HOME PRESS ROOM UPDATE ON THE ILE THE SACRAMENTO BEE 2003

As part of his unilateral budget-cutting action this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger eliminated funding for what had been the intellectual driving force behind the burgeoning labor movement in California.

The governor's action to cut $150 million from this year's budget -- initiated to help fund the car tax rollback -- included a $2 million hit on the University of California's Institute for Labor and Employment.

H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the GOP governor's Department of Finance, said the cut was part of Schwarzenegger's effort to resolve the state's budget mess and was not intended to reflect any ideological slant. "Our focus was to identify areas where savings could be achieved while at the same time maintaining the core mission (of the university)," Palmer said. "We did that in a number of areas. And this is one of them."

Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg, D-Los Angeles, said Schwarzenegger's elimination of the labor institute sends a strong signal about his thinking when it comes to working people's efforts to move up in society.

"His view of the world, by his first actions here, is, 'Them's that got is going to get more, and them's that haven't, to heck with you,'" Goldberg said.

Founded in 2000, the institute has directed nearly $5.5 million in state funding into more than 300 research projects, some of which have found their way into the hottest public policy debates in California, including the recently enacted "pay or play" health insurance bill.

"We're really the only unit in the University of California that does outreach to working people and the labor movement," said ILE Director Ruth Milkman, a UCLA sociology professor.

The 20 to 30 employees at the institute's offices at UCLA and UC Berkeley stand to lose their jobs as a result of the cut. Milkman said the institute has not decided how to respond to Schwarzenegger's budget action.

If the Schwarzenegger administration hesitated to discuss the ideological implications of the ILE's demise, conservative groups and business lobbyists jumped at the opportunity.

"This body operates like a taxpayer-funded, pro-union think tank, churning out endless reports that promote a pro-labor union ideology and a labor union agenda," said Matt Tennis, legislative director for the Associated Builders and Contractors.

California labor leaders, however, deplored the cuts to the ILE as particularly drastic when 40 percent of the state work force is earning less than it did 15 years ago, according to a study released this year by the California Budget Project. Moreover, they say the university's labor-oriented research funding pales in comparison with the amounts directed to the system's agriculture and business schools -- $40 million, by the unions' count.

"We think this is a clear attack on academic freedom," said Tom Rankin, president of the California Labor Federation.

Rankin is a member of the institute's governing council, a position that opponents believe colors the ILE's research.

"I think the ILE has every right to promulgate their anti-capitalist views and pro-labor political agenda, but I don't think taxpayers should be forced to bankroll their opinions," said Lawrence McQuillan of the San Francisco-based Pacific Research Institute.

For his part, Rankin said the UC Berkeley and UCLA business schools are researching "how to manage and how to deal with unions" and that their advisory boards are loaded with corporate titans. One of them, Gerald L. Parsky, a member of the Board of Visitors of UCLA's Anderson School of Business, was appointed Thursday to head President Bush's re-election campaign in California.

In the institute's three years of existence, ILE-backed researchers have plowed into issues ranging from a living wage campaign in Santa Barbara to labor rights in the global high-tech industry.

This year, the institute is researching a Teamsters campaign to organize truck drivers in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Another project is trying to hash out an alliance between nonprofit, low-cost housing developers and the building trades unions. The ILE funds also financed a conference on garment worker unionization campaigns in California and around the world, among other items.

Rather than gather dust on ivory tower shelves, ILE research has been thrust into controversial policy issues such as the state-mandated, employer-funded health insurance bill. In September, the ILE released a report in the middle of the Legislature's debate over the bill that showed significant employer support for the measure despite lobbying efforts by big business groups to kill it. The bill, SB 2, was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by former Gov. Gray Davis.

The ILE also produces a voluminous annual report called "The State of California Labor." This year, the institute reported that union membership in the state has increased by 500,000 over the past six years, climbing to 18 percent of the work force, a departure from national figures that showed a decline in union membership to 13 percent over the same period. The 2003 report also documented "substantial" upward mobility among immigrant workers.

University of California spokesman Brad Hayward said eliminating the ILE is the latest in what has amounted to several hundred million dollars in budget reductions the system has endured over the past three years.

"These are programs that have a major impact on both our understanding of the world around us as well as on the development of new technologies and products and innovations," Hayward said. "Every additional cut is an additional increment of pain."