Unions Throw Cash, Clout Into Brown’s Campaign : Politics: Labor feels shut out by Wilson and is his rival’s staunchest backer. But prison guards support governor.

“What happens to state workers if Pete Wilson wins the gubernatorial election in November?” asks an editorial in the magazine of the largest state workers’ union.

“We’re sunk,” is the answer.

With rhetoric like that, it’s not surprising that the magazine’s publisher, the California State Employees Assn., has taken out its checkbook to back Wilson’s Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Kathleen Brown--providing her uphill campaign with $264,000 in badly needed cash and services this year.

A detailed review of Brown’s campaign reports and interviews with labor leaders show that the state employees group is not alone. Driven by distaste for Wilson as much as enthusiasm for Brown, unions across the state, representing truck drivers and carpenters, teachers and firefighters, are throwing their weight and considerable cash behind efforts to unseat the incumbent.

To be sure, Brown has other major contributors. Director Steven Spielberg has chipped in $100,000. And under the cryptic name of 35 East Corporation, companies operated by multibillionaire financier Ronald O. Perelman have contributed $99,000. (One of Perelman’s companies, MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., is at 35 E. 62nd St. in New York.)

Altogether, Brown has collected $20.7 million through Oct. 22 in her drive to become the state’s chief executive. While that’s not as much as Wilson’s record-breaking $26.8 million, her campaign aides insist that it is enough to keep her competitive through next Tuesday’s election. And it is more than Wilson’s 1990 Democratic opponent, Dianne Feinstein, collected throughout her entire campaign.

To raise the cash needed to compete with Wilson, Brown has turned to a broad array of contributors. Her donor lists include big-time personal injury attorneys, real estate developers and Hollywood executives. Because there are no limits on campaign contributions, a relatively small number of large contributors account for much of her campaign war chest.

But it is the steady flow of union cash that has proved to be the lifeblood of the Brown campaign. It is support she can count on before anything else.

Through Oct. 22, the end of the last reporting period, Brown had collected almost $3 million from labor. With the two heaviest weeks of campaigning and fund raising still to be counted, that total is sure to grow by Election Day. But it already exceeds the $2.7 million that Democrat Dianne Feinstein took from labor in her unsuccessful race against Wilson in 1990.

Using catchy phrases like “Let’s beat Pete,” and “No Re-Pete,” the unions are rallying their members to support a candidate that they believe will favor their members more than the incumbent.

In the days ahead, unions will boost Brown’s candidacy by organizing precinct walks and phone banks to identify likely Brown voters and by getting them to the polls Nov. 8.

Many union leaders say that Brown offers hope for change after the state’s economically dismal years under Wilson.

“Basically for 12 years we’ve had stagnation,” said California Teachers Assn. Executive Director Ralph Flynn, referring to Wilson and his GOP predecessor, Gov. George Deukmejian. Per-pupil spending in California has been frozen under Wilson and in some districts teachers’ wages have been cut. But like other labor leaders, Flynn says his union’s endorsement of Brown goes beyond the bread-and-butter issues of wages and benefits for its 235,000 members. Flynn said his group is also concerned about rising student fees and Wilson’s harsh rhetoric on immigration.

The teachers have contributed $100,000 to the Brown campaign through Oct. 22. Its California State University affiliate, the California Faculty Assn., has pumped in an additional $68,000.

Daniel A. Terry, president of California Professional Firefighters, representing 20,000 local, state and federal employees in the state, says his members are worried about the ability of communities to respond to fires.

“I think generally speaking firefighters are well paid, so we’re not moaning and groaning about that. . . . But we see the same number of people working fire stations today as worked there when we had 17 million people (compared to 32 million today).” The statewide firefighters organization has contributed almost $60,000 to Brown this year and dozens of local units have added from $200 to $500 each.

There is one notable exception to the chorus of pro-Brown, anti-Wilson labor organizations: the state prison guards’ union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. The union spent nearly $1 million to help Wilson defeat Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and has given $525,000 thus far this year.

Not only has the governor backed tougher sentencing and more prison construction, but in difficult financial years, Wilson has been relatively generous to the state’s prison guards, raising their salaries 2% to 5% more than their fellow state workers, said the president of the 23,000-worker union, Don Novey.

He insists that Wilson has done well by state workers in the face of an unprecedented fiscal crisis. “This guy inherited a $14-billion hole . . . and employees got over 8% to 10% pay increases over this four-year period.”

Unlike other public employee union leaders who say that the governor won’t even meet with them, Novey says Wilson has always proved accessible and reasonable. “If you sit the guy down, things have a tendency to be worked out,” he said.

Other labor leaders complain that Novey’s union has reaped other rewards for its support of Wilson. The governor appointed Novey to one of two labor slots on the Industrial Welfare Commission, which sets the minimum wage and grants exceptions to the state law requiring overtime pay for work beyond an eight-hour day.

