The Governator defeats the evil Unionator!

[fintstone]

Another California Golden Fleece Gets Its Due: The End of Direct Taxpayer Funding for Union Think Tank
By Kevin Dayton

The Pacific Research Institute is pleased to report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has eliminated direct taxpayer funding for the Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE) at the University of California by vetoing $3.8 million intended for it in the 2005-06 state budget. Few programs deserved elimination more than the ILE, which earned PRI's California Golden Fleece Award in July 2003 and April 2005 for its egregious waste of taxpayer money.

Gov. Gray Davis and the legislature, controlled by Democrats, created the ILE in the bloated 2000-01 state budget with a $6-million grant for the "Multi-Campus Research Unit for Labor Studies." The California Labor Federation claimed a central role in winning taxpayer funding for this program, included in the budget with virtually no attention from Republicans, businesses, or taxpayer groups. It wasn't long before the ILE began collecting leftist academics and former union organizers at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA to serve as the "think tank" for the unions' political agenda at the state and local levels.

California, under the Davis administration, was the national testing ground for unions to advance pro-union legislation. In support, the ILE continually churned out biased, pseudo-academic studies from professors and graduate students. Living-wage ordinances and the alleged evils of Wal-Mart were two favorite issues.

News media repeatedly quoted ILE representatives as neutral academic experts when Southern California grocery store workers were on strike in 2003-04 and West Coast port workers were in a labor dispute in 2002. Through the ILE, taxpayers unknowingly funded union recruitment programs as well.

The ILE convened conferences and seminars on union organizing, and it sponsored summer internships for college students to help unions with organizing campaigns. It funded studies such as "Making People Pro-Union: Organizing Workers in the Culture of Capitalism," and it provided grants for the production of pro-union curriculum materials to distribute in California public schools. Although the ILE was prolific in its attacks on free enterprise and capitalism, it initially prospered without much scrutiny or criticism.

In late 2001, the ILE sparked its first organized opposition when a graduate student produced an amateurish paper that promoted union-only Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for construction projects. The study, with its obviously pre-conceived conclusion, brought the ILE to the attention of Associated Builders and Contractors of California, a "merit shop" business association that had no qualms about focusing on the ILE for the next four years as a target for elimination of taxpayer funding. The Pacific Research Institute's Lawrence J. McQuillan, director of Business and Economic Studies also began a campaign to educate the public about ILE agenda.

In the summer of 2003, during the recall campaign against Governor Davis, ILE staff trained union activists, organized as Workers Against the Recall (WAR), at anti-recall-election seminars. One seminar was even scheduled to be held at the ILE office at UCLA. The State Building and Construction Trades Council posted the UCLA seminar notice on its web site, and soon numerous Republican-oriented political organizations were aware of it. A grassroots organization called Recall Gray Davis took the lead in protesting and highlighting to the media how a taxpayer-funded program was active in anti-recall political activity. A scuffle between union activists and pro-recall protestors filmed by TV news crews outside one of the WAR training seminars added controversy to the ILE.

By the time of the recall election, free-market think tanks such as PRI and the Manhattan Institute were citing the ILE as an example of inappropriate government spending, and Republican legislators and major business and taxpayer groups were well-aware of the program's taxpayer-funded activities on behalf of unions. When Governor Schwarzenegger made unilateral budget cuts in December 2003, he eliminated the remaining $2 million of the $4 million appropriated to the ILE in the deficit-ridden 2003-04 budget. His proposed 2004-05 budget eliminated all funding from the program, but $3.8 million was restored as part of a budget deal with Democrats.

In 2005, Schwarzenegger once again proposed eliminating funding for the ILE, and on July 11 he vetoed the $3.8 million included in the budget approved by the state Legislature. Although ILE staff and some Democrats in the legislature are pressuring the University of California to maintain the program out of its general fund, direct taxpayer funding for the ILE is gone.

In the end, a program that unions should have been funding and running independently, received a total of $22.8 million in direct taxpayer funding. Without Governor Schwarzenegger's budget cuts, the amount would now be $28.6 million. Imagine the outrage if taxpayers had provided more than $20 million to the California Chamber of Commerce for its research and recruitment activities. Even though less than 20 percent of California workers are union members, unions wield great political clout in Sacramento, and that's why this California Golden Fleece lasted so long and cost so much despite huge state budget deficits. It was past due for elimination.

[Evans, Marv]

The California Governor is luck to have line item veto power. The U.S. President should too.

[fintstone]

Agreed!

[artplumber]

The unions are killing him in the polls.