not be true, but a taxpayer is much more likely to support programs that succeed, and to cancel programs that fail. From the perspective of a government bureaucracy, and the ambitions of the career bureaucrats that staff it, failure is an opportunity for growth and advancement.

This alone is reason enough to outlaw public sector unions. When a union agenda overlays onto what is already a built-in bias towards more government as reflected in the sentiments of government employees, that sentiment is buttressed with financial and political power, at the same time as it is corrupted further by the traditional union rhetoric that foments an adversarial relationship between employees and management. Which brings us to the next fatal flaw afflicting government unions, the fact that they elect their own bosses.

Political spending by government unions inevitably favors the candidates who will advocate for bigger government: more laws, rules, regulations, fines, fees, and taxes. That fulfills the ambitions of the union and its members: more money, more staff, more programs, translating into growth in membership dues and public employee compensation. When government unions negotiate for better pay and benefits, the politician sitting across the table knows that if they resist, they will be targeted for defeat in the next election. In any close race, and even in races where the incumbent would ordinarily have an advantage, the injection of union money will make the difference. There is no comparison in the private sector, where management is appointed by shareholders, and is retained or dismissed based on the success of the company, not the preferences of the unions representing its employees.

Unions in the public sector differ from private sector unions in another critical respect, which is that in their negotiations for better pay and benefits, they are not constrained by market realities. In the private sector, unions know that if they ask for too much, it will leave the company unable to compete, and this has a self-limiting effect on what they ask for. There is no such constraint on public sector unions. When they ask for increased pay and benefits, they know that the politicians they have elected will either raise taxes to grant these demands, or face defeat in the next election.

The consequences of allowing public sector unions to completely dominate a state can be seen in California, where public sector unions now collect and spend nearly one billion dollars per year in membership dues. The control this brings is easily verified. To fund the 2020 campaign to elect the Speaker of the California State Senate, Toni Atkins, every one of the top 10 contributors was a public sector union. For the Speaker of the California State Assembly, Robert Rivas, every one of the top 20 contributors was a public sector union. This dominance is seen across every elected office in the state.

In California, public sector union money is used either explicitly to fund political campaigns all the way from the governor and U.S. Senators down to every local elected position including school boards, city councils, county supervisors, water agencies, public utility commissions, transit districts, judgeships, etc., or is used to fund “nonpolitical” public education campaigns and “nonpartisan” get-out-the-vote campaigns. The result? California has the highest taxes, the highest cost-of-living, and the highest rate of poverty and homelessness in the nation. But for government unions, failure is success.

California is also the epicenter of high tech, and the ability of Google and Facebook to manipulate public opinion and voter turnout in elections is well documented, as is the propensity of these companies to support Democrats. But this behavior, decisive as it may be, would not be a match for the power of union-controlled government if it were out of alignment. Just as the unionized, overwhelmingly Democrat federal bureaucrats during the Trump administration actively thwarted his policy agenda and executive actions, if big tech were using its power to promote Republican candidates and causes, agencies, regulators, judges and politicians would swiftly find a way to stop them cold.

There is an innate incentive for government employees to want to grow government. This makes any political party or politician that is devoted to the principle of limited government automatically their enemy. To add to that inevitable and perennial conflict the power of organized unions tilts the balance and rigs the game.

Public sector unions are one of the root causes of government overreach and inefficiency in America today. As long as these unions can use their financial and political power to serve the interests of government bureaucrats, proponents of limited government are fighting a nearly impossible battle. They should be outlawed.

This article originally appeared in American Greatness.

When Will Government Unions Stand Up For All Workers?

Public sector unions have corrupted the ability of California’s governing institutions to serve the interests of the people. The consequences include a failing public education system, catastrophically flawed environmental policies, and an unrelenting attack on the ability of small businesses to survive. In each of these cases, there are plentiful examples of this corruption, and the damage it has caused. Here are just a few:

Failing Public Education

California’s teachers unions have supported work rules that render it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers, or, when layoffs are necessary, to retain the best teachers instead of those teachers with seniority.

They have supported curricula that promotes divisive political ideology instead of teaching basic skills.

In higher education, they have supported the imposition of a “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” bureaucracy, at staggering expense, that one may argue serves no purpose other than to cater to mediocre students who prefer to allege discrimination instead of actually doing the hard work that scholarship requires.

They have supported, overall, a bloated expansion of the administrative bureaucracy at all levels of public education, which is one of the primary reasons there is never enough money in public sector budgets to go around.

The have opposed school choice, preventing the emergence of significant competition to failing public schools.

The teachers union has damaged public education in California, compromising the futures of millions of students.

Flawed Environmental Policies

While the firefighters union has lobbied successfully for pay and benefits that are arguably higher than might be necessary to effectively recruit and train qualified firefighters, they have not damaged the profession of firefighting. On the contrary, California has never been better served by its firefighters than it is today. But as the State of California built what has become the most effective wildfire suppression army in the history of the world, it failed to change environmentalist policies that are to blame for the catastrophic fires over the past few years.

Not trying harder to fix this may be a sin of omission rather than one of commission, but it’s a big one. This powerful union represents men and women who dedicate their lives to protecting people, property, and ecosystems. They have a moral obligation to recognize that building up the resources to fight fires must be balanced with taking effective steps to prevent fires in the first place.

The reason for California’s devastating wildfires is because while we got better and better at suppressing the naturally occurring fires that are essential to thin the forests, environmentalist inspired restrictions reduced California’s timber industry to a quarter of its former size. Up until the 1990s, California’s annual timber harvest was over 6.0 billion board feet. Last year, it was barely 1.3 billion board feet. If you don’t let forests burn naturally, and you don’t harvest timber, you get stressed and overcrowded trees that become tinder for devastating superfires that have no historical precedent.

The firefighter’s union can and should use their influence to bring back commercial logging. There is no other way to cost-effectively restore health to California’s forests.

Attacking Small Businesses

Perhaps the saddest example of union power in California harming the general public is the passage of AB 5, a union backed law that redefined millions of independent contractors as employees, and required their clients to hire them or face prosecution. This flawed, grossly intrusive law is taking effect in stages, with the latest target being the 70,000 independent truckers that help move goods from California’s ports to points all over North America.

The language of AB 5 requires truckers that want to continue to do business as independent owner-operators to fulfill the following criteria:

The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity, both in contract and in fact.

The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.

The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed.

This puts truckers in a no-win situation. Of course shippers will direct what they want truckers to pick up and deliver, and of course that is something done in the course of a shipper’s business. But why should an independent trucker be forced to become an employee of one of their clients? Wouldn’t that mean the trucker could no longer do work for other shippers. Wouldn’t that remove flexibility from the shipping industry and truckers to meet fluctuating demands?

Kevin Kiley, currently running for U.S. Congress, and one of the few members of the California legislature not cowed by public sector unions, had this to say about AB 5:

“AB 5 is one of the most corrupt laws in U.S. history. It has already cost countless Californians their livelihoods. Now it is placing further strain on supply chains, leading to even greater inflation and greater hardships for California families.”

Government unions in California have the power to make changes that help everyone, instead of just their members. For starters, they can stop marching in solidarity with the teachers union, which is incorrigible. Then they can find common ground on at least some issues with conservatives, while agreeing to disagree on others. They might take on the environmentalists, by supporting spending on new water supply infrastructure and by helping to restore California’s timber industry.

And when it comes to laws like AB 5 and the like, they might merely ask themselves – is this going to help the overall economy, or not? After all, a rising tide lifts all boats.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Globe.

How Unions Can Help ALL Workers

Last month on January 5, Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez resigned from the legislature to join the California Labor Federation. Gonzalez is likely to succeed the current Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski when he retires this summer. What will this mean for the labor movement in California?

