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In the mid 1970s, the Supreme Court extended First Amendment Constitutional protection to the corporate financing of elections. Since that historic decision, corporations have virtually taken over the electoral process. Unlike individuals and other groups, corporations are able to amass huge concentrations of shareholder wealth and have demonstrated a willingness to spend it within the political system to ensure that they are able to pursue their self-interests (i.e.: profits and returns for investors) without interference.  

It is no coincidence that while the influence that corporations have on politics has risen sharply over the last 30 years, there has been a corresponding decline in workers’ real wages, retirement security, and access to quality, affordable health care. After all, corporations rightly see employee compensation as a cost, and costs must be cut in order to ensure greater profits. Corporations have been enormously successful, for example, at beating back modest attempts by workers to gain a living wage, to protect their pensions, and to legislate that corporations bear a greater share of employee healthcare costs.  

Labor unions, the collective political voice of the working class, have largely been rendered obsolete by the corporation’s rise to dominance over the last 30 years. Corporations outspend unions 24 to 1 in terms of political contributions. Union membership has declined from 25 percent of the U.S. work force in the late ‘70s to about 12 percent today.  

In the public sector, however, labor unions are more prominent and workers are therefore compensated more humanely. For example, here in California, public employee unions recently defeated a fierce and well-funded campaign by the governor and by corporations in California to privatize workers’ pensions.  

Apparently, the modest gains made by California’s public sector workers are unacceptable to the corporations that dominate California’s economy. Their response is Proposition 75, and their aim is clear: public employees must be made to shut up once and for all so that they are rendered incapable of fighting back against the corporate takeover of California politics. 

The initiative would prohibit public employee unions in California from spending union dues on political donations without the explicit consent of members. The initiative would have the obvious effect of forcing unions to divert resources away from political action and toward the heavy administrative procedures mandated by Prop. 75. Proponents of 75 state that they are fighting on behalf of public sector workers. This claim is dubious at best, given that the major funding for the initiative has come from a group calling itself the Small Business Action Committee. Turns out that by “small,” this Committee must mean “huge,” as nearly all of their funding in 2004 came from major corporations and executives, including Ameriquest, the former GAP Chairman Donald Fisher, Phillip Morris, and PG&E. 

Vote no on 75 and stop the corporate hijacking of California’s political system. 

Michael Marchant is a social worker and union member living in Albany.