Labor’s grip on Capitol
Aunion-backed bill to pad local government payrolls has been steadily diminished by those with the clout to fend off organized labor and its numerous friends in the California Legislature. The state’s cities got a reprieve from the bill en masse. So did San Francisco, the state’s only city and county, and Santa Clara County. All that’s left for the state Senate is to finish the job and kill this misbegotten bill altogether.
The winnowing of recent months left 56 of the state’s 58 counties still subject, for no compelling policy reason, to AB1250, which effectively prohibits an array of private firms and nonprofits from doing government work. Backed by the Service Employees International Union and authored by Democratic Los Angeles Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, a former SEIU official, the bill broadly requires contracts for services “currently or customarily performed” by government employees to meet a litany of conditions.
Counties would, for example, have to ensure that contractors don’t take the place of actual or potential public employees, show that a contract’s benefits aren’t “outweighed by the public’s interest” in hiring government workers, and compel contractors to divulge all claims and complaints against them within the past decade and identify all the employees and subcontractors doing the work.
The bill’s onerous conditions leave little doubt that its intent is to discourage and eliminate private contracts in favor of expanding government payrolls and union membership. It threatens to needlessly inflate public spending and disrupt a range of services, many of them routinely provided by nonprofits serving the homeless, the mentally ill and other vulnerable people. A legislative analysis found that the bill would bring about “potentially major local cost increases or service reductions” and could affect “a broad array of services.”
It’s disturbing enough that the Democratic majority has moved this bill as far as it’s come. But it’s not the only exercise in union water-carrying being seriously considered in Sacramento.
AB1513, by Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, would require the state to provide home health workers’ names and contact information to unions for organizing purposes. AB251, by Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, and SB349, by Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens (Los Angeles County), would impose extraordinary staffing and financial requirements on dialysis centers. All are backed by the SEIU, which according to state records is linked to more than $5 million in contributions to legislative candidates in the current election cycle alone.
Granted, no one can blame union organizers for trying to expand their ranks by any means available. But the Legislature doesn’t have to spend so much of its time and energy doing it for them.