Two huge unions in CA are clashing over money and political influence

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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In 1863, just 13 years after California became a state, its superintendent of public instruction, John Swett, founded the California Education Society with 100 members, all men.

That was the genesis of what became California Teachers Associationa union that achieved, through laser focus, significant political power long before public employee unions gained collective bargaining rights half a century ago.

The CTA collects dues from its more than 300,000 current members and spends much of its revenue on campaign contributions to friendly politicians and lobbying for and against legislative bills and occasional elections.

There are thousands of interest groups pushing their causes at the Capitol, but the CTA is generally considered the most influential. His shining achievement was the 1988 crossing Proposition 98a constitutional guarantee of state support for primary, secondary and higher education offsetting the decline in local property taxes from Proposition 13 a decade earlier.

Each year, as the governor and lawmakers haggle over a new state budget, the process begins with calculating how complex Prop. 98 requires that they be allocated to schools, after which the remainder of state revenue is distributed among other programs and services.

If politicians fall short, they are allowed to cut school money, but must later restore it.

In recent years, however, another segment of the budget has risen to challenge education for fiscal dominance: health coverage for 14 million low-income Californians — more than a third of the state’s population — through Medi-Cal.

It is the state spend nearly $200 billion of Medi-Cal in the current fiscal year, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2026-27 budget increases it to $217 billion. Most of that money comes from the federal government, but it’s still one of the larger state budget commitments, about $50 billion.

Cuts in federal aid put pressure on Newsom and the Legislature to cover the shortfall. Much of this pressure comes from a union that rivals the CTA in single-minded pursuit of its goals: SEIU-United Healthcare Workers Westwhich claims to have 120,000 members.

Inevitably, the interests of the CTA teachers and those of the SEIU-UHW health workers have collided since there is so much money to go around unless taxes are raised of some kind.

This year’s race for governor is one arena for that rivalry. The Service Employees International Union, the parent of SEIU-UHW, is backing former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the top Democrat. The CTA has backed billionaire Tom Steyer, who has repeatedly vowed to pursue one of the holy grails of teachers, eliminating the limits of Prop. 13 for property tax on commercial properties, which will generate more money for schools.

The two unions are also at odds over details in the state budget, such as funding for preschool programs. The state Senate’s version of the budget would move support for preschool in the Prop. segment. 98 of the budget, thus freeing up money that could go to healthcare. The CTA sees this as an assault on school funds.

Their biggest clash of all is over a sponsored ballot measure by SEIU-UHW, which would impose a 5% wealth tax on California’s roughly 200 billionaires and devote nearly all of its revenue to maintaining health care.

CTA leaders not only don’t like being left out of the pile of new tax money; they worry that putting it on the November ballot will erode support for the teacher union votewhich would make permanent an additional income tax on the state’s wealthiest residents that was first approved by voters in 2012. Its approval would support up to $15 billion in annual tax revenue.

For unions that usually agree on issues, this is turning into a clash of the titans.

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