Documents obtained on April 29, 2013 through a request under the authority of the California Public Records Act reveal behind-the-scenes maneuvering for a government mandate that construction companies sign a Project Labor Agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California as a condition of building California’s High-Speed Rail. Getting these records was not a simple task....

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sacramento, California, April 30, 2013 Contact:  press@calpolicycenter.org A new study published by the California Policy Center estimates the total state and local government debt in California between $848 billion and $1.1 trillion. The study, authored by CPPC researchers Bill Fletcher and Ed Ring, is the result of extensive interviews with state employees...

Is the Public Sector at War with the Private Sector? The labor movement has been losing steam in the U.S. for decades, with the unionization rate having declined from a high of one third of the private-sector workforce in the late 1950s to under 7 percent today. yet, unions have been, until recently, gaining strength...

It seems as if most of the civilized world is squaring off against the teachers unions these days; California’s SB 441 is the latest battle. As a way to put some teeth in a moribund teacher evaluation system in California, State Senator Ron Calderon has written SB 441, a very modest bill, which would at...

SUMMARY:  The total outstanding government debt confronting California’s taxpayers is bigger than is generally known. Earlier this year, when Governor Brown referred to the $27.8 billion in state budgetary borrowings as a “Wall of Debt,” his intention was probably to warn Californians that balancing the state budget was only a first step towards achieving financial...

Here are links to the top stories available online over the past week reporting on union activity including legislation, financial impact, reform activism, etc., from California and across the USA. Could Michigan’s right-to-work law cause bullying of union holdouts? By Melissa Anders, April 23, 2013, Michigan Live Michigan’s right-to-work law has raised concerns among some...

For five months, the City of San Diego refused to give the public a Project Labor Agreement negotiated for its planned $520 million convention center expansion. This union agreement was reportedly the result of a backroom deal involving top union leaders, but multiple requests for it under the authority of the California Public Records Act failed to dislodge it. But today (April 23,...

CTA sponsors a resolution demonizing what it perceives to be faux Democrats. At last week’s California Democratic Party convention in Sacramento, the California Teachers Association went into attack mode, sponsoring a resolution suggesting that two organizations run by prominent Democrats are backed by dastardly corporate Republican types. WHEREAS, the so-called “reform” initiatives of Students First,...