New labor laws in CA may have unintended consequences

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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The California Legislature has a bad habit of writing a new law on the spur of the moment and paying little or no attention to its potential consequences.

While legislative history contains many examples, the most spectacular occurred three decades ago when the legislators and then-Gov. Pete Wilson has overhauled the way electricity is generated, distributed and priced, telling consumers it will make energy more affordable and reliable.

The real-world impact was just the opposite. Electricity became less reliable, prices skyrocketed, and investor-owned state utilities faced bankruptcy.

Other examples of unintended consequences in California include launching a high-speed rail project without comprehensive construction or financial plans, skyrocketing state employee pensions without accounting for the costs, and doing the same to unemployment insurance.

One can also add the current practice of draining emergency reserves to cover budget deficits resulting from overstating revenues and understating expenditures, leaving the state’s finances vulnerable to an inevitable economic downturn.

Then there is Bill 288one of many measures the Democratic-dominated Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have passed in recent years to thwart — or so they hope — President Donald Trump.

AB 288 sponsored by California labor unions and carried by Assemblywoman Tina McKinnerD-Inglewood, expands the authority of the California Public Employment Relations Board — which oversees union management activities in state and local governments and school districts — to include private sector employment.

The bill aims for the Public Relations Board, or PERB, to step into the role filled for decades by the National Labor Relations Board, as McKeener and other advocates say the NLRB has been frozen by a dispute over its membership.

Earlier this year, Trump fired Dwayne Wilcox, chairman of the NLRB, leaving the board without a quorum and unable to decide pending cases. Trump’s actions are being litigated.

“Well, I’m just going to say that if we don’t have a board, no quorum, no board, no fairness for public servants, for public servants,” McKinner told the state Senate Judiciary Committee right before AB 288 passed. “So we need to make sure that PERB can hear these cases because if there is no forum for workers to resolve unfair labor practices, then where are they?

“What are we doing for them? We can’t just leave them out in the cold because the NLRB doesn’t have a quorum. We could also have the loss of union protections, like the rights to bargain, organize defense and reinstatement after retaliation. So we can’t leave our workers unprotected because employers will take advantage of that.”

Private employer groups opposed the measure, arguing that the NLRB’s existence, while barred, protected the state from usurping federal power.

In general, states can legislate labor relations only in economic sectors not covered by federal law. That’s why a half-century ago, California could have created a public employment board and an agricultural labor relations board to oversee employment on farms and in food processing plants.

The NLRB and interests that opposed AB 288 are sued in federal courtarguing that the legislation is illegal under federal law.

AB 288 sets a potentially disruptive, even dangerous, precedent. If the legal challenge were to survive, each state would be free to create its own set of laws governing unionization.

Blue states like California could effectively mandate unions for private sector employees, as they already do for state employees and farm workers.

Meanwhile, red states could effectively bar unions from organizing workers to make the states more attractive to industry and insulated from NLRB oversight, even if Democrats recapture the White House.

Balkanization of labor-management relations would create chaos in the national economy. This could also potentially work to the general disadvantage of union organizing efforts. Do California unions and their political allies really want to take this chance?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.