San Diego Daily Transcript, Jul 30, 2004

After a hard fight by the non-union lobby to keep about $4 million of state money from going to pro-union education programs in public universities -- it was written into the budget anyway.

The Institute for Labor and Employment received $3.8 million in the new state budget that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) was expected to sign Saturday.

The funding allocation has got open-shop contractors throughout the state are calling foul.

According to the group's Web site, the ILE is a research program devoted to studying labor and employment in California and the nation.

The organization also provides programs that include faculty grants for research, grants for graduate students and post-doctorate programs at the University of California campuses at Los Angeles and Berkley, said Ken Jacob, deputy chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

"A lot of what they do is leadership education and outreach for unions," Jacob said.

Open-shop contractors call it an unfair representation and misallocation of tax monies to favor an organization that produces one-sided "propaganda" in a contentious and ongoing issue, said George Hawkins, executive vice president of the San Diego Associated Builders and Contractors, an open shop construction group.

"It's an abuse of public money," Hawkins said. "In general, they promote the concept of finding ways to defeat opponents of organized labor."

The Associated Builders and Contractors launched an aggressive lobby campaign to get that funding removed from the budget based on the unfair message, said Kevin Dayton, spokesman for the ABC's Golden Gate Chapter.

Dayton said the ILE is known for putting out "one-sided" policy papers supporting union goals without fair research.

"It's a union think tank," Dayton said. "They produce phony studies that coordinate with the union political agenda both at the state and local level."

The organization is about 4 years old and received about $17 million since its inception in July 2000.

When originally drawing up the 2003-2004 budget, Gov. Schwarzenegger cut $2 million from the $4 million appropriated. Also proposed was the elimination of the fund completely in the 2004-2005 budget, Dayton said.

"We want to see that funding eliminated," he said.

Another group opposing the funding is a San Francisco-based think tank called the Pacific Research Institute.

The organization gave the ILE a Golden Fleece Award for "wasteful spending," said Lawrence McQuillan, director of business and economic studies for the Pacific Research Institute.

"Basically, we don't see it as an appropriate use of taxpayer money for a think tank that promotes the political agenda of the labor unions," McQuillan said. "We are not saying that it can't exist, we are saying that it's inappropriate for the taxpayers to foot the bill."

Calling the ILE "the mouthpiece of the labor industry," McQuillan also pointed out that many of the board members for the California Labor Federation -- one of the state's largest and most vocal union organizations -- also sit on the board of the ILE.

Specifically, Tom Rankin, president of the California Labor Federation, is a member of the ILE Governing Council. CLF Executive Secretary-Treasurer Art Pulaski is a member of the ILE Advisory Board. And CLF Legislative Director Angie Wei is a member of the ILE Research Advisory Board, which makes grant and fellowship decisions.

The Associated Builders and Contractors are mounting a letter-writing campaign to Schwarzenegger to take the money back.

Neither Schwarzenegger's representatives nor leadership of the Institute for Labor and Employment returned repeated calls for comment.