SACRAMENTO, CA -- The victory of Vicente Fox and his Partido Accion Nacional (PAN), ending 70 years of one-party rule in Mexico, is good news for both Mexico and the United States. But commentary on the elections has missed an irony. Some of the trends President-elect Fox is intent on eliminating are now taking hold in California.

In Mexico, most unions are instruments of government policy and channels of patronage. Indeed, the
Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) regime’s success in controlling labor created the foundations
for the entire Mexican system, what Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa called “the perfect dictatorship,” a
statement he made on Mexican television.

Early in the regime’s history, the Confederacion de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM) was integrated into the
official party, with government supporting the workers in exchange for political loyalty. This system has been
good for the ruling party and the powerful labor bosses, but bad for the Mexican people. After 70 years
of one-party rule, the rot runs deep, and getting rid of it will be a major challenge for President Fox.

Mr. Fox understands that this type of corruption prevents the Mexican economy from developing to the point where it can sustain Mexican workers, who must now seek work abroad in huge numbers. Meanwhile, out of
the public eye, the kind of corruption Mr. Fox is fighting is taking hold in California, where unions are
becoming an instrument of government policy.

In 1970, about 35 percent of California workers were union members. That dropped to 27 percent in 1980, 18
percent in 1994, and around 16 percent today. The numbers are growing only among government workers, with
the result that, as Joel Kotkin has noted, politicians increasingly represent not their constituents but
government workers. That has been the pattern in Mexico under one-party rule. This is a troubling enough
prospect for democracy but not the only way unions now influence government.

As a response to its dwindling numbers, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) recently changed its position
and now supports amnesty for those who came here illegally. In effect, to boost membership, the AFL is
trading a green card for a union card.

A bill by Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, a former Service Employees International Union leader (SEIU), would
allow the undocumented to obtain a California driver’s license. The lobbying campaign for this bill has been
conducted under SEIU auspices. At some of these meetings, the push has been to go further and give the
vote to those who came illegally. Groups receiving millions through the California Department of Education
have already registered voters who were not American citizens, a felony.

The SEIU’s political director, Juan Jose Gutierrez, was formerly with One Stop Immigration and one of the
organizers of the massive 1994 rally in Los Angeles of some 70,000 immigrants, waving Mexican flags, which
actually helped Proposition 187 to pass. Fabian Nunez, also formerly of One Stop, is the former political
director of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and now the director of governmental relations for the
Los Angeles Unified School District. What a cozy world.

California’s current leadership seems quite comfortable with the increasing entanglement of unions and
government, and won’t be asking President Fox for advice on how to reverse that trend.

--K. Lloyd Billingsley