CA: Measure targets unions' money

Sac Bee ^ | 3/20/05 | Andy Furillo

[NormsRevenge]

Right now, just one tax-cut activist is fronting the effort to check the political clout of the state's public employee unions.

Lurking in the background, however, are the nation's biggest drug companies and their $7.7 million stash of campaign funds, not to mention Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a political campaign committee for which he has pledged to raise millions more.

If and when some or all of them engage in a fight to force the unions to get written employee consent before they can spend dues money for political purposes, it could become the most explosive campaign of the 2005 special election season.

"This will be a donnybrook if it qualifies for the ballot," said Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies. "The unions will consider this life or death."

The measure differs in scope from the unsuccessful Proposition 226 campaign in 1998. That initiative tried to require all unions, private-sector workers as well as public, to obtain employee consent before spending dues money on political campaigns. This one would affect only the public labor groups.

Lew Uhler is the activist who is president of the National Tax Limitation Committee and leader of the campaign that is gathering signatures to get the "employee consent" measure on the ballot. The way he sees it, union money has led to union influence over state and local politicians in California, which has led to union-favoring policy decisions on pensions and other matters that he thinks are driving the state into bankruptcy.

--snip--

Uhler said that slicing off the private-sector unions turns the matter into a more purely focused taxpayer issue.

[goldstategop]

Cut the public employee unions off at the knees. Then the politicians' will lose their fear of them and start paying attention to the long-ignored public here.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[elbucko]

Public employee unions are sucking the life out of California. Any effort to reduce their influence in the state is welcome.

[Doe Eyes]

Doesn't this raise the same freedom of speech issues as the McCain-Feingold caimpain finance reform law?

[elbucko]

Cut the public employee unions off at the knees.

Yes. Public employees should be forbidden by law to strike. Public employees enjoy a monopoly status that private union workers do not. When the teachers go on strike there is no choice for the public, as there is when the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike Ford and the public can go buy a Chevy.