Opinion: Gov. Brown says no to labor on child care
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
During last year’s gubernatorial campaign, opponents of Democratic candidate Jerry Brown frequently portrayed him as the man who unionized California government. That’s because, during his first tenure as governor, Brown signed the bill that gave state workers the right to collective bargaining.
On Tuesday, Brown made it clear that he won’t be the man who unionizes state government’s child-care contractors. At least not yet.
Brown vetoed AB 101, a bill that Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) rushed through the Legislature in the waning days of the session. The measure would have allowed certain providers of state-subsidized child care to form a bargaining unit and negotiate with the state over reimbursement rates, benefits, licensing rules and health and safety standards, among other issues. Presumably, one of its main roles would have been to push the Legislature to enable more families to obtain child care -- an area that has been subject to deep cuts in recent years, like so many social programs in the state.
And once a bargaining unit was created, the measure would have enabled it to collect dues from every similar provider of subsidized child care, regardless of whether they had joined the union.
In other words, it would have functioned much like a public employee union, even though the workers at issue -- operators of family child-care services -- aren’t public employees; they are people providing child care in their homes or in the homes of their customers, often for relatives and neighbors.
Organizing those workers has long been a priority for labor lobbyists. Brown’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, repeatedly vetoed bills like AB 101, citing the potential cost. And in his terse veto message Tuesday, Brown agreed. Here’s the money graf:
Today, California, like the nation itself, is facing huge budget challenges. Given that reality, I am reluctant to embark on a program of this magnitude and potential cost.
Proponents of the bill argued that letting providers organize would enable them to work more effectively to improve family daycare. Among other things, they were eager to stop the private agencies that distribute the state subsidies from improperly delaying or withholding payments to child-care providers. But the Legislature doesn’t need a union’s help to make child care a higher priority and provide more funding for it. Nor does the state need a union’s help to crack down on the middlemen who abuse child-care contractors.
Brown’s veto of AB 101 is another in a series of small gestures that the governor has made that show his independence from the Democratic orthodoxy in Sacramento. That’s not to say anyone would mistake him for a Republican. Nor are Republicans likely to forgive him for not vetoing the Dills Act in 1977. But he’s clearly not moving in lockstep with the unions -- or anybody else in Sacramento for that matter.
RELATED:
Union measure, stadium plan occupy Legislature’s final week
-- Jon Healey