Gonzalez has earned a controversial reputation in the State Assembly, partly by virtue of the legislation she’s sponsored, and partly by her Trumpian penchant for lobbing polarizing Tweets at her political opponents. But when Gonzalez takes the helm of the most powerful labor organization in California, as is expected, will the weight of the job moderate her political priorities?

It’s common for right-of-center politicians to criticize unions, and it’s worth repeating some of these criticisms. Public sector unions have an agenda that is inherently in conflict with the public interest, since the interests of their membership – more jobs, better pay and benefits – may be served regardless of whether or not public services are operated efficiently and effectively. They divert public funds out of public employee paychecks to wage campaigns to elect the politicians with whom they supposedly then “negotiate” labor agreements. The agencies they represent don’t have to compete for customers or make a profit, they can just raise taxes. Civil service laws offer ample protection to public employees, and voluntary associations that don’t engage in collective bargaining would still provide plenty of political leverage for public employees. Public sector unions should probably be illegal.

As for private sector unions, on the other hand, these unions often represent the only recourse that workers have when employers, for whatever reason, abuse their employees. The history of the labor movement in America is an evolution, whereby over the decades the rights of workers have steadily improved. While there is disagreement as to how much, private sector unions still have a vital role to play in the American economy. And union spokespersons who are always quick to attack “greedy CEOs” should reflect on a great irony: union encroachment into the private sector, along with increasing government regulations usually advocated and sponsored by unions, enables corporate consolidation because only the most financially resilient private companies can withstand the expense of excessive regulations along with union pay scales and union work rules.

The reality, in any case, is that in California, public sector unions exercise nearly absolute control over state and local elected officials, by virtue of the nearly $1.0 billion per year they collect in membership dues. And by this time next year, one of California’s most outspoken and arguably extreme advocates for union power is probably going to be running the most powerful union organization in California. With great power comes great responsibility. So in the interests of ALL the workers in California, here are three ideas that Lorena Gonzalez and her union colleagues are invited to consider.

Try Not to Restrict the Supply of Skilled Labor

The consequences of labor in short supply is that employers are required to pay more in order to attract workers. That’s good for workers. But if the pipeline that feeds trained workers into the marketplace is too narrow, there is an economic penalty that harms everyone. The shortage of nurses is a good example. There isn’t merely a short-term crisis in staffing health care workers because of COVID. There’s a long-term crisis as well.

An analysis from 2019, published by the California Policy Center, found that nursing programs in California turned away 62 percent of qualified applicants for lack of openings. The analysis reported, using 2018 data compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation, that by 2030, California will have to replace more than half of its nursing workforce, over 165,000 positions. Meanwhile, California is only graduating around 11,000 trained nurses per year.

There are solutions to the challenge of too few trained nurses. Some positions filled by nurses can be just as effectively filled by nursing assistants with vocational degrees. And the guidelines designed to limit the annual enrollment in approved schools of nursing, set by the California Board of Registered Nursing, can be revised to allow for more accredited private programs to be accepted.

If the union representing nurses wanted to, they could support policies that would safely eliminate the shortage of nurses in California. This may only be one step towards providing better health care to all Californians, but it’s a big one.

These shortages exist across many disciplines where unions could help. The State Building and Construction Trades Council has around 450,000 members in California. Most of their members are currently employed, which is a good thing. But what if California’s state legislature were to start making massive investments in, for example, badly needed water infrastructure? Is the SBCTC ready to support programs to double the number of their trained workers? Are they increasing available vocational training for high school and community college students, along with training for inmates and others who want to reenter the workforce?

It is possible that increasing the supply of workers puts downward pressure on wages. But releasing entire sectors of California’s economy from paralysis due to labor shortages helps all working families, not just those currently enjoying union pay and benefits.

Demand Public Projects That Offer Long-Term Economic Benefit

The classic example in California of a project of dubious value is the High Speed Rail project. Absolutely everything about this project is wrong. The project will never make an operating profit, even if amortizing the stupefying capital costs are not taken into account. It relies on imported rolling stock. It carves a scar across the land that disrupts thousands of private properties and sensitive ecosystems. It is mired in litigation and may never be completed. And supposedly we’re willing to squander countless billions on High Speed Rail because it creates thousands of good paying jobs.

If there is one example of where union power could have been used – and could still be used – to accomplish something truly great for all Californians, it would be to scrap the High Speed Rail project and instead direct that workforce to build something that will benefit Californians for generations. The checklist of worthy projects is urgent and obvious: Resurface and widen the freeways to prepare for green, sustainable, autonomous, high-speed next generation vehicles. Repair the aqueducts and seismically retrofit the dams, build plants to recycle 100 percent of urban wastewater, and add a few more offstream reservoirs to capture runoff, and bring California’s remarkable water system into the 21st century. These projects create just as many good jobs, but they also make California a better place.

Why won’t California’s unions demand these projects, instead of supporting High Speed Rail? Exploring the reasons for this exposes an ugly truth. California’s unions are unwilling to stand up to the environmentalist lobby, and the only major construction project that California’s powerful environmentalists apparently approve of is High Speed Rail. And even these environmentalists, if they’ve got any common sense at all, know that High Speed Rail isn’t going to do anything to help the environment. But unions want work, and environmentalists don’t want better roads and more water, so this hideous compromise is the best they can collectively come up with. Disclaimer: This is overstating the situation. But only slightly.

It isn’t labor costs that are the reason infrastructure costs so much in California. It’s the excessive cost of permitting and out-of-control litigation. California’s construction unions, if they want to advocate policies that will help all the workers in California, need to demand more spending on water and transportation infrastructure. At the same time, they need to demand regulatory reform so money can be spent on heavy construction instead paying bureaucrats and litigators.

Recognize that Lowering the Cost-of-Living is Equal to Raising Pay

Increasing wages in an inflationary environment is like a cat chasing its tail. You go around and around but never get to a better place. Unions are hardly the only culprit when it comes to the causes of inflation. But with the political power they wield in Sacramento, every time there is a new proposed law or regulation, they might ask themselves “this might be good for our members, but how will this affect the overall cost of living?” State spending on better roads and more water infrastructure, to stick to those fundamental examples, lowers the cost of living. Better roads and more water means it is easier to build new homes. More water means less expensive water, which means row crops such as lettuce and tomatoes, along with dairy products (cows eat alfalfa), can be produced in-state at lower prices than imported products.

California’s unions could use their power to deregulate the timber industry. Loggers have been driven out of California, relocating to states like Georgia, or nations like New Zealand, where the cost of operating is far less – not because labor is cheaper, but because regulations are more reasonable. Imagine if California’s timber industry were revived, producing 6.0 billion board feet a year again, like they did in the 1990s? Imagine if sawmills were back, and framing lumber could be imported from Redding instead of from British Columbia. Imagine all those union jobs for loggers and mill workers, but at the same time imagine the cost of lumber for homes costing a fraction of what it costs today in California.

There are cases, as noted, where literally hundreds of thousands of union jobs can be created at the same time as the overall cost-of-living is lowered, because the jobs that are created are producing a long-term economic return. Water and transportation infrastructure, along with a revitalized logging industry, are examples of this. The High Speed Rail project as it is currently envisioned in California, on the other hand, has the precise opposite effect. It is a long-term economic drain.

California has instead created a regulatory environment that in every way has priced people out of the ability to make a living. Home prices are out of reach, because there are not adequate enabling roads and supplies of water to facilitate home building, and because the price of lumber and other building materials is far higher than in other parts of the country. All of this can be fixed, and unions in California can take the lead in fixing it.

Lorena Gonzalez and the labor movement she is taking over must ask themselves: Do we want to continue on a path that suits our membership, but destroys opportunities for everyone else who is trying to run a small business or manage a household in California, or do we want to confront some tough questions and get out of our comfort zone?

This article first appeared on the website of the California Globe.

