Unions Working a New Tactic Against Governor – Los Angeles Times

In a non-surprising move labor unions have added intimidation to the litany of tools they are employing to fight the Paycheck Protection (Prop 75) and other initiatives. Labor has spent six months running anti-Schwarzenegger ads to protect their ability to take money from union members and apply it toward political causes without consent. Since unions claim they are working on behalf of their members one wonders why getting permission from those members is so threatening. Actually one doesn’t have to wonder, it is easy to imagine 30-40% of union members not agreeing with the union on the support of specific candidates and that means unions might have a little more trouble collecting the vast war chests they have now at their disposal. The thought that they might be held accountable to the individual wishes of members must be very scary. But these thoughts are overblown as they would likely use the same intimidation and scare tactics on political donation withholders as they do on strike breakers or pretty much anyone else crossing their paths.

One semi-related observation, the name selected by the labor coalition for fighting the initiatives “Californians for a Better California” is odd since labor is fighting every proposition and every attempt at change including the redistricting measure that even the Los Angeles Times agrees is a good idea. A more appropriate name for the labor coalition would have been “Californians Who Wish Things Were Better but Want to Fight any Change that Might Make it so.”

technorati: schwarzenegger Special Election 2005 labor unions

This entry was posted on Monday, October 3rd, 2005 at 9:17 am by Insider and is filed under 2005 Initiatives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.