California’s government unions have long been funding political campaigns, resulting in politicians rubber-stamping union demands, regardless of how extraordinary they may be. This has led to catastrophic outcomes in education, fire safety, health care, infrastructure, housing, cost of living, taxes, and crime. Now, state lawmakers are preparing to give even more power to government-union leaders.
State Senator Tom Umberg’s Senate Constitutional Amendment 7 (SCA 7) would create a constitutional right to “economic well-being” for government workers, prohibiting California state and local officials from taking any action that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively. Lawyers representing public employees could argue that a decision to close a school, end a failed program for the homeless, or build a road with nonunion labor would interfere with their union’s constitutional protections.
According to former State Senator John Moorlach, “Democracy is gone if this passes.” He is a strong advocate of pension reform and has been the target of multimillion-dollar government-union political campaigns. Jason Pengel, Chairman of the Board of Associated Builders and Contractors, said that by privileging the rights of union members over nonunion workers, “SCA 7 will have a major negative impact on the state’s housing, environmental, and economic goals.”
Labor experts predict that enforcement of SCA 7 will fall under the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which has led to legal harassment of business owners alleged to have violated any number of state and federal versions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Proposition 65, and workplace-harassment claims. Labor attorney Gregory Rolen warned that “such cases are driven less by the merits than by the specter of exorbitant fee awards.” He added that “as written, this would just create another such opportunity. The bill should be retitled ‘The Plaintiff’s Bar Formal Employment Act.’”
SCA 7 is part of a national effort by government-union leaders in blue states, like Illinois’s Amendment 1 and Pennsylvania’s H.B. 950, to broaden classes of employees that can be organized, even in violation of federal law. The stakes are high for California, as Michael J. Lotito, an attorney at Littler Mendelson and an expert on California employment law, warns that if SCA 7 becomes law, “it cements California as the most anti-employer state in the country — and that includes government employers who are going to find themselves with decreasing power to resist even more unreasonable demands by unions.”
