For Electrical Workers (IBEW) organizer Kevin Norton, the stakes of this year’s gubernatorial contest between former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman and Attorney General Jerry Brown couldn’t be higher.
Says the Los Angeles Local 11 member:
This is the kind of election where the wrong results could hurt us for a very long time and set back the labor movement by decades.
Whitman, a former Wall Street executive who sat on the board of Goldman Sachs, is running on one of the most anti-worker platforms in California political history, Norton says.
She has no qualms about attacking the labor movement and making clear that if she was elected, we would be her first target.
The Republican candidate has allied herself with the open-shop Associated Builders and Contractors, promising to outlaw project labor agreements on state-funded construction projects.
ABC has already led several efforts to ban PLAs at the municipal level and is banking on Whitman to do away with them statewide.
And although California has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, she supports expanding the number of H1B visas – used by temporary immigrant workers to fill skilled jobs – from 60,000 to 500,000.
And she opposes programs that could create good-paying jobs for Californians, including a voter-approved plan to build the state’s first high-speed rail system.
Whitman has already spent more than $100 million on the race so far, tapping her own deep pockets and those of her Wall Street allies, giving her an 86-to-1 financial advantage over Brown.
Says Bay Area Local 595 Political Coordinator Greg Bonato:
She is just trying to buy this election. It’s obscene how much cash she is dumping to flood the airwaves
But working families have a strong advocate in former Gov. Jerry Brown, says Local 11 Business Manager Marvin Kropke.
Brown has a 40-year record of supporting working families, from expanding collective bargaining rights for California workers back in the 1970s to his recent efforts to crack down on contractors who abuse their workers as our attorney general.
Union members are also working to help re-elect pro-worker Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is running against Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive who is widely reviled by former employees for nearly running the company into the ground, costing the jobs of 33,000 workers.
In 2004 she told a group of Silicon Valley executives that "there is no job that is America's God-given right anymore."
After Fiorina's speech, Sidney Weintraub, a political economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the San Francisco Chronicle:
Labor unions have battled 'offshoring,' which Fiorina calls 'right- shoring.'
The IBEW is also focusing its energy on more than a half dozen House races, supporting candidates like Reps. Jerry McNerney and Loretta Sanchez, both of whom have established strong pro-worker voting records.
While the labor movement can’t compete financially with Whitman and Fiorina, it does have the power of a mobilized and active membership, says Norton.
The IBEW sponsored a campaign school in August, bringing together more than 60 grassroots leaders from throughout the state and is working with other building trades to reach more than 17,000 construction workers at the worksite and in their homes.
Local 595’s Bonato, who has helped pro-worker legislators win office in the traditionally nonunion Tri-Valley region, outside the Bay Area, says he has seen the direct benefits of helping labor’s allies get elected.
When we have pro-worker candidates in office, it makes a difference in terms of jobs and the whole economic environment for our membership. When our endorsed candidates win, it translates into work for our members, simple as that. And that is what this election is all about –good jobs.