Labor Bills Test Davis the Centrist

Shortly after Gray Davis was elected governor in 1998, jubilant labor leaders--statehouse pariahs during 16 years of Republican rule--handed the victorious Democrat a lengthy wish list.

Davis scanned labor’s pie-in-the-sky priorities for his first year in office, then offered a gentle rebuke. His advice to labor, aides recall: Spread the shopping spree over four years.

Now, as the final legislative session of Davis’ first term draws to a close nearly four years later, labor groups are lined up at the Capitol checkout counter with a cart full of bills.

For Davis, who has courted and cashed checks from unions and business groups alike, the 20-odd pieces of labor legislation about to land on his desk might just as well be a basket of political hand grenades.

At stake are the interests of two key Davis constituencies, labor and business, and the governor’s goal of preserving politically beneficial relationships with the natural rivals.

Labor unions have been the single biggest source of financial support for the Davis reelection effort, accounting for more than 13% of the governor’s campaign donations at one point earlier this year, a Times analysis found.

At the same time, business groups have given generously to the governor, and the continued patronage of this traditionally Republican bloc provides substance to Davis’ claim to rule from the center.

“The governor doesn’t see it as an either/or proposition,” said Steven Maviglio, Davis’ press secretary. “You can be pro-family and can be good for business.”

But in the days ahead, Davis’ political dexterity will be tested as he weighs union pressure to sign their bills against appeals that he veto what business groups are calling labor’s “job-killer” legislation.

Labor advocates insist their legislative offensive isn’t an election-season strategy to force Davis to sign bills he otherwise might veto--or pay a price at the polls in November. Other Capitol lobbyists and business interests, however, contend that labor, and liberal legislators who disdain Davis’ professed centrist philosophy, are trying to do just that.

“Organized labor knows that with the power they have in the Legislature, they can get almost every bill to [Davis’] desk,” said Tom Nassif, president of the Western Growers Assn., a farmers group that is battling a bill that would give unionized farm workers binding arbitration in contract negotiations. “I don’t think [labor unions] do him any favor when he has to decide between the future of the California economy and agriculture and having to do them a favor.”

Of all the labor-sponsored bills heading toward Davis’ desk in the coming days, SB 1736--binding arbitration for farm workers--seems destined to generate the most political grief for him. The bill is sponsored by the United Farm Workers union and authored by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco), a Davis nemesis.

The UFW and its hand-to-mouth members aren’t major campaign contributors, but the union packs a powerful symbolic punch as the bearer of the banner raised on behalf of California farm workers by the late Cesar Chavez. The union has launched a Chavez-inspired campaign of marches, fasts and vigils to pressure Davis to sign the bill, or to embarrass the governor if he doesn’t.

Thus far, Davis isn’t tipping his hand. His spokesman says the governor will be guided by his middle-of-the-road instincts on SB 1736 and the other labor bills.

“If you look at the wish list of both labor and business, I think you can tick off things that have made both business and labor angry,” Maviglio said. “When [the California Chamber of Commerce] ‘job-killer’ list comes out, the governor does pay attention to this, just as he pays attention to labor’s priority list. He’s very careful of charting a centrist course.”

An example cited by Davis supporters is workers’ compensation. Unions were frustrated by the governor’s three consecutive vetoes of labor-sponsored bills expanding coverage for injured workers before he finally signed a modified bill in February.

Business groups carped about Davis driving up their costs, and some business lobbyists are still furious they were excluded from the legislation’s final fine-tuning. But more forgiving business advocates note that the governor parried union demands for three years and headed off a potentially costly ballot initiative threatened by unions and their supporters in the Legislature.

“I think in the bigger picture, the governor has been very fair with the [agriculture] industry,” said Don Gordon, president of the Agricultural Council of California, which represents farm cooperatives and associations around the state. “The governor has been fairly consistent in being the sort of moderate centrist that he is.”

The problem for Davis is that labor and business have vastly different definitions of centrist, leaving both sides feeling abused by the governor.

On the labor side of the political equation, the disaffection of the California Teachers Assn. highlights the governor’s mixed reviews among the state’s unions.

