By Ashley Gaman | Reportero SDUN

Public sector unions and progressive agendas are under attack by budgetary reforms in San Diego, according to local labor officials who spoke at a recent San Diego Democratic Club (SDDC) discussion panel.

Much of the discussion revolved around conservative politicians allegedly using the need for financial reform within state and city budgets as an excuse to direct public frustration at labor unions nationwide. There are currently more than 700 pending state bills across the country that target union activities such as collective bargaining rights and union fees.

“The right wing of the Republican party and their allies in business and media began to craft a narrative that is trying to redirect the rage of the American people toward the American workforce itself, in particular unionized workers who serve in the public sector,” said Carla Kirkwood, program chair for SDDC. Panelists agreed that unions are under attack.

“I never imagined that there would be such a coordinated attack throughout the United States against organized labor,” said Lorena Gonzalez, secretary-treasurer of the San Diego and Imperial County labor councils.

“It’s not right to take away the right of any worker to join together in a union and to collectively bargain for a better life, and that’s basically what they’re trying to do,” she said.

According to Michael Zucchet, general manager of the city’s largest union, San Diego Municipal Employees
Association, the Republican Party is attacking the basic structure of labor unions and, by extension, the Democratic Party. He says they are “couching it as financial reforms and pension reforms when what it really is is an attack on unions.”

The panelists agreed that one of the toughest fronts of the attack is pension reform of city employees, who don’t benefit from social security and have not received salary raises since 2005.

“I don’t think this is about balancing the budget; this is clearly about taking away the rights of working, middle class San Diegans,” said Gonzalez.

These are not six-figured, rich city employees who are being affected, but rather hard-working individuals who provide invaluable services to the public while scraping by at home, said Eric Banks, president of Service Employees International Union Local 221.

He reiterated the point with an account of an unnamed city employee who recently started living out of her car with her family. Other city employees are working two to three jobs just to scrape by.

“When you’re talking about attacking public sector employees, you’re talking about attacking the very fabric of the social safety-net system and attacking core values that we care about as Democrats,” Banks said.

According to Gonzalez, the attacks on unions are threatening to all progressive agendas. For example, she said that, “In states where you don’t have the same protections we might enjoy here in California, the only way LGBT workers have rights are under collective bargaining agreements. When you start to erode that right, it erodes the rights