Winning a War of Attrition Against Government Unions

Anyone involved in state or local politics in California soon realizes that government unions are the most powerful special interest in the state. From time to time, as the ride-share behemoths proved in spectacular fashion last November with Proposition 22, corporations will defy the unions on very specific issues. But by and large California’s corporations have entered into a profitable symbiosis with government unions.

Small wonder. California’s state and local government unions collect and spend nearly one billion dollars per year, mostly in the form of dues from workers in the state and local government bureaucracies. The teachers’ unions alone, when you include local chapters and bargaining units representing education service workers, have nearly a half-billion dollars to work with. Every year.

There is not one member of California’s state legislature who is not likely to acknowledge, off the record, that government unions in California exercise almost absolute political power. But they have one Achilles heel, California’s initiative process.

Every two years – it used to be every state election including primaries and special elections, but in 2011 the unions got rid of that privilege – California’s voters have the right to directly approve or reject new laws and new constitutional amendments that can supersede legislation passed by the union-controlled state legislature. Not only can laws and constitutional amendments approved via a state ballot initiative overturn existing law, but the state legislature cannot pass contrary legislation to nullify these initiatives. They can only be nullified by a new, contrary initiative being put before voters in a subsequent election cycle.

Putting an initiative on the ballot is no small task. For example, a constitutional amendment, capable of implementing fundamental political changes in California, will not qualify for the state ballot in November 2022 unless proponents gather not quite 1.0 million signatures from registered voters. To ensure that many signed petitions withstand the validation process, since inevitably there are duplicates and ineligible signatures, at least 1.3 million signed petitions have to be gathered. The campaign necessary to collect this many signed petitions can cost proponents anywhere between five and ten million dollars.

This isn’t a lot of money for government unions to spend. It also isn’t a lot of money for a consortium of large corporations to spend. That is evident from the quantity of initiatives that qualify for the state ballot every two years. But it is an absolute pile of money for any group that is willing to defy these unions to spend. It is a nearly prohibitive amount of money, which is why initiatives that pose an existential threat to government unions rarely make it onto the state ballot.

In the first two decades of this century, only a two major threats to government union power via ballot initiatives come to mind. In 2012, Prop. 32 would have banned unions and corporations from contributing payroll-deducted funds to state and local candidates. It would also have banned government contractors from contributing to candidates that may award government contracts. Unions fought this hard, spending $70 million in opposition, vs. $20 million mustered by the proponents. In 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger – who up to that time had been an outspoken critic of government unions – put four initiatives on the state ballot. All of these initiatives challenged union power, and the unions fought back hard, spending well over $200 million to defeat them all, versus $50 million raised by the proponents.

Decouple Qualification Effort from Campaign for Passage

The historical record of ballot initiatives that challenged government unions in California has spawned a conventional wisdom that goes something like this: “The unions are going to grossly outspend us, so we can’t have any hope of victory unless we carefully pick a perfect, winnable initiative, preferably incremental in nature that will overwhelmingly appeal to voters. So let’s save our money and go at the unions once every ten or twenty years, because maybe then we can win a little something. If we try anything bolder than that, nobody will ever donate to conservative causes again in California.”

This logic, while timid, is safe and sound. But there is another way to look at these numbers. And it goes like this: “Unions may have $2.0 billion per year to spend, but they can’t use all of that for politics, and while what they do spend on politics is still insanely abundant, it isn’t limitless. If we know that unions are going to spend $50 million or more to be sure they defeat a ballot initiative that they consider an existential threat, then let’s make sure we have at least one, if not a half-dozen, existential threats qualified for the ballot, every two years from now until hell freezes over.”

Imagine the impact of this strategy. Instead of spending $5 million to qualify an initiative for the ballot and $50 million to try to win passage, drop that campaign for passage to $45 million, and use the $5 million you save to make sure you have another initiative on the ballot in two years.

This strategy can be examined from a lot of angles. Why even worry about the campaign for passage of an initiative? Why not form a committee focused on one thing only; qualifying initiatives for the state ballot every two years, as many as possible, where every one of them is an existential threat to the government unions?

It’s a target rich environment. Education reform, pension reform, work rule reform, collective bargaining reform. Take away their right to strike – they’re public employees that enjoy civil service protection. Or attack the leftist issues that government unions support in lockstep with corrupt corporations, i.e., roll back extreme environmentalist laws that have tied up in knots any attempts to develop land, energy and water in California. No wonder the state is unaffordable. Get rid of union make-work projects such as high-speed rail and direct the money into infrastructure that will actually benefit Californians. Require annual 3rd party audits of government agencies. Reform the government contracting processes.

There’s no end to what sorts of policy initiatives could be introduced to voters that would draw the fire of government unions and deplete their treasuries. Dozens of policy areas, hundreds of detailed proposals, and they could be put forward again and again. How many times can these unions spend $50 million or $100 million to defeat these existential threats?

This is a war of attrition that underfunded insurgent reformers in California can win. The asymmetry between the cost of qualifying a state ballot initiative and the cost to the unions to defeat it will eventually drain them. For every dollar that’s spent by the insurgents, the unions will have to spend five to ten dollars. The more bold and disruptive the initiative is, the more the unions will spend to be certain it fails. And all those hundreds of millions they’ll spend is money they can no longer spend in Georgia, Wisconsin, or anywhere else outside California. It’s also money they’ll be unable to spend to control battleground school boards and city councils across the state.

The spinoffs of this strategy go beyond just breaking these unions financially and reducing their ability to control local and state elections. As outspoken opponents of government unions finally become a significant percentage of local elected officials, because they weren’t spent into the ground by their union supported opponents, a critical mass of young and rising reform-minded politicians emerge in California. Suddenly reformers have experienced candidates available to run for state assembly and state senate.

There’s more. Over time, the power of incumbency, the level campaigning playing field, and a host of enlightened new policies will enable the electorate to understand the value of political reform. Better schools. Better neighborhoods. A lower cost-of-living. Lower crime. Lower taxes and fees. An end to harassment of small businesses. Fewer regulations. More government accountability.

Eventually, to come full circle, unions will be so exhausted fighting initiatives that are mortal threats to their existence that voters will start to approve them, because the unions no longer have the capacity to out-spend the proponents in the general campaign.

Government unions are the root cause of bloated, inefficient, even hostile government in California. Making them fight for their existence via ballot initiatives is a cost-effective way to eventually break their power.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Globe.

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Union Power is Behind Fullerton’s Push for Higher Taxes

Did you know your taxes are being used to advocate for more taxes? Well, not exactly. It’s against the law for public agencies to engage in “advocacy.” The people running these agencies who want to raise your taxes may only spend public funds in order to “communicate” with you about their proposals. And so they “communicate” good and hard. And then you vote.

To make perfectly clear what’s really happening here, the communications are only one side of the coin. When they decide to put tax increases on the ballot, city councils use public funds to hire expensive consulting firms to help them engage in “communications” with voters. At the same time, the public sector unions who arguably control these city councils –  unions that need all that money to raise their pay and fund their pensions – hire political professionals to wage campaigns to voters that explicitly advocate these tax increases.

An example of this, and there are many, is the City of Fullerton. Like most California cities, it’s in financial trouble these days, if it wasn’t already. And like most California cities, public sector unions exercise inordinate if not absolute power over the city council.

Public Sector Union Power is Behind the Push for Higher Taxes

Fullerton is a city with a long history of public sector union influence on elected officials. In a 2012 article entitled “Fullerton Police Union Intimidates Reform Candidates,” author Steven Greenhut writes about two councilmen at the time, Bruce Whitaker and Travis Kiger, who were victims of this intimidation. They were demanding reform in the wake of the death of Kelly Thomas, a schizophrenic homeless man fatally beaten by Fullerton officers in July 2011.

Greenhut documents tactics allegedly employed by Fullerton’s police union, including storming City Council meetings, yelling at council members who stood up to them, leveling unsubstantiated charges designed to scare Fullerton residents into electing pro-union candidates, and sending out dozens of hit pieces designed to smear candidates that don’t (or won’t) adhere to police union demands.

