Arnie Vetos All Funding for California’s Labor Program

by Mike Hall, Oct 6, 2008

Miguel Contreras

In a last minute surprise move last week, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) vetoed all state funding for the respected University of California’s Miguel Contreras Labor Program.

The program is named after Contreras, a longtime labor leader and head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor until his death in 2005. (Click here for more on Contreras and here for more on the labor studies program.)

There was an understanding last year that this would not be vetoed. The governor put out three [proposed] budgets this year and each one included it. I’m not really sure what the motivation was.

Says Ken Jacobs, director of the Miguel Contreras Labor Program:

It is clearly political to come in and cut a single academic program. It came as a complete shock.

Republican legislators long have targeted the program for elimination, even as it has provided California policymakers with valuable research about the economic and workforce impacts of proposed California policies, including health care reform and climate change legislation. The California Labor Federation says the labor studies veto

Threatens to deny working people the benefits of the research and educational resources of California’s premier public university. It is also extremely disruptive and burdensome to the faculty, staff and students who have worked so hard to build and maintain one of the top labor studies programs in the country.

The $5.4 million program represents only a small fraction of the funds allocated to business schools throughout the UC system—none of which Schwarzenegger saw fit to slash. We know this was a difficult budget year, but by reaching into the University of California’s budget and directly cutting the entire labor and employment research program without any academic review, the Governor’s attack violates fundamental principles of academic freedom and university governance.

The labor federation, union and academic activists are mounting a drive to revive funding for the Contreras Labor Program. Click here for more information and to send a message to Schwarzenegger.

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