LABOR MATTERS
Labor's Clear Choice: Angelides
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
Just look at the campaign websites. Look for the endorsements link. Under “Labor Endorsements (partial),” California State Treasurer Phil Angelides lists 48 labor organizations, including the IATSE and the California Labor Federation. Under “Endorsements,” California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger lists Businessmen, Farmers and Ranchers, Remarkable Women, and Servicemen and Veterans––but no Labor endorsements. None.
The election for California governor is Tuesday, November 7. Organized Labor has endorsed Angelides because of his decades-long record. Only one candidate has consistently sided with the interests of Labor.
Angelides has a well-established record in supporting programs that help middle- and modest-income families. As the state’s chief financial officer, he may be the country’s most effective proponent of socially enlightened investment. A guiding force on the boards of California’s public employee retirement funds––the largest such funds in the nation––Angelides has moved millions of dollars to inner-city development, small businesses and renewable energy technology.
As a candidate, Angelides has called for a package of middle-income and small business tax cuts totaling $1.4 billion. He also promises to roll back college tuition, pump more money into schools and provide affordable health insurance for all kids. And on the crucial issue of the state’s budget deficit, he says, “No one thinks you can close a $4 billion budget hole through efficiencies.” Decisively, he’d raise income taxes on wealthy individuals who earn more than $250,000 a year and couples earning more than $500,000. That would generate $3.1 billion. He’d also appoint a commission to recommend $2 billion worth of corporate loophole-closings. That comes to $5.1 billion in higher taxes, nowhere near the $18 billion the Schwarzenegger camp accuses him of proposing.
Republican Schwarzenegger may criticize his challenger on how to close the state’s budget gap, but the current budget will spend $3.4 billion more than it takes in. And projections by the California Legislative Analyst’s office show it only growing.
 California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, left, and IATSE President Tom Short rallied IA members at a fundraiser held October 3 in Burbank, California. Photo by Kim Gottlieb-Walker/ www.lenswoman@aol.com |
At the end of last June, said Angelides, the governor “signed his budget that leaves the state with over $20 billion in deficit borrowing and facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion next year. We know what Schwarzenegger will do next year if he’s re-elected––he’ll do exactly what he did before: raise the cost of living for middle-class families by cutting school funding, raising tuition and fees, and cutting health care for children, the disabled and the elderly. Middle-class families will pay the price for Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget.”
On this central issue, the Schwarzen-egger campaign, at best, minimizes the shortfall. Instead, the governor has engaged in a diversionary campaign of tactical concessions, such as embracing the causes of global warming and stem cell research, increasing the state’s minimum wage and making low-cost drugs available to low-income Californians. The latter two are, of course, long-standing priorities of organized labor and are hardly in keeping with the governor’s record. He not only vetoed earlier minimum wage bills and health care reform bills, but according to the California Secretary of State, accepted $775,000 from health insurers and HMOs, and $1.08 million from drug companies since 2003.
Siding with employers, Governor Schwarzenegger also vetoed bills that would have boosted penalties for violating gender-equity wage requirements and allowed locked-out workers to collect unemployment benefits. The GOP governor also turned down a bill that would have punished employers who engaged in misconduct during a lockout, and a measure designed to prevent Enron-type accounting irregularities. This is ironic, since Enron and its ilk were responsible for a big chunk of the state’s deficit.
Another case in point: Assembly Bill 89, informally called the Wal-Mart Disclosure Bill, would have disclosed the names of companies that egregiously failed to provide adequate healthcare benefits to their employees, and by doing so forced these employees to use taxpayer-funded indigent healthcare. It was passed by the legislature. According to the California Labor Federation, Wal-Mart gave the Schwarzenegger campaign a contribution of $104,000 on the same day it passed. He vetoed the bill.
Further, this governor has taken $2.3 million from the oil industry as he opposes legislation to prevent gasoline price-gouging. If Schwarzenegger was opposed to “pay to play” in the 2003 recall election, where does that leave him now?
Before you vote, remember what Schwarzenegger proposed to do in the months between his recall victory and his failed 2005 special election: cut pensions for state employees, cut death benefits for families of firefighters and police, cut workers’ compensation, cut daily overtime and even eliminate a guaranteed time for lunch.
While Schwarzenegger may win the votes of bodybuilders at Venice’s Muscle Beach, Angelides has a few words for the governor. “I have a muscle right here,” Angelides said, pointing to his heart, “that is going to fight for [the people of California] each and every day.
NLRB Redefines Role of Manager in ‘Kentucky River’
Decisions
Healthcare industry workers permanently assigned as “charge
nurses” should be considered supervisory and thus ineligible
for union representation, a federal panel held in early October in
a decision with sweeping implications for the broader labor force,
writes Will Lester for the Associated Press.
The National Labor Relations Board, in a 3-2 ruling, also said people who work supervisory shifts on a rotating basis may be exempt from supervisory status in some cases, but not others, depending on the frequency and consistency of the supervisory shifts.
The decision in the so-called “Kentucky River” cases
was long awaited by both organized labor and business.
AFL-CIO president John Sweeney denounced it, charging that the decision
invites employers ‘’to strip millions of workers of their
right to have a union by reclassifying them as ‘supervisors’
in name only,’’ he said.
