Gear up to fight "paycheck deception" one more time

By BARRY BROAD

California Teamsters Public Affairs Council

California is the place where bad political ideas never die... they just get worse. And nowhere is this more apparent than those ideas that are generated by the right wing, anti-union corporate greed guys. The latest example of this phenomenon is the new version of the so called “paycheck protection” initiative that has recently qualified for the November 2012 ballot. To be clear, the only protection this initiative provides is to shield corporate fat cats from our political power. That’s why this is really “payroll deception.”

Similar to Props 226 and 75, which were on the ballot in 1998 and 2005, respectively, this new initiative will significantly limit our ability to raise funds to fight issues affecting our members. It prohibits any contributions collected by payroll deduction (i.e. member dues) to ballot measure campaigns as well as independent expenditures supporting or opposing state and local candidates and ballot measures. So, if they tried to pass right to work in this state, our ability to fight it would be drastically diminished. Simply put, we would lose.

Further, the payroll deception initiative prohibits any direct contributions by unions to state and local candidates or the candidates’ controlled committees. Corporations already outspend unions by as much as 20-1 on politics. These prohibitions would increase that disparity because this initiative doesn’t affect the ability of corporations and rich corporate executives to spend in unlimited amounts. Their interests and voices would be the only ones heard in our political process.

The other important thing to be aware of is that this version of payroll deception is much worse than its predecessors. Unlike Prop 75, this would apply to all sectors of workers, public and private. Unlike Prop 226, this would ban all deductions from wages for political purposes even if the workers and their employers affirmatively agree to such deductions on a voluntary basis.

The point of this whole thing is to silence our voice at the political level and ultimately at the worksite. This initiative is crafted specifically to make it very effective at accomplishing that goal. We need to put every effort toward defeating this terrible idea!

The Secretary of State has not yet designated numbers for the initiatives on the November ballot, but watch this paper for more information as the election gets closer.