Courting Labor, Yee Vows to ‘Toast’ UC Regent Appointee

Mayoral candidate holds rally to denounce regent who argued against collective bargaining for public employees

On Sunday, San Francisco resident David G. Crane penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, examining in wonkish detail the disparate histories behind the granting of collective-bargaining rights to private-sector and public-sector workers.

Crane, a Democrat who served as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s economic policy adviser and who has been an active proponent of pension reform at the state and local level, suggested that most public employees didn’t need collective bargaining powers, since protections under the Civil Service Act already guarantee job protections. “Collective bargaining is a good thing when it’s needed to equalize power, but when public employees already have that equality because of civil service protections, collective bargaining in the public sector serves to reduce benefits for citizens and to raise costs for taxpayers. Citizens and taxpayers should consider this as they watch events unfold in Madison,” he wrote.

With the union unrest in Wisconsin in the air, state Sen. Leland Yee, who is running for mayor of San Francisco, has evidently decided to turn Crane into Labor’s Public Enemy No. 1.

“David Crane, he thinks custodians, teachers, nurses and other public sector workers don’t need representation,” Yee told a group of union demonstrators Thursday at the Parnassus campus of the University of California, San Francisco. The picketers alternated chanting “Nasty, greedy Crane,” with “I don’t know but I’ve been told, Regent Crane is mighty cold.”

The crowd cheered on Yee, who had convened the event. Yee told them that Crane maintained, “‘You guys are making too much. Your benefits are too much.’ David Crane wants to abolish all the unions … representing the workers of the state of California. When he gets his way, if he gets his way,” he said, state employees will be “working in a sweatshop, working for a pittance.”

The crowd booed. Yee, flanked by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and San Francisco Labor Council chief Tim Paulson, beamed.

Crane is somewhat astonished by the goings-on. “Nothing in my op-ed calls for an end to collective bargaining and I support collective bargaining for UC employees,” he wrote in an e-mail, when asked to comment on the anti-Crane rally. “Either Senator Yee did not read the op-ed and statement or he is just raising a fake issue for hoped-for political gain. Either way I think citizens are tired of it and that a senator should know better.”

To punish Crane, Yee vowed to scuttle his appointment to the University of California Board of Regents. Schwarzenegger tapped Crane as a regent shortly before leaving office. The state Senate;— Yee’s stomping ground — must vote to approve the appointment by year’s end, or else Crane will be forced out. Yee is hoping to have the Senate vote soon to scuttle the appointment, a Yee aide said.

“David Crane has got this little thing he wants. To be confirmed as a UC regent. David Crane, you are fired,” Yee said. “He is going to be toasted like you cannot believe.”

Somewhat ironically, Crane’s argument that collective bargaining powers were unnecessary did not apply to workers at University of California, where Yee held his demonstration. Crane points out that UC workers are not covered by the Civil Service Act.

When asked how off-point it might be to be holding the anti-Crane demonstration with UC workers, Yee was unapologetic. He said that if Crane is attacking most state workers’ collective bargaining rights now, it is to be expected that he will attack collective bargaining rights for UC workers and private-sector workers eventually. (Crane’s incendiary op-ed, however, seemed to support private-sector workers’ collective bargaining rights.)

“We all know he does not support workers’ rights,” Yee said. “He outed himself regarding what he thinks about workers’ rights. Workers everywhere are being attacked.”

[ Source: The Bay Citizen ]