FLASHREPORT

STATE BUDGET RESTORES $6 MILLION FOR BIASED LABOR INSTITUTE

An exclusive column penned by Kevin Dayton, Government Affairs Director for the Associated Builders and Contractors of California.

Business and taxpayer groups in Sacramento were disappointed on June 30 when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a 2006-07 state budget without vetoing $6 million inserted by legislative Democrats to restore direct taxpayer funding for labor research and education at the University of California.  The “Labor Institute” that in its heyday had trained union activists on how to oppose the recall of Governor Gray Davis is now the new Six Million-Dollar Man, rebuilt to harass California businesses once again.

This funding restores to full strength what was formerly known as the Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE) at the University of California, which was created at the behest of the California Labor Federation in 2000 with a $6 million appropriation.  The program received a total of $22.8 million in direct taxpayer funding from 2000 to 2005, when Governor Schwarzenegger line-item vetoed the full $3.8 million intended for the program.

The Labor Institute brought together former union organizers and leftist academics at the U.C. Berkeley and UCLA campuses to operate as what its detractors described as a “union think tank,” overseen by top California union leaders who sat on the Institute’s Governing Council and Advisory Board.  At one point more than 25 people were working directly for the Labor Institute.

Since its creation in 2000, this program has done the following:

1. Produced dozens of biased studies in support of union-backed state and local legislation and timed the release of these studies to the media just before key votes. These studies attacked the employment practices of businesses and individual corporations in almost every sector of the economy.

2. Provided biased quotes to news media during labor disputes between unions and businesses, while portraying itself as a neutral, scholarly academic program.

3. Convened training seminars for union organizers.

4. Funded summer internships for college students to organize companies in conjunction with unions.

5. Funded academic "research" with a strongly anti-business bias.

6. Encouraged and promoted a biased version of labor history to be taught in California public schools.

7. Ventured into partisan politics by training union activists on how to fight the recall of Gray Davis.

8. Compromised the image of the University of California and the status of a University of California degree by producing shoddy, amateurish “academic” work under the university name.

Shortly after taking office, Governor Schwarzenegger struck $2 million from the Labor Institute as part of mid-year budget recessions.  Although his proposed 2004-05 budget eliminated all funding from the program, the Governor ended up signing a budget that included $3.8 million for it.  Then, in the following year, the Governor vetoed the full $3.8 million intended for the program in the 2005-06 budget.  Yet the program would not go away.

According to information that Associated Builders and Contractors of California obtained in May through a Public Records Act request, the University of California still managed to find total funding of $2,633,615 for “Labor Research Programs” in 2005-06 despite the lack of direct appropriations.  Documents show that the University of California’s Labor Research Programs received $1,383,615 as a permanent budget from the University in 2005-06 and an additional $1,250,000 in temporary funding.

The $1.25 million in temporary funding was “redirected from research programs that were also initiated as legislative priorities and have received large amounts of State funds in the past.”  Apparently the University of California has extra money sitting around to perpetuate programs that lose their state funding.

Now, the Labor Institute is flush with $6 million in new taxpayer funding.  It’s a shame, because there is no program in the state budget more deserving of elimination.  Unions shouldn’t be billing taxpayers for their self-serving studies and seminars.
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You can contact Kevin via the FR right here.