The expanded definition of supervisors means up to eight million workers may be barred from joining unions, writes James Parks in the AFL-CIO blog Now.
California Job Flight Legislation Put Off to 2007
Runaway production legislation in California is dead until next year,
writes Dave McNary in Variety. With the end of the Legislature’s
term on September 1, Assembly Bill 777 expired. The bill––
backed by Governor Schwarzenegger and Hollywood labor unions––would
have allocated as much as $100 million annually over ten years in
refundable tax credits to producers who shoot in California.
Legislative leaders meeting with the governor could not reach an agreement on a tax package with Democrats, saying the package was too expensive with an anticipated deficit next year, according to a message to supporters sent by California Film Commissioner Amy Lemisch, Directors Guild of America executive Kathy Garmezy and Paramount Pictures executive Chris Essel.
Aerospace’s Loss May Be Hollywood’s Gain
Over the last three decades, writes Richard Verrier in The Los Angeles
Times, the aerospace sector has shuttered scores of manufacturing
plants and put thousands out of work. In August, Boeing announced
plans to begin shutting down its C-17 assembly plant in Long Beach.
The number of full-time aerospace jobs in Los Angeles County fell
70 percent from 1990 to 2005, to 38,400, while entertainment employment
in the county grew 37 percent during the period, to 130,900 jobs.
But the wrenching displacement has left something valuable in its wake. Film producers consider these aircraft hangars—as much as eight times the size of the largest Hollywood soundstages—as lucrative selling points for Los Angeles at a time when the region has struggled to keep film productions from leaving for other states and countries such as Canada, the Czech Republic and Australia that offer generous tax incentives to filmmakers.
Awards-Related Gift Bags Subject to IRS Scrutiny
The Internal Revenue Service launched a campaign in August aimed at
clarifying the tax consequences of the gift-jammed goodie bags that
are a staple at awards ceremonies and film festivals, writes John
Horn in The Los Angeles Times. The bad news for every A-lister and
low-level minion alike who pockets the freebies: They’re taxable
income.
At nearly the same time, the Academy Board of Governors voted to discontinue the practice of thanking Academy Awards presenters and performers with gift baskets.
CEIDR Study Examines Runaway Production
The lure of foreign incentives for feature films has cost the US economy
47,000 jobs per year since 2000, and $23 billion in economic benefits,
says an 82-page study from the Center for Entertainment Industry Data
and Research (CEIDR). The report reaches the conclusion that international
locations are now the home to more than half of all picture shoots.
“Subsidies worldwide are having the intended effect of attracting US producers, especially the bigger budget productions,” said study author Stephen Katz, co-founder of the research organization. “It appears that if the US hopes to retain a competitive edge in the global market for production, it will be necessary for the government to consider the enactment of an enhanced US federally based incentive program and for state governments, particularly California, to do likewise.”
Roy Brewer, Labor Chief in Blacklist-Era Hollywood, Dies
at 97
Roy Martin Brewer, an ardent anti-Communist who headed the West Coast
office of the IATSE during the blacklist era, died in September in
Los Angeles. He was 97.
Brewer maintained that the film industry had been infiltrated by Communists, and cooperated with the government in a campaign to root them out. During a strike and studio lockout in 1946, Brewer sided with producers against a competing union that he contended was Communist-influenced. Clashes with rivals and law enforcement left dozens of people hurt and led to hundreds of arrests.
As a driving force behind the Motion Picture Industry Council, formed in 1947 to improve the business’ image and to clear repentant ex-Communists for employment, “Brewer was known for being able to destroy or salvage careers,” writes David McClellan in The Los Angeles Times.
“If someone had been named in Red Channels,” a booklet listing entertainers suspected of pro-Communist leanings, or was “on various lists and wanted to work again, they had to write a letter disowning their political past,” said Larry Ceplair, co-author of the 1980 book The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60.
The council “decided if the letter was apologetic enough, and
they’d send it to the various studios and say, ‘We think
this letter is okay,’ and the studio could then hire the person
or not,” Ceplair said.
US, Japanese Auto Workers’ Unions Agree to Deepen Ties
United Auto Workers of the US has struck an agreement with its Japanese
counterpart to deepen ties and begin studying common issues, a move
which may possibly lead to the two labor unions collaborating on organizing
workers at Japanese-run factories in the US, the Wall Street Journal
reported, citing unnamed sources.
The agreement was made last July when UAW President Ron Gettelfinger
met in Tokyo with representatives from the Confederation of Japan
Automobile Workers’ Unions, the report said.
Why Don’t More People Join Unions?
Those of us in the union movement hear this all the time, writes Tula
Connell in the AFL-CIO blog called Now: “If workers really wanted
to join unions, they would.”
But at Cingular Wireless operations nationwide, 40,000 workers have
joined the Communications Workers of America recently––18,000
in just the past 12 months––because Cingular respects
workers’ rights to make up their own minds about unions without
threats and intimidation by the employer.
It’s not because the technicians and call-center workers at Cingular are any different from most of us. In fact, some 57 million working people say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey from Peter Hart Research Associates.
So why don’t more workers join unions? In short, the answer is outmoded labor laws and employer interference.
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.