California legislators pass hundreds of laws every year. But sometimes, they free themselves from following them.
On one emblematic issue, however, this may be the session when that changes: Lawmakers, who have pushed through major bills to support unions throughout California, may finally let their own staffers organize.
For at least the fifth time in the last 25 years, the effort came to an anticlimactic end last year as a legislative unionization bill passed the state Senate, but failed in an Assembly committee on the last day of the session.
This year, there are a lot of pieces in place that could help the new push. For one: the amount of turnover in what is now California’s most diverse Legislature ever.
The legislation was revived — and highlighted as Assembly Bill 1 on the first day of the current session Dec. 5 — by new Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, who leads the committee where it has died four out of the five times it has been proposed.
“What are we afraid of? Why are we afraid of our staff to have representation?” the Inglewood Democrat told CalMatters today. “We’ve asked the farmers to let the farmworkers unionize. We asked the hotel owners to let hotel workers unionize and the restaurant owners to let restaurant folks unionize. And we’re not letting our own folks in our building unionize. We can’t continue this.”
In addition, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon supports the idea of staff unionization. The incoming speaker, Assemblymember Robert Rivas, who is set to take the top leadership post on June 30, is one of 20 Assemblymembers and seven senators whose names were on the bill at introduction.
A wave of unionization in…
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