If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. — Thomas Jefferson

While California laments a bad economy and massive budget deficit, organized labor is celebrating recent legislative victories that include paid family leave, changes in overtime rules, and a living-wage law. Bills high on labor’s agenda this year such as “play or pay” health care and extending unemployment benefits are moving through the Legislature.

A driving force behind labor’s successful political movement is a little-known think tank called the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment (ILE). Based at UCLA and UC Berkeley, with support staff throughout the UC system, this institute has received $17 million from taxpayers since its inception in July 2000.

Despite the current budget crisis, ILE is set to receive $4 million from the state legislature to fund all of its annual operations, which consist mainly of providing academic cover for the political agenda of unions and their Sacramento allies. The ties between ILE and organized labor are blatant.

Tom Rankin, president of the AFL-CIO California Labor Federation (CLF), is a member of the ILE Governing Council. CLF executive secretary-treasurer Art Pulaski is a member of the ILE Advisory Board. CLF legislative director Angie Wei is a member of the ILE Research Advisory Board, which makes grant and fellowship decisions.

A June 10 CLF press release bemoans the fact that some lawmakers have called for an end to taxpayer funding of the ILE. CLF angst is understandable since unions, which represent less than 14 percent of workers, have much to lose if the ILE shuts down. Consider some recent ILE-funded projects.

• $50,000 was awarded to the California Labor History Textbook Project. The textbook is “suitable for use in high schools” and aims to “disseminate core union values as broadly as possible to young working people in California.”
• $20,000 was awarded for the two-part study Making People Pro-Union. These works consider “the proposition that a culture of capitalism pervades contemporary U.S. society, which represents a significant obstacle both to establishing union organizations and to developing pro-union identities among workers.”
• $5,000 went to the study Laboring to Learn. The goal? “To understand how adult educators can conduct popular education and critical pedagogy to help build a multi-racial, gender-balanced, anti-imperialist and working class political movement that is capable of negating labor defined as exploitation.”

ILE money also supports “educational” activities such as a May 2002 conference on union organizing and a California Union Leadership School beginning in September, cosponsored by the CLF and noteworthy for its online promotional material that includes an artist’s rendering of a sheriff as a pig.

One of the largest recipients of ILE aid is UC Riverside economics professor David Fairris, whose work, primarily on the minimum wage and living wage, has received more than $90,000. Although the ILE promotes itself as a scholarly institute, the accuracy of Fairris’s work has been questioned.

Fairris co-authored a UCLA report that argued that Agua Caliente casino workers are underpaid. But in June the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians released a study by Menlo Park-based Exponent refuting the results. The tribe countered, “The UCLA study was seriously flawed.” By “omitting critical data-in particular obvious income sources such as tips and overtime-the UCLA researchers substantially under-estimated the earnings of the casino workers.”

The ILE has a right in a free society to promulgate its anti-capitalism views and to fund research that strikes at the heart of a basic economic freedom in America – the right of employers and employees to freely negotiate compensation. But why should taxpayers be forced to bankroll ILE’s pro-union agenda?

Unions collect roughly $880 million in dues each year in California. Surely they can spare $4 million to support the ILE and unburden state taxpayers.

Davis is set to sign the fiscal 2004 budget tomorrow, which provides the opportunity for him to eliminate this sort of unnecessary spending. Will he? Probably not.

Since taking office, Davis has accepted about $16 million from organized labor, his biggest source of money. It is this willingness to put politics ahead of principle that has produced a $38-billion budget deficit. It is only natural that the ILE should now join the governor as a recipient of the Pacific Research Institute’s California Golden Fleece Award.

Andrew M. Gloger is a public-policy fellow and Lawrence J. McQuillan, Ph.D., is director of Business and Economic Studies at the California-based Pacific Research Institute. Contact the authors at agloger@pacificresearch.org.

This article was adapted from their op-ed titled “A Tax-Funded Union Lobby,” Orange County Register (August 8, 2003).