More recently, Fullerton’s firefighters union have demonstrated their political power. This June, the political reform website “Friends For Fullerton’s Future” published a report entitled “Fullerton Fire Would Rather Watch Placentia Burn.” This is part of a longer story, about how earlier this year Placentia took the courageous step of restructuring their fire department, against the wishes of their firefighters union, saving millions in the process.

Placentia’s fire department restructuring was done in careful consultation with experts, and the innovations they’ve come up with are likely to make their fire department more effective at less cost to taxpayers. But as part of a coordinated effort to contain Placentia’s new model -a dangerous threat to union power and union benefits – the Fullerton firefighter union put maximum pressure on their City Council to reject a mutual aid agreement with Placentia, despite it being a neighboring city.

Union negotiated work rules, pay scales, and pension benefits are one of the primary reasons California’s cities and counties are in financial trouble. In Fullerton, 70 percent of the general fund budget is allocated towards public safety – the police and fire departments. In 2019 the average fire captain in Fullerton collected a pay and benefits package that cost the city $224,000; the average fire engineer, $186,000. According to Transparent California, 146 Fullerton employees made over $200,000 in pay and benefits in 2019, nearly every one of them were either police or firefighters. No wonder money is tight.

To cope with a projected $7.9 million deficit, the Fullerton City Council has approved a 1.25 cent sales tax increase, which voters will either approve or reject this November. The city expects to raise $25 million per year through this tax. At first glance that appears to be overkill, but first glances can be deceptive.

For starters, nobody knows how far revenue will drop. The pandemic shutdown is entering its eighth month with no end in sight. And while tax revenue falls across the state, pension costs continue to rise. For Fullerton, this is documented in the CalPERS actuarial reports for the city’s miscellaneous and safety employees. These reports, the most recent available, were released in July 2019, well before COVID-19 burst the global investment bubble.

The reports show that Fullerton was already pouring $25 million into CalPERS in the current fiscal year, an amount projected to rise to over $33 million by 2025. And with 70 percent of that going into public safety pensions that were only 64 percent funded as of June 30, 2018, who knows how much those payments are going to rise.

The initial intention of the city council was to propose all of the funds raised by a sales tax increase would go to pay for new and upgraded infrastructure, but a special infrastructure tax would require a 2/3 approval by voters, and the city’s polling indicated that was an unlikely outcome.

Which brings us back to the topic of cities using taxpayers money to research voter sentiment, which they then use to tailor “public information campaigns” to “educate” voters on their new tax proposals.

When Do “Public Information Campaigns” Become Political Campaigns?

In his syndicated column entitled “Local tax hikes cleverly packaged,” two years ago, Dan Walters wrote “Local governments cannot, by law, directly finance campaigns to win voter approval of new taxes. However, local officials can – and quite often do – hire consulting firms to test voter sentiment in advance, design tax proposals to give them the best chance of winning approval, and design supposedly educational mailers and other materials that portray the taxes in positive terms.”

The difference should be obvious, but in practice it’s not. When you engage in a political campaign, you are explicitly supporting a particular candidate or ballot measure. When you are “communicating,” you are compelled to limit yourself to presenting objective facts and information to the public; you cannot take a stand for or against a candidate or ballot measure.

The problem arises because California’s cities and counties are so desperate to raise taxes and secure additional bond financing, their taxpayer-funded “communications” efforts vs. political campaigning is a distinction with almost no difference. After all, it is merely informative to tell voters that the city needs more money to hire more police and firefighters so octogenarian widows aren’t sexually assaulted in their burning houses. These sorts of messages are not political ads, they’re just “communications.”

And through that massive loophole pours countless millions of taxpayers money every election season, out of city or county coffers and into the hands of communications consultants.

Walking this fine line requires cities to make sure they communicate without advocating. But why on earth would a city council spend city funds to communicate information that would discourage voters from voting in favor of a tax increase that they have themselves approved for the ballot?

Fullerton, unsurprisingly, wants to “communicate” with voters about their proposed sales tax increase. To manage their communications, they have accepted a proposal from TBWBH Strategies, a “non-partisan strategy and communications consulting firm specializing in bond, tax and other public finance ballot measures supporting public programs, services and facilities.”

On the homepage of TBWBH’s website, note how they carefully they have worded the description of their primary services, which they characterize as “Revenue Measure Consulting for Public Agencies.” Notice that nowhere does this description actually say they engage in advocacy:

“TBWBH Props and Measures is a strategy and communications consulting firm specializing in developing revenue measures for the ballot and implementing informational communication strategies to meet your funding needs. Our work has generated billions in revenue for quality public services, programs, facilities and infrastructure in communities throughout California and the nation.”

If you scroll a bit further down TBWBH’s homepage, after a slide deck that depicts the many sorts of public agencies that TBWBH works with, there is a description of additional services they provide, characterized as “Winning Revenue Measure Campaigns.” The description reads:

“TBWBH Props and Measures also advises advocacy campaigns supporting revenue measures to develop and implement strategies that secure the votes needed to win. Even on tough supermajority revenue measures, we maintain a win rate of over 90%.”

All of this is perfectly legal.

Do Public Agencies Ever Cross the Line into Advocacy?

The somewhat ambiguous criteria for what constitutes “advocacy” renders this an extremely difficult question to answer. But sometimes public agencies and their communications consultants cross a line obvious enough to earn them a slap on the wrist. But it doesn’t happen very often, and the consequences are minimal.

For example, on August 21 of this year, Los Angeles County settled a claim that it used tax funds to campaign for tax hikes. As reported by LAist, “In 2017, L.A. County spent nearly $1 million in public funds on a campaign to pass Measure H, a quarter-cent increase in the sales tax to fund new services for homeless people. It blanketed radio and TV airwaves, and ran print ads in newspapers in English and Spanish with the slogan ‘Real Hope, Lasting Change.’ Now, county taxpayers are on the hook for another $1.35 million to settle legal complaints about the campaign, based on state law which says governments may not spend taxpayer funds to advocate for a tax increase.”

The scope of this ruling is laughable. Measure H, which was a voter-approved 1/4 cent sales tax increase, will generate an estimated $355 million a year for ten years to fight homelessness. As an aside, that is more than enough money to cure homelessness in Los Angeles County if they’d restore laws and penalties to curb vagrancy, petty theft, and public intoxication, and build supervised tent shelters in inexpensive parts of the county. But instead, anything goes in woke Los Angeles, and corrupt developers are making billions, building “homeless supportive housing” at an average cost of $500,000 per unit. Measure H, like most homeless initiatives in woke locales across America, is a lucrative scam for developers and a magnet for more homeless. This is a failed model in a failing county.

To the point, however, a one-time $1.35 million settlement for violating campaign finance laws amounts to nothing, when the fruits of the illicit advocacy campaign total $355 million per year.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit leading to the settlement with Los Angeles County was the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Jon Coupal, HJTA president, was quoted in LAist saying that next time “We’re going to put bounties on these individuals who engage in this activity.” When asked to clarify what he meant by that, Coupal, in an email, said “we acknowledged that, despite the record fine imposed against LA County, some public entities might still calculate that such fines are worth the return on investment. For that reason, HJTA will, in the most egregious cases, pursue personal liability against the elected officials and public employees who authorize such illegal expenditures. Such a remedy has been recognized by the California Supreme Court as a legitimate penalty.”

Watch out, public agencies. The watch dogs are going to bite harder next time. And they are watching Fullerton very closely.

When reached for comment on the common practice of public agencies using taxpayer sourced funds to “communicate” to voters about tax measures they have proposed, Jon Fleischman, a political strategist with Fleischman Consulting Group and the publisher of the FlashReport, had this to say:

“This practice of spending taxpayer dollars to hire professional public relations firms to advocate for the passing of tax increases is pure corruption. There is an appropriate expectation that when measures are before the voters, those who support and oppose them will raise money and spend money to influence voters, and that those activities will be publicly reported. Here you have voters who do not support higher taxes having their own tax dollars used to influence the outcome of the vote, all while shielding this electioneering from public disclosure as campaign related expenditures.”

