San Diego UT: Golden State's progressive labor laws may not survive

[question everything]

August 22, 2004

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger drives a moving van down the streets of Las Vegas, soliciting businesses to move back to California. Jobs flow out of the state as global outsourcing builds steam as an economic force. California adopts controversial bounty hunter legislation that allows workers to take employers to court when they find even minor violations of state labor law. The workers then share in civil penalties of their employers.

These are disorienting times for business in the Golden State. California, whose economy is so vibrant that it would rank as the seventh largest in the world, is seeing the world shrink around it like never before. And that world is closing in on the state's labor laws, which protect workers and give them more rights than in any other state. Those progressive and well-meaning laws may not survive in the years ahead.

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The bulk of California's labor laws were enacted in the 1950s, when the state was blossoming as an economic power and organized labor represented more than 40 percent of the state's workers. Today, unions represent about 14 percent of the state's 16.7 million workers... California traditionally has been a leader among states, building the nation's most solid economy and a quality of life that is the envy of others.

Mainly, it has been governed by the spirit of progress. The question that now looms is whether the state will be able to preserve what it has built, including a network of labor laws that are proving costly in a changing world.

Michael Kinsman: [phone]; [e-mail]


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