If Proposition 75 passes in November it will impose an unnecessary set of bureaucratic obstacles that would effectively cripple the ability of unions to compete in an electoral arena where labor is already outspent by corporations by more than 241.
Rather than effectively lobbying Sacramento to maintain or increase spending on community colleges or running education friendly candidates for office, your AFT representatives would be forced to run around campus and get each individual member to approve the political spending that we do each and every year.
Union members already have the right to object to political spending while no such limitations exist for corporate spending! The idea is to stack the deck. Why? Because labor’s money supports a real network of workers who, when effectively mobilized, can bring in votes in numbers that exceed their own membership rolls and challenge the big money of corporate donors.
This is how labor friendly candidates and propositions can win despite the obvious financial advantage on the other side. This doesn’t stop companies like Wal-Mart from dumping millions into a campaign to kill universal health care or the host of CEOs and other monied special interests that are supporting the Governor’s doublethink campaign against “special interests” from spending even more money, it just keeps us a player in the political game. It allows us to fight to save education spending and address bad policy in Sacramento. What Proposition 75 would do is take public sector workers out of the running while doing nothing to address the influence of big money and hence create a vastly more uneven playing field.
What’s at stake? Proposition 98 funding for community colleges, your pension, your healthcare benefits, our salary formula, and the far better labor relations we have managed to achieve by helping to elect education and worker-friendly Board members to name a few things. If Sacramento politics seem miles away to you, look no further than the future of our students, your college, your paycheck, health, and retirement to see why you should care about defeating Proposition 75 in November. If we have no voice, we can’t defend you against the seemingly never-ending assaults on the public sector and education in particular.
Attached is a copy of our recommendations for the election that we encourage you to forward to all family and friends.
DON¹T FORGET TO VOTE NO ON PROPS. 74, 75, and 76!
AFT/SDCCD Reccomendations