Wilson has placed other prison guard union officials on the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, which sets worker safety rules, and on a new commission that oversees the enforcement of safety rules and implementation of workers’ compensation reforms.

But Novey’s union is clearly apart from most labor organizations in this campaign.

“Labor is heavily supporting Kathleen Brown,” said Michael J. Riley, president of Joint Council of Teamsters No. 42 in Los Angeles. “Whatever she is, she’s a hell of a lot better than Pete Wilson.”

John F. Henning, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL--CIO, quickly enumerates half a dozen complaints that organized labor has with Wilson.

Among the items on Henning’s list:

The governor has vetoed bills that extend the period of time covered by unemployment benefits and that raise payments to disabled workers. Wilson’s appointees to the Industrial Welfare Commission have refused to raise the state’s $4.25-an-hour minimum wage, which was last changed in 1987. After the Northridge earthquake, Wilson suspended overtime for those working more than an eight-hour day in five Southern California counties. This month, Wilson reinstated the overtime pay rule, but said he would ask the Legislature to drop the requirement in favor of the federal standard, requiring overtime for work in excess of 40 hours in a week.

Also on Henning’s list is Wilson’s failure to find a replacement for a labor union representative on the state’s seven-member Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board. The vacancy on the board--probably best known for abolishing the crippling shorthanded hoe long used by agricultural workers--has gone unfilled since February, 1991.

Public employee unions are even more critical, contending that Wilson has never made a secret of his anti-labor bias since his decade as mayor of San Diego.

“Wilson is a rogue on labor,” said Pat McConahay, spokesperson for the 130,000-member California State Employees Assn. “The litany of his offenses against state employees is a long, ugly laundry list. It’s been four years of bashing and making us scapegoats of every problem and financial ill of the state.”

The public employee labor leaders still smart from Wilson’s angry response to union resistance to the 1991 budget settlement, which included mandatory furloughs for state workers and a diversion of $1.9 billion from public employee pension funds to balance the state budget.

“Government union bosses,” Wilson complained, would rather have layoffs of the newest state workers than accept what was, in effect, a 5% pay cut. “In a phrase, they are willing to eat their young.”

The unions came back at Wilson with a vengeance the following year, winning passage of an initiative intended to prevent future pension fund raids by a governor and the Legislature. The unions also helped defeat a Wilson-sponsored initiative to cut welfare grants and give the governor the power to slice the state budget in a fiscal emergency without legislative approval.

Labor support for Democratic candidates for governor has a long tradition. According to the AFL--CIO’s Henning, that’s been the case since 1952 when labor split over its endorsement--the AFL supporting Republican Gov. Goodwin J. Knight, while the CIO backed his Democratic opponent.

Yet Brown had to work to win labor endorsements in her primary fight against state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi and to build on that support for the general election:

* In a Labor Day conversion in 1993, Brown announced her opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was later ratified by Congress despite organized labor’s protests. Several key union officials say Brown reversed her earlier support of NAFTA after she was told that she could not expect union support unless she did so. She has said she changed her position after she reviewed NAFTA side agreements that did not do enough to protect U.S. jobs and the environment.

* Brown has repeatedly promised labor unions a say in appointments to key positions in her Administration if she is elected. She told the AFL-CIO’s annual legislative conference in May that as governor she would consult with organized labor in naming a new director of industrial relations, the state equivalent of the federal secretary of labor. In a front page statement in the California AFL-CIO News this month, she argued that Wilson had ignored the needs of working men and women, leaving unions on the outside. “That neglect will end when I take office next year,” she said. “In my Administration, organized labor will be back on the inside. . . . “

* The Brown campaign committee lists a number of current and former labor organizers and officials on its payroll, including Vernon Watkins, who is the campaign’s political director. Watkins is assistant to the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at the union’s international headquarters in Washington.

Brown campaign spokesman John Whitehurst minimized the significance of union support, saying that the issues for unionized workers are the same as for all Californians: jobs and the economy.

He recited what has become a mantra of Brown’s candidacy: “Working people of California believe Kathleen Brown has a plan to create jobs and that Kathleen Brown will improve their quality of life. Under Wilson, 550,000 jobs were lost and 54,000 businesses failed.”

He contrasted labor participation in the Democrat’s campaign to big business participation in Republican Wilson’s campaign.

When asked whether Wilson was anti-union, as many labor leaders contend, Dan Schnur, the governor’s campaign press secretary, said: “Compared to Kathleen Brown, he sure is. Would Wilson have caved in to organized labor and come out against NAFTA like Kathleen Brown did? Definitely not. Would Pete Wilson oppose contracting out of state business to private contractors if the work can be done much more quickly and more efficiently, like Kathleen Brown did? Definitely not.

“The union bosses might be contributing money to Kathleen Brown, but the rank and file membership, the working men and women of California, these are the Pete Wilson supporters,” Schnur said.

Next: Gov. Wilson’s campaign financing.