Uncategorized | California Policy Center

University of California Releases SEIU-Funded Report Justifying SeaTac Wage Measure

Someday a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California will have the courage to suggest that hosting the Miguel Contreras Labor Program at the Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses compromises the academic credibility of the institution and taints the overall image of its research programs. In the meantime, the California Labor...

By Kevin Dayton

Redistributionist Politics California Style: From Private Citizens to Unionized Government

The terms “Blue State” and “Red State” were coined about a dozen years ago by journalist Tim Russert and were based on the colored maps being used by the television networks to graphically display presidential election results. Although originally based on the arbitrary decision to label Republican voting states red, and those supporting the Democratic...

By Jon Coupal

Big Labor Feels the Pressure

Now that two cases concerning forced unionism have made it to the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket (see “The Devil at My Doorstep” Introduced to the Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court: An Opportunity to Protect Fundamental Freedoms), it appears big labor’s Gasping Dinosaurs are becoming even more desperate in their attempts to avoid extinction. Events transpiring in the past several weeks make...

By Dave Bego

Union Watch Highlights

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. Senate confirms Obama labor board nominee By Thomas Ferraro and Kevin Drawbaugh, October 29, 2013, Reuters A divided Senate on Tuesday confirmed a former union...

By Editor

Union Watch Highlights

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. Both sides commend deal that ends BART strike By Lee Romney, October 22, 2013, Los Angeles Times It was a waiting game that drove the...

By Editor

Union Watch Highlights

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. The next, next Citizens United By Reid Wilson, October 15, 2013, Washington Post Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McCutcheon v....

By Editor

Why the Democratic Party Cannot Embrace Public Sector Union Reform

“Public employees have a private interest in taking more and more of the taxpayer-generated revenue for themselves. In other words, public employees have a private interest in diverting public funds from public services to their wages and pensions. In this sense, the increasing numbers of public employees and their increasing wages and benefits threaten to...

By Edward Ring

Union Watch Highlights

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. BART strike: no news Tuesday may be good news By Mike Rosenberg, October 8, 2013, San Jose Mercury News BART and its unions were back...

By Editor

Why Did the California State GOP Accept Donations from Public Sector Unions?

As reported in the Sacramento Bee on Sept. 26 “Teachers union, SEIU open wallets to California Republican Party,” in recent weeks the California Teachers Association donated the California GOP $15,000, the SEIU Local 1000 donated $10,000, and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association donated another $25,000. Representatives of all three of these powerful public sector...

By Edward Ring

Special Exemptions: How Unions Operate Above the Law

Summary: At the moment, labor bosses are demanding exemptions from the pains of the Obamacare law they fought to enact. But that’s just the latest in a long list of laws that unions are allowed to skirt. Unions are often exempt from laws on extortion, identity theft, and whistleblower protection. It’s illegal for you to use...

By Kevin Mooney

Union Watch Highlights

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. Thousands of LA County Workers Assemble in Walkout By Renee Schiavone, October 1, 2013, Claremont-LaVerne Patch Roughly 2,000 union members assembled on Grand Avenue Tuesday...

By Editor

Union Power, Not Worker Welfare, Motivates Attack on Nonunion Employer

After battling the SEIU’s Corporate Campaign against my company, and ultimately winning, I firmly believed that I had experienced corruption at its worst. Sadly, I was mistaken. It all began in January 2012 when my company was awarded a housekeeping contract in Kokomo, Indiana, a city that benefited from a major portion of the President’s 2009 Stimulus...

By Dave Bego

Union Watch Highlights

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. City’s offer yanks retroactive pay hikes, union says By Fran Spielman, September 24, 2013, Chicago Sun-Times Rank-and-file Chicago Police officers are not the only ones...

By Editor

New Accounting Rules Force CalSTRS, Other Public Pension Plans, to Acknowledge True Liabilities

It’s been said that after Al Capone was sentenced to prison for tax evasion in 1931, his chief financial and legal advisor, Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, told other mobsters how to avoid Big Al’s fate. They must keep two sets of books. One set, that could be made public, would show “honest income” from a...

By Jon Coupal