Steps to Prevent “Public Education” That Supports New Taxes

The California Policy Center issued a policy brief in 2017 that included sample language for a local ordinance that would make it much harder for public officials to engage in “education” campaigns relating to new tax and bond proposals. The operative paragraphs from that sample ordinance are as follows:

Article 1. This city/county will not use public money – either internally, through its own staff and treasury, or externally, through the hiring or use of outside vendors – to engage in public education; public opinion polling or studies; or communications intended or may seem to be intended to determine the outcome of political campaigns.

Article 2. This city/county will fully disclose and make available – online and in public meetings and in public places – any documents, including contracts, communications, or proposals with vendors and/or staff which touch on public education; public opinion polling or studies; or communications which might seem to a reasonable person designed to determine the outcome of political campaigns.

Article 3. Every city/county official – elected, appointed or in any way employed with this city – is duty-bound to declare publicly a violation of this resolution.

Article 4. This city/county will never use force – including lawsuits – to derail an attempt to disclose the potential violation of this resolution.

The next few years are likely going to be more financially challenging for California’s cities and counties than the last few years. Higher taxes burden private citizens that are already harmed by the economic slowdown. Rather than raising taxes, local elected officials, and the public sector unions that influence them so much, need to work to make government more efficient. It can be done.

This article originally appeared on the website California Policy Center.

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The Financial Power of California’s Government Unions

There is no special interest in California that wields more influence over state and local politics than public sector unions. At every level of government, from the office of the governor to a school board managing a district with only a few hundred students, public sector unions are omnipresent. With rare exceptions, to defy their agenda is certain political suicide.

The reason for this power is money. Lots of money. Every two-year election cycle, not millions, but hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by California’s public sector unions to support or oppose candidates, campaign for ballot measures, lobby the legislature, and pay for public relations campaigns. While wealthy individuals or powerful corporations may at times challenge these unions, their concerns are narrow in focus. Nothing matches the perennial torrent of public sector union money; the opposition may stir up a flash flood, but these unions are the Amazon.

Twice in the past five years the California Policy Center has attempted to estimate just how much money public sector unions collect and spend each year. In 2015, a rough top-down estimate that used US Census Bureau data on union membership and general assumptions on the average union dues payment came up with $1.0 billion per year. In 2018, exercising an abundance of caution, referring to the 990 forms that unions file with the IRS, as well as researching membership information that is often provided by the unions on their websites, the total public sector union spending estimate was $800 million per year.

This time, using the same methods as 2018, but going into somewhat more detail, the new estimate is $921 million. It should be noted that available information online is usually about 18-24 months behind. For example, our 2018 report referenced Form 990s that were filed for 2015. This 2020 report used Form 990 data for the year 2018, the most recent currently available.

The fact that data presented here represents 2018 numbers raises an important question: Has the Janus decision, which found that the application of public sector union fees to non-members is a violation of the First Amendment, had any effect on public sector union revenue and membership? Because Janus took effect in mid-2018, the results shown here may only serve as a baseline. Form 990s for 2019 will not be available to the public for another year.

Moreover, unless the trends in total revenue estimates show truly dramatic changes, which is unlikely, there are too many variables at work to know what may be generating the variance. If the numbers are up, would they have been up higher without the Janus decision? Will any downward results in 2019 merely be the impact of unions losing non-members who still had to pay agency fees, or would some of the downturn be the result of losing members? How will the bureaucratic obstacles put up by the unions delay individuals from exercising their new rights under Janus? And how would one account for new bargaining units, such as the 45,000 child care providers who in July 2020 voted to become new AFSCME members?

Much of this discussion, however vital, falls outside the scope of this analysis. Here then is an assessment of just how much public sector unions collected in 2018.

PUBLIC EDUCATION UNIONS

The biggest public sector union in California, by far, is the California Teachers Association. From their website’s “About Us” page, the CTA’s declared membership is 310,000, down from the “Fact Sheet” they’d posted two years ago (since removed) which declared a membership of 325,000. On the surface, this may suggest the CTA has lost members, but in reality what was the CTA’s loss was another union’s gain.

As reported by EdSource in August 2019, the faculty associations representing 19,000 staff working in the Cal State University System voted to “disaffiliate” from the CTA. The CTA, for its part, claims new recruits have made up for this. Whatever the net effect will be, during 2018 these Cal State workers were still part of the CTA, so 325,000 remains a valid membership estimate for that year.

Using an average annual dues estimate of $1,040 per member, which is based on an analysis published in June 2018 in LA School Report, the CTA and all of its local affiliates had an estimated total dues revenue in 2018 of $338 million. The CTA also had “other income” in 2018 of $18 million, which brings their total revenue estimate up to $356 million.

A distant second to the CTA, but still one of the biggest public sector unions in California, is the California Federation of Teachers. Like the CTA, the CFT is comprised of separate local and regional affiliates, making the challenge of estimating their consolidated revenue best approached by multiplying their average dues by their stated membership. According to their “About Us” page, their membership is 120,000, and their average member dues, reputedly somewhat lower than the CTA at $900 per year, puts their total revenue at $108 million.

The California School Employees Association, which according to their “About Us” page has a massive membership of 250,000 school support staff, reported on their 2018 Form 990 total revenue of $81 million. This implies an average annual dues of only $327 per member, which seems low. Without reviewing the 990s for all of the CSEA affiliates, and accounting for the net effect of all internal transfers of funds, it is impossible to discern a more accurate number for CSEA. It may be that the number of CSEA members is a relatively low percentage of the number of people represented in their bargaining units.

PUBLIC SAFETY UNIONS

The decentralized nature of most of the major public sector unions in California makes any reasonably accurate but rough estimate dependent on two variables – total membership and average dues per member. To arrive at the number of members of police unions in California, we relied on an October 2018 Public Policy Institute of California study “Law Enforcement Staffing in California.” Quoting from the study:

“In 2017 there were more than 119,500 full-time law enforcement employees in California; roughly 78,500 were sworn law enforcement officers (with full arrest powers) and 41,000 were civilian staff.” We are assuming that 100 percent of the sworn law enforcement officers are unionized. If this is incorrect we would appreciate the opportunity to know the accurate percentage.

To arrive at the average union dues paid by California’s police officers, we reviewed the Form 990s for the unions representing sworn police officers in California’s ten largest cities. On these forms the “revenue from dues” is a separate line item. We then collected, for each city, the number of police officers on the force. In most cases, this information was available from the city websites, in a few cases, we had to rely on news reports, and in two cases, we called the police dept. in those cities and asked them. Using this method, the weighted average annual union dues we calculated was $1,340.

The product of average police union dues of $1,340 and 78,500 sworn law enforcement officers yields an estimated total revenue for all police unions in California of $105 million per year.

A similar method was used to estimate the total dues collected by California’s many firefighter unions, mostly local affiliates of California Professional Firefighters. On its “About CPF” page, the California Professional Firefighters claim membership of 30,000. Applying the same average annual dues assumption we used with members of police unions, $1,340 per year, we estimate the total dues collected by firefighter unions from their members at $40 million per year.

California’s prison guards are represented by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), a centralized union which reported on its Form 990 total revenue in 2018 of $30 million. This is consistent with a membership of around 31,000, implying average dues of $983 per year.

OTHER PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS

Two very large public sector unions that belong in any analysis of public sector union revenue in California are the California affiliates of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the California State Employees Association which includes the massive SEIU Local 1000.

AFSCME California includes a diverse group of “Councils” that represent an impressive variety of professions. This can be quickly appreciated by reviewing their “Who is AFSCME California” webpage. From the information on these pages, along with phone calls to some of the actual Local offices, the total number of AFSCME members in California is estimated at 220,000 people. If anything, this estimate is low, insofar as some large agencies were unable to provide membership numbers.

