Muristek
OPINION- California’s Democratic politicians bend over backwards to help their union allies recruit and retain dues-paying members but so far have killed efforts to allow legislative employees to join a union. California’s dominant Democratic Party is joined at the hip with the state’s unions so it’s not surprising that legislators frequently enact measures aimed at helping their allies recruit and maintain dues-paying members. Just last month, for instance, language was slipped into a very lengthy budget trailer bill declaring the state’s intention to provide union members who do not itemize their income tax deductions with a refundable tax credit offsetting their dues. In effect, under the “Workers Tax Fairness Credit,” as it’s dubbed, taxpayers would underwrite some or all of the dues members pay to their unions. It’s one of several measures in recent years clearly aimed at making it easier for unions to maintain membership in the face of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing state laws that require public employees to pay dues even if they are not union members. And, one should note, some of the taxpayer-subsidized union dues money would eventually wind up in the campaign accounts of the legislators who voted for the bill and the governor, Gavin Newsom, who signed it. The Capitol’s mutually beneficial partnership with union organizers, however, has one obvious exception: its own workers. The Legislature has sidetracked several attempts to allow its employees to form a union, pushed mostly by former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, who recently became the California Labor Federation’s top official. But the issue seems to be gaining ground this year. Assemblyman Mark Stone, a Santa Cruz Democrat, did a “gut and amend” maneuver on a bill that had already passed the Assembly and was pending in the Senate. He inserted language allowing legislative employees to unionize and the revised bill then won approval of the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee.
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