“Teachers are very angry at Davis,” said Wayne Johnson, president of the powerful state teachers union. “They feel betrayed by him. He’s been, I think, very pro-business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But he didn’t really do the kinds of things for labor and teachers they anticipated.”

The same sort of grousing echoes from business groups.

“Over a four-year period, 100% of the labor agenda has been put before [Davis] and he’s signed at least 75% of it,” said Julianne Broyles, a veteran lobbyist for the California Chamber of Commerce. “A lot of things are being delivered to his desk that we hoped he would have vetoed and a lot of previous governors would have [vetoed].”

Even worse, says Willie Washington, a lobbyist for the California Manufacturers and Technology Assn., what labor hasn’t already gotten from Davis, “they have in the oven as we speak.”

Buoyed by the workers’ compensation victory and encouraged by liberal state lawmakers, the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO--the state’s largest labor umbrella group--has bombarded the Legislature with 27 bills.

“We’d love for [Davis] to have signed all these bills in Year One,” said Art Pulaski, the federation’s leader. “We respect what he’s done for working families. [But] 27 bills in the hopper now suggest that our druthers would have been he had done more.”

Labor’s blitz is ambitious in its breadth.

SB 1661, for example, would provide California workers with paid family leave for medical emergencies or the birth, adoption or foster-care placement of a new child. Union officials say the bill resolves the predicament of families that can’t afford to take the unpaid family leave allowed under California law.

“We didn’t need it 20 years ago because one spouse was at home, but nowadays families can’t afford to have a spouse at home and not working,” Pulaski said. “It doesn’t cost much money. That’s the thing the business community cries the most about, when CEOs are walking away with millions of dollars or in some cases hundreds of millions.”

Opponents say the proposal would force businesses and workers to pay billions of dollars in new taxes.

“It’s a very anti-business bill,” Broyles said. “This is not any time to be looking at a bill like this.”

In fact, business groups say virtually all of the pending labor bills would drive up costs--and drive some companies out of business.

AB 2989, for one, would require California companies that offer management severance packages to also compensate rank-and-file workers who lose their jobs. Labor advocates say the bill would deter companies from cutting jobs merely to impress Wall Street or boost executive pay.

AB 2242 would give workers earning the minimum wage annual cost-of-living increases, reversing a trend of declining purchasing power for the poorest workers, labor groups say. The bill also would increase penalties for employers who fail to pay the minimum wage.

AB 2957 would require a company to notify workers and government agencies 60 days before a mass layoff, relocation or termination but goes beyond the federal requirement for such notifications. BH

Labor leaders contend these and other bills would merely return California workers to the point where they were in 1982, when George Deukmejian was elected governor and ushered in 16 years of Republican control of the California governor’s office. They say Davis’ go-slow approach has forced them to flood the Legislature with bills the governor wouldn’t sign in his first three years in office.

“There are choices to make,” said Marc Grossman, chief spokesman for the United Farm Workers union.

“You can anger a couple of dozen rich people, or you can help the poorest of the poor with some modest social justice.”

Business groups fear that the sheer number of pending bills virtually ensures that labor will win passage of some of its proposals, even if it loses some high-profile battles.

The political costs of Davis’ choices won’t become clear until the Nov. 5 election, but the stumbling campaign of Republican challenger Bill Simon Jr. could shield the governor from serious damage, labor and political experts say. California businesses, in fact, have gone beyond hedging their bets, contributing heavily to Davis and sparingly to Simon.

The California Labor Federation has endorsed Davis, although Johnson, the teachers union leader, says labor support for the governor is “very unenthusiastic.”

Pulaski is more generous in his praise. However, he does suggest that union members might work harder on Davis’ behalf if the governor remembers his friends as he reviews their bills.

“For every one of these bills that the governor signs, he’s going to get more votes,” the labor federation leader said.

Regardless of how many labor bills Davis approves, Pulaski insists that the Democratic governor will have merely shaken the status quo--not turned the world upside-down.

“It was outrageous we were left out for all those years because of partisan politics,” Pulaski said. “We just wanted to level the playing field, and we have achieved that. If only Gray Davis had been as responsive to us as the previous administrations had been to business.”