Because the AFSCME dues assessment varies roughly between 1.25 and 1.5 percent, because a high percentage of AFSCME’s job descriptions involve skilled professionals, and based on conversations with experts on public sector unions, we believe an average annual dues collections estimate of $600 per year is reasonable, since even at the lower withholding percentage this implies an average member income of $48,000 per year. Based on these assumptions, we estimate AFSCME California’s consolidated dues revenue at $132 million per year.

Last but not least is the California State Employee Association, which includes three major unions of active state and local government employees. The Cal State University Employees Union, which declared revenue of $7 million in 2018, the massive SEIU 1000, representing 96,000 employees with revenue of $56 million in 2018, and the smallest of the three, the Association of California State Supervisors, representing 6,500 members with an estimated 2018 revenue of $4 million.

When it comes to the possible impact of the Janus decision, the 2017 and 2018 Form 990s for SEIU 1000 offer intriguing data. In 2017, SEIU had service revenue considerably higher, at $67 million. Understanding the reason for this drop, and watching the revenue trends over the coming years for all of California’s public sector unions, should make for interesting future analysis.

CONCLUSION

As shown on the following summary chart, California’s public sector unions collect and spend well over $900 million per year, or $1.8 billion per two-year election cycle. While only about one-third of this money is spent on explicitly political purposes such as campaign contributions and lobbying, this is still a staggering amount of money. What other special interest in California is willing and able to spend $600 million every two years on political advocacy, year after year, for decades on end?

And where the spending is not declared as political, it may still have a political impact. As the plaintiffs argued in the Janus case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and in the deadlocked Friedrichs case before that, all public sector union spending is inherently political. Public education campaigns, for example, are not considered “political,” but unions rarely embark on these efforts, often at levels where they saturate California’s expensive media markets, without at least an indirectly political motivation. And what about negotiations for compensation and work rules? Aren’t these political decisions?

When considering the total spending estimate here, it is worth emphasizing that in most cases these estimates understate the ultimate total. In every case, the average dues we assumed for our calculations of total dues revenue were lower than what virtually all anecdotal evidence suggests. And in only one case, the state branch of the CTA, did we include “other income” apart from dues revenue. How many of these unions and their many affiliates, most of them flush with cash and other invested assets, had additional revenue beyond just what they collected from their members?

Moreover, what about the many unions we didn’t identify here, but which are active in California and, cumulatively, add significant numbers to the estimates of total members and dues collections? What about the Council of UC Faculty Associations, an amorphous group that represents potentially tens of thousands of professors, associate professors, post-docs, etc.? Under what umbrella do these bargaining units fall? Were they excluded from this analysis? Probably. And what about the California Nurses Association? How many of their members work in the public sector?

To get another glimpse of just how Sisyphean the task of identifying and tracking all of California’s public sector unions is, have a look at this website, put up by the Freedom Foundation. Scroll down this page and consider the following: Were all of these various Locals included in this analysis? Here’s your answer: No. They weren’t. There’s simply too many of them. Some years ago, a professor at Pepperdine University who was considered an expert on public sector unions in California was asked if there was an accurate compilation, anywhere, ever, showing how much, collectively, these unions rake in every year. His answer, emphatically to the negative, was too obscene to be repeated here.

If anyone wishes to undertake a comprehensive analysis of every single public sector union in California, every state headquarters, every regional council, every Local, they’re welcome to it. The reporting requirements are almost nil. Unlike private sector unions, which are somewhat more accountable due to having to file the more detailed Form LM-2 with the U.S. Dept. of Labor, the only public disclosure required of public sector unions is the Form 990, mostly used for tracking nonprofits. The diligent analyst, using Form 990s, will have fun attempting to net out the thousands of cases where funds are transferred between affiliates – dues trickling upwards to regional, state and national offices, as well as sometimes horizontally between Locals, and sometimes from the top down. Have at it.

California’s public sector unions are not only the most powerful political special interest in the state, but most of them are nakedly partisan. To have all this power, and merely use it to push for more staff, more restrictive work rules (which equates to more staff), more pay, and more benefits, that would be bad enough. Not because workers shouldn’t want to optimize their opportunities to work and live with security and dignity, but because public sector unions simply do not have to deal with the natural checks on their demands that create more balance between management and private sector unions. But with only a few exceptions – primarily among the law enforcement unions – the websites of these public sector unions read like a pamphlet describing the agenda of the Democratic party. Is this appropriate? Does this represent the membership? And even if so, shouldn’t public sector unions, with all the power they wield, be politically neutral?

A long overdue reckoning with public sector unions faces California’s electorate. It might start with the public schools, which labor under a public sector union monopoly that has nearly destroyed accountability. The CTA, for example, has endorsed the absurd goal to “defund the police.” Perhaps defunding the CTA itself might be a more appropriate way to rescue California’s disadvantaged.

But between the political reality of public sector union power, and the necessary reforms that Californians desperately deserve, are nearly one billion dollars per year of cold hard cash.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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China, Climate Change, Unions

AUDIO – In-depth discussion on the topics of China, climate change as it relates to energy policies and how that’s connected to population growth, with a bit of time left over to explain the difference between public and private sector unions. An always challenging one hour on the Andrew Schatkin Show.

http://schatkinshow.com/2020/05/podcast-with-edward-ring-2/

Rates of Pay and Pension Debt in California’s Distressed Cities

Nobody needs reminding that California’s cities, like every other going concern in America, are heading for tough economic times. As recently as two months ago, robust collections of sales taxes, utility taxes, transient occupancy taxes, property taxes and other sources of taxes and fees were pouring money into municipal coffers. Now, with the economy abruptly ground to a near standstill, these revenues are all but dried up. But municipal expenses haven’t dropped proportionately, if at all.

What bears reminding is the fact that even before the sudden pandemic shutdown, California’s cities were in financial trouble. Just six months ago – and it seems like a century has passed – the California state auditor released a fiscal health analysis of California’s cities. Measuring factors including cash liquidity, debt burden, financial reserves, revenue trends, and retirement obligations, the report ranked the cities from the healthiest to the most afflicted.

During the economic downturns already endured by California cities in this century, public sector pay and benefits continued to increase even as the private sector workforce experienced layoffs and pay cuts. In the aftermath of the tech bubble bursting, pension benefit enhancements continued to gain approval by cities, one by one, justified by the reasoning that if a neighboring city had done so, then every city must follow suit. In the aftermath of the real estate bubble bursting, city workers took furloughs, where they worked one day less per week and received 20 percent lower pay – but their rate of pay did not decline.

The data presented here, calculated based on data posted on the State Controller’s website, discloses average pay for twenty California cities, all of them within the worst 50 in terms of financial health according to the state auditor. The first chart, below, shows average pay for full time workers. Only five of these cities, Adelanto, Coalinga, Guadalupe, Lindsay, and San Joaquin, show average total compensation under $100,000 per year. By the way, to identify an individual pay record as for a full time worker, the criteria was that the base pay would exceed a minimum of $30,000 and be in excess of the minimum pay reported for that position, and that the individual received health and pension benefits. On that basis, tiny Isleton had zero employees in 2018.

On the chart below there are three cities, Coalinga, Hemet, and Long Beach, which are shaded. The shading indicates these cities DID include the “unfunded contribution” in their total pension benefit expenses per employee. Most cities do not report this cost as part of individual compensation, despite it being a huge expense. This is an important distinction, because the unfunded payments are almost invariably larger than the normal pension payments. That can be seen in the fact that the average individual pension cost for Hemet, $38,650, and for Long Beach, $25,404, greatly exceed the amounts calculated for the other cities. Coalinga, with a relatively small individual pension payment despite including their unfunded payment in the average, is a rare exception. A review of Coalinga’s active employees shows that all of them have post-PEPRA (the 2014 legislative pension reform) benefit formulas, and a review of their Transparent California retiree pensions shows modest retiree benefits. But Coalinga, to put it mildly, is an outlier.

