CA labor unions flex their muscles

California labor unions cleaned up in the Legislature last session, and often get their way on the bills they care about.

There are reasons for that: Unions invest a lot of money into electing their allies, donating at least $22 million to current lawmakers’ campaigns since 2020. 

And, as CalMatters Digital Democracy reporter Ryan Sabalow points out, at least six legislators are former union officials or are closely affiliated with labor.

One is Democratic Assemblymember Liz Ortega of Hayward, who’s now pushing a labor-backed bill that would put obstacles in the way of cities and counties that want to contract with nonprofits to provide services.

Ryan reports that the bill pits labor unions against local governments with nonprofits caught in the middle — and that Ortega has caused a bit of a ruckus by calling out the salaries of some nonprofit executives.

The measure would expand reporting requirements for nonprofits when they contract with local governments. Contracts would be posted on local government websites and the number of contracted employees, their job classes and salaries would be made public. Unions would also be informed about new contracts and changes to existing ones. 

The California Labor Federation, a co-sponsor of Ortega’s bill, says that contracting out work to nonprofits instead of hiring union members erodes middle-class jobs and denies community members long-term employment. 

But bill opponents argue that contractors help provide vital services — such as running animal shelters, providing health care in local jails or performing engineering services for public works projects — during ongoing local government labor shortages. Geoff Green, the chief executive officer of California Association of Nonprofits, also says nonprofit employees “are not in competition with public-sector workers.”

And as one of the few Democratic legislators who typically sides against unions on legislation, Sen. Steve Glazer of Orinda also opposes the bill. He cast the lone Democratic “no” vote when the Senate’s committee on local government passed the bill last week. In addition to creating an extra burden for local governments, Glazer told Ryan he “didn’t see the justification for what they claimed was the purpose of the measure.”

Read more on the battle in Ryan’s story.

Ortega’s bill isn’t the only one on the California Labor Federation’s 2024 priority list. 

It’s trying again on a measure to allow striking workers to collect unemployment benefits, after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it last year. The current version, Senate Bill 1116, squeaked out of the Senate last month but is again on the California Chamber of Commerce’s “job killer” hit list.

The federation is also pushing SB 1446 to limit self-service checkouts at grocery stores and require certain staffing levels, which the grocery worker union says will help prevent retail theft.

One key difference that needs to be hammered out in the budget negotiations by Gov. Newsom and legislative leaders: Higher-education funding. 

That includes a $826 million gap on how much to spend on the Middle Class Scholarship program, which 300,000 California students receive, explains CalMatters higher education reporter Mikhail Zinshteyn. 

In his latest spending plan, Newsom proposed permanently gutting the program to $100 million a year, dropping the average award for recipients attending the University of California or California State University from between $2,500 and $2,800 to just over $300. 

The Legislature’s counterproposal, which lawmakers passed last week, kept intact last year’s promise to expand the program to $926 million in 2024-25, bumping average awards to a range of $3,100 to $3,600. 

Sen. John Laird, a Santa Cruz Democrat and chairperson of the budget subcommittee on education at a hearing last week: The Legislature’s plan “significantly brings back the Middle Class Scholarship, right at the time that parents and students are making decisions about what colleges to go to and whether they have the financial resources to go to certain public higher education institutions in California.”

The two competing funding amounts could mean the difference between students taking out more loans to pay for college or California moving one step closer to making debt-free college a reality. Lawmakers and the governor have until July 1, the start of the next fiscal year, to reconcile this and the entire state budget.

Read more about higher ed funding in Mikhail’s story. 

Survey says: Higher education, however, isn’t the top state spending priority for Californians: Only 8% chose it, compared to 43% for health and human services and 40% for K-12 education, according to the Public Policy Institute of California poll released late last week.

Overall, 42% of Californians say the deficit is a big problem, but they’re divided on how to deal with it, with 42% favoring spending cuts and 40% preferring a mix of spending cuts and tax increases.

Newsom says ‘no’: The governor issued his first veto of 2024 on Friday, and he cited the budget crunch as he did for many vetoes last year. SB 301 would offer rebates for converting cars into zero-emission vehicles, but Newsom said “there is no funding currently identified or available in the state budget to support this new program.”

Last year, Newsom vetoed 156 bills and signed 890. In 2022, he vetoed 169, while signing 997.

With Republican legislators pledging to vote against reparations bills and some Democrats expressing reservations as well, could a listening tour help encourage the public to persuade their lawmakers for support?

That’s what the California’s Black Legislative Caucus is hoping for as it promotes a 14-bill legislative package during a six-city tour over the next five months, writes CalMatters San Diego and Inland Empire issues reporter Deborah Brennan. The bills seek to compensate Black Californians for the lasting damage of slavery. The tour kicked off Saturday in San Diego and partly focused on a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban forced labor in jails and prisons — considered one of the last remnants of slavery as prisoners can earn a maximum of $0.74 an hour.

The amendment effort follows a previously failed attempt in 2022. But this year’s bill by Assemblymember Lori Wilson of Suisun City to get the amendment on the November ballot has been notably altered since its introduction: The initiative still asks voters to affirm that “slavery in any form is prohibited,” but language of forced labor has been removed. Instead, it prohibits prisons or jails from punishing an incarcerated person for refusing a work assignment. The bill does not address cash payments, such as requiring a minimum wage for inmates.

During a panel discussion, Democratic Assemblymember Corey Jackson of Moreno Valley said incremental changes will make the bill more palatable to voters. But Sen. Steven Bradford of Inglewood argued that anything less than eliminating involuntary servitude in California “is falling short of the objective.”

Other reparations bills would call for a formal apology for California’s role in slavery, seek to restore lost property taken through race-based use of eminent domain and more. During the CalMatters’ Ideas Festival earlier this month, Jackson also said that addressing inequities in education and home ownership were his two reparations-related priorities.

Read more about the status of reparations in Deborah’s story.

More on reparations: CalMatters has a detailed explainer on the reparations debate and has also created an interactive tool to estimate how much someone might be owed in reparations for slavery and racism. Look it up here, watch a TikTok about it and see it on Instagram.

Teachers in California are starting to use artificial intelligence to grade papers. But it’s a brave new world with few guardrails, CalMatter tech reporter Khari Johnson wrote. He and producer Robert Meeks have a video on his story. Watch it here.

The segment is part of SoCalMatters, which airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal and is available on YouTube.