NY State's budget is in the red, and it's inevitable that taxes will rise and there will be cuts. The political question is who will suffer the cuts. In NY, Gov. Elect Andrew Cuomo, a centrist Democrat (and son of liberal former Gov. Mario Cuomo) has formed an alliance with the construction unions to attack at the public sector unions.

This is a stinging blow to solidarity between unions. By pitting labor against labor, both sides will spend resources attacking each other, and weakening the overall movement. It's going to be a battle between the upper end of the blue collar workforce, the construction workers, against the lower end of the pink and white collar workforce, government workers, teachers, and school staff, who generally earn less than the construction workers.

Will this pattern be replicated in CA?

It's possible. The question is whether the groundwork has been done to prevent it. The construction unions tend to be relatively conservative because their interests are aligned with developers, and their level of education along with their economic precarious situation discourages solidarity.

Likewise, public sector unions can fail to exercise solidarity as well, because they see their power in their ability to affect elections, to pick their next bosses.

Solidarity requires sacrifices today to make gains in the future. It means rejecting short-term deals like partnering with Cuomo to stand with other unions, on principal and via long-term deals in the future. For example, construction unions might work with school unions to try and pass a school construction bond measure.

So it's critical that all unions survey the political landscape, and prepare for solidarity at all times. This not only includes having relationships between unions, but also with the community of non-unionized workers, and people unemployed.

The question in CA is, has that groundwork been lain?

The Brown administration promises to be rough on public sector workers. He's been having meetings, and releasing powerpoints. The outlook is ugly. There will be big deficits for years. Additionally, the pension burden looms large as one of the largest chunks of our future obligations. The issue is how the cuts will be made. The victims of the cuts will be a range of workers - the same as in NY. If unions are pitted against each other, it can result in lopsided deals, where one group of workers suffers a lot more than another.

In CA we also have the issue of these funding sources that are protected by initiatives. These were attacked at the last election, but the voters protected their decisions, for better or worse. If the unions are united, but they aren't looking at working with un-organized workers, it could be the un-organized who end up suffering. Again, this can be a lopsided, bad outcome. We won't know until we know.

The CA budget fixing team is a mixed bag, with pro union pols like Chiang, centrists like Lockyer and Brown, and a range of appointees whose names are just emerging. Unions may find that defeating Whitman was a cake walk compared to negotiating with Sacramento.

References:

http://www.capitaltonight.com/2010/12/labor-wars/

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/newyork/state_budget/index.html

http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2010/12/09/jerry-brown-the-new-budget-sherrif-in-town/