Tough Times Call for Fiscal Restraint

The point of showing this pay and benefits information is not meant to overemphasize how much some city employees make, but rather to provide information that may help convince elected officials and voters that further pay increases should not be considered at this time. The City of Huntington Beach recently approved pay increases for some of their employees, despite knowing the city faces potentially catastrophic shortfalls in revenue in the coming months. There are rumors that the City of San Diego is negotiating possible pay increases. Across the state, cities face the decision to continue issuing cost-of-living increases, step increases, or even negotiating new increases to pay and benefits. But these are not ordinary times. At the least, all forms of compensation should be frozen.

What is often forgotten when discussing issues of public employee compensation is how easy it is to underestimate the accurate averages. Three concepts need to be reiterated.

First, in the public sector, median compensation is almost always higher than average compensation. This is never the case in the private sector, where a handful of very wealthy individuals invariably pull the averages up. Therefore, when we compare median household income to average total public employee compensation, we understate the disparity. (Nerdflash: When Excel comes up with an “=medianifs” function, we’ll prove this!)

Second, many calculations of average income in the public sector include part-time workers, just as many calculations of average pensions in the public sector include retirees who only worked a few years and consequently received a relatively modest pension benefit. The averages presented here are only for full time employees, which is far more representative of how much they make.

Third, total compensation must be considered as the only legitimate measurement of how much anyone makes. While “base pay” may or may not seem low, there is “other pay,” comprised of literally dozens of pay categories including car allowances, meeting stipends, longevity pay, incentive pay, and bonus pay. Similarly, the cost to the employer for pension benefits and health insurance must be counted as pay – doesn’t a self employed person have to set aside money out of their earnings to pay for those benefits?

Here then are snapshots of total compensation for five cities, chosen from among the twenty listed above based on their larger employee headcounts.

The first of these snapshots depict average pay by department for the City of El Cerrito. The first thing that jumps out of the data for this financially troubled city is that their average full time firefighter made an astonishing $246,879 in pay and benefits during 2018. Why do the police, who encounter risks that are arguably equivalent to firefighters, should be averaging total compensation of $175,305, only 71 percent as much, is a mystery. But the solution is not, as is so often the case, to increase police pay. The solution is to reduce firefighter pay.

Something else important to note is that El Cerrito, along with most of the cities considered here, does NOT report as part of its individual employer paid pension benefit, any amounts to pay down their unfunded liability. As previously noted, this grossly understates how much their employees really make.

The estimated median household income in 2017 was $104,455, compared to an average total compensation for El Cerrito’s full time city workers in 2018 of $167,606. Despite entire households (presumably with, on average, more than one worker per household) making only 62 percent of what the average city worker makes in El Cerrito, that’s among the closest ratios you’re likely to see.

Viewing the total compensation by department data for Hemet, below, offers insights into why pension costs are sinking California cities. Remember, this is 2018 data. Back in 2018, pension contributions were calibrated by CalPERS based on actuarial estimates that were only updated through 6/30/2016, because the pension actuaries always submit their formal estimates one year after financial reports are issued. That is, a typical city’s consolidated annual financial report (CAFR) for the fiscal year ended 6/30/2017 would only show pension liability estimates as of 6/30/2016. Yeah. They’re that far behind.

In any case, look at the average employer pension cost for Hemet’s police, $50,632, when base pay for police only averages $78,354. For their firefighters, the average employer pension contribution is even more, $55,431, when base pay averages $81,947. These cities were on track, before the pandemic shut down the economy, to be paying nearly as much in pension fund contributions as they were for base pay.

The median household income in Hemet in 2017 was 39,801; the average full time worker in 2018 made total compensation of $145,922. That’s 3.7 times as much.

The next city, Inglewood, offered in 2018 an average overall total compensation package for its full time employees of $142,806, as depicted in the first chart. And as seen below, their lowest paid employees are the two members of their treasury department – likely clerical positions – at $71,856, and then their Section 8 housing department, where the 22 full time members of that department earned on average $78,430 during 2018. Inglewood had an estimated median household income in 2017 of $51,456.

Let that sink in. The average total compensation of a full time employee with the City of Inglewood is 2.8 times higher than the median household income for a private sector resident of that city. Yes, household income calculations don’t necessarily include the value of benefits. But private sector benefits rarely exceed 25 percent of pay, and “households” on average have more than one employed inhabitant.

Continuing our random gallop through some of California’s financially distressed cities, the next chart shows the City of San Gabriel. The most remarkable thing about this data is that it is unremarkable. If the averages seem excessive, that’s typical. Overall, in fact, San Gabriel’s averages are a bit lower than what is found in most California cities. As usual, their firefighters are making far more than their police – why is this, when it is far harder to recruit police than to recruit firefighters?

And just to be clear: Pointing out this paradox is not to criticize firefighters. More generally, pointing out that public safety employees make a lot of money, and collect pensions we can’t afford, is not to criticize public safety employees. It is merely to make the difficult assertion, with respect, that the reason public safety employees make a lot of money is because sometimes they are on the front lines of bad things, like pandemics.

Freezing rates of public safety pay during a pandemic that paralyzes the economy, along with everyone else’s pay, is the appropriate thing to do. Their pay has always been higher because of the dangerous realities of their job. When the dangerous reality hits, you don’t raise their pay still more, because it has already been raised in anticipation.

The estimated median household income in 2017 for San Gabriel was $59,598. The average pay for a full time city worker in San Gabriel in 2018 was $131,361 (not including cost of unfunded pensions).

Which brings us to Long Beach. Why Long Beach? Sure, they’re among the top fifty distressed cities according to the state auditor’s report, but they didn’t make the top twenty. They’re not among the worst of the worst. Long Beach is a good example of a city that’s done a lot of things right, yet still finds itself estimated to be one of the most financially challenged cities in California. Why?

To really answer that, it is necessary to review not just the average pay for full time employees for the City of Long Beach, which was $143,972 in 2018, compared to an estimated median household income in 2017 of $60,557 – less than half as much. That’s a crippling payroll burden, just like it is in every other city in California. Why do members of the lowest paying department in the city earn, at $89,480 per year, 47 percent more than the average household in the city they serve? Why does the average full time firefighter in Long Beach earn nearly four times as much?

These are difficult questions. But if we can’t ask them now, when millions of Californians are unable to work at all, when can we ask them? What does public service mean in a democracy, if there isn’t shared sacrifice by the government employees, to help carry some of the burden and share some of the fate of the citizens being served?

It’s the Pensions, Stupid

Poor James Carville. His famous quote has made it all the way to the pension overhang, this abstruse albatross, a nerd’s nemesis, ominous but opaque, the theoretical tsunami, the perennial phantom that never materializes, the metaphorical can kicked down the endless road for countless years. But it is. It is the pensions. And we are stupid to ignore them this time.

It was stupid to keep enhancing pensions back in 2001 through 2005 when the economy was digging out from the tech bubble crash and even idiots had belatedly realized that the stock market couldn’t consistently log returns like it had in the late 1990s. A few years after that, it was stupid for cities like Stockton and Vallejo to declare bankruptcy but leave the pension benefit formulas untouched. And it will be stupid, unforgivably stupid, to not recognize that this time, if defined benefits are to be saved, pension benefit formulas for all employees, for future work, need to descend to PEPRA levels.

The final chart here depicts the cash flow impact of changing pension fund earnings projections. There’s actually a lot to like here, so pay close attention. This is a good case, not a typical case. Note that the pension fund, upon most recent 6/30/2018 data (the 6/30/2019 CAFR) for the City of Long Beach was 78 percent funded. That’s a terrible ratio for any pension fund at the end of an eleven year bull market, but it’s nearly 10 percent better than the funded ratio at that time for CalPERS at large.

Observe the total estimated employer contribution in 2019-20, $137.3 million, compared to where it will go in five years – up to $188 million. That’s a 50 million bump they face, and these numbers came out before the pandemic slowdown. And Long Beach is a good case. Check these actuarial estimates for other California cities. In nearly every case, they’re worse. Much worse.

Over the coming months the California Policy Center will produce ongoing analysis of agencies – cities, counties, special districts – that are going to be severely stressed by the ongoing collapse of revenues, combined with the relentless rise in pension costs. But through all of what is to come, two responsible options present themselves. At the least, freeze all pay and benefits. And if possible, move all employees, regardless of hire date, to PEPRA level pension benefits for all future work, effective immediately.

If these two steps are taken, whatever financial challenges these cities face, and there will be many, will nonetheless be significantly easier to bear.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Public Sector Unions Continue Their Attack on Property Rights in California

California’s legislature is controlled by Democratic super-majorities in both houses. These Democrat politicians, in turn, are controlled by public sector unions. They are now considering Assembly Bill 828, which will empower courts to summarily reduce rents by up to 25 percent and create additional barriers to the eviction process.

Passage of this law would be a disaster. It’s not just a blatant usurpation of property rights. It also adds a hefty shove to an economy already teetering on the brink of an epic deflationary spiral.

But supporters have the votes to pass this measure, and Gov. Newsom is likely to sign it into law. This is happening in a state where the pandemic emergency has already induced the legislature to ban evictions, and already had capped rental rate hikes. In California today, there is no longer any legal incentive for renters to pay rent, whether or not they are impacted by the current state of emergency. But landlords get no similar relief from property taxes or mortgage obligations.

A look at who funds these Democratic politicians yields unambiguous results. The money trail works like this: California’s citizens pay taxes, which fund state and local government payroll departments, from which, paycheck after paycheck, money automatically pours into the coffers of public sector unions. These unions use that money to buy the allegiance of politicians via campaign contributions.

The three primary sponsors of AB 828 are assemblymembers Phil Ting (D, San Francisco), Ash Kalra (D, Silicon Valley), and Mike Gipson (D, Los Angeles). Using data from FollowTheMoney.org, if you view the “Top Donors” for Ting, Kalra, and Gipson, you will see that nearly all their money comes from unions, and nearly all of these unions are public sector unions.

Phil Ting’s top 15 donors, for example, are all unions; his number one donor is the powerful California Teachers Association. Ash Kalra’s top 28 donors are unions with only one exception, the “Consumer Attorneys of California at #10. Mike Gipson’s slightly more diverse assortment of donors includes the California Dental Assocation at position #3, the California Association of Realtors at #8, a casino and Chevron at positions 12 and 13, Anheuser-Busch at 18 and the California Beer & Beverage Distributors at #20. This leaves fourteen of Gipson’s top twenty donors that are, you guessed it, unions.

A California Policy Center analysis conducted in 2018 estimated that California’s government unions collect and spend over $800 million per year. Not per election cycle. Per year. About one-third of this money is spent on political campaigns and lobbying (that would be roughly half-a-billion per election cycle) with a substantial share of the rest used to fund “non-political” activities including “public information campaigns” and get-out-the vote efforts.

There is no special interest, even in California’s huge economy, that can match this level of focused political power.

Corporations big enough to oppose the political agenda of these unions rarely bother, since they might then be targeted with retaliatory legislation. When they do stand up to the unions, it is only if pending union supported legislation poses an existential threat to their industry. Even in the rare event of conflict, the unions are usually able to prevail, since these industrial special interests lack the cohesion and the common agenda, much less the multi-decade commitment it would take to seriously challenge these unions.

As for California’s much vaunted 160 billionaires? First of all, having a net worth in excess of a billion dollars still doesn’t provide the discretionary funds necessary to go toe to toe with a special interest that spends a half-billion per election cycle. You have to be a multi-billionaire to play this game. And in any case, most of California’s billionaires either keep their heads down, or, far too often, they just offer additional financial support for the leftist agenda of the public sector unions.

The Consequences of Public Sector Union Power

When conscientious Americans, concerned about the future of the nation, warn us about the growing power of the administrative state, they’re right. But in deep blue states and cities across America, there is the other deep state, controlled by public sector unions. The threat these unions pose to democracy and freedom is equally troubling.

The usual problems with public sector unions are well known, but worth repeating: They use campaign donations to elect the politicians they negotiate with for pay, benefits, and work rules. Their members staff the bureaucracies and operate the machinery of government, with a sizable minority of those members committed union activists bent on advancing the union agenda within their agencies. They rely on taxes to pay for their wages and benefits instead of having to earn revenues and profits in a competitive market. But there’s more.

Public sector unions are inherently driven to want to expand government. For government unions, the failure of a government program constitutes success for their organizations, since their remedy for any failed program is to increase the size and scope of government. For government unions, the fracturing of our society and the erosion of our values and traditions has the effect of elevating the importance of government, which becomes the secular referee, brokering distribution of benefits to a divided citizenry. And to the extent more citizens become more dependent on government, the more unionized, dues paying, government employees have to be hired. And there’s still more to this story.

The reality of absolute public sector union power has led to corporate adaptation. California’s politically driven process of small business annihilation did not begin with the ongoing pandemic, that merely accelerated it. The most important unheralded reality in America today is that unions, and Democrats, are not protecting consumers and small businesses from predatory multi-national corporations. The opposite is true: the Democratic establishment is partnered with the wealthiest special interests in the world, and, crucially, the extreme left wing of the Democratic party are their most useful idiots, their willing foot soldiers, their militant dupes.

This plays out in countless ways. Years before the pandemic struck, California’s extreme left, with public sector union backing, supported downgrading property and drug crimes, and partially emptying the prisons. Their environmentalist wing, also supported by public sector unions, successfully promoted law after law, year after year, that tied the private construction industry up in knots. Their social justice wing promoted “inclusive zoning,” the preposterous notion that low income (or zero income) households have the human right to live in high income neighborhoods.

The result of these trends is an out-of-control homeless population and houses that can only be purchased in exchange for a lifetime of mortgage servitude. But when the people lose, the public sector wins. More homeless dependency and anarchy means more bureaucrats and first responders. Stratospheric real estate values means more property tax revenue. And when the corrupt politicians set the table, the corrupt corporate cronies come to dine.

Instead of lobbying to repeal these ridiculous laws, the biggest corporations devise profitable pathways to exploit them. Large property developers have enough money to weather years of litigation and punitive costs for permits, and eke out a profit on projects where no small construction contractor or landowner could ever hope to break ground. Other developers find lucrative returns in the affordable housing business, collecting tax credits, low interest federal loans, and myriad local, state and federal grants to deliver a absurdly inadequate supply of subsidized housing units at a price tag that averages well over a half-million per apartment.

California’s legislature didn’t create the pandemic that grips the world. And nothing they do will fully counter what we’re in for – a cascade of devastating economic shocks for which recovery could take many years. But California’s legislature, and the leftist public sector unions that control it, are doing exactly the wrong things. This is merely a reflection of what they’ve done for years, and portends a horrific national response in the years to come, if as of January 2021 a Democrat occupies the White House and Democrats control the U.S. Congress.

Rather than using public funds to help renters pay their rent during this uniquely difficult time, California Democrats are proposing to use bail out funds buy up the small income properties whose owners cannot hang on without income from their tenants. Once they’ve moved some small fraction of the homeless into the units they’ve acquired – people who could have long ago been moved to less costly areas and helped to overcome their various challenges – they will eventually allow very large corporate developers, often hiding behind nonprofit shell corporations, to consolidate the properties and build high rises.

It’s not really property rights that are under attack in California. Property rights are alive and well, as long as the owner is a public agency, a multinational corporation, or a sovereign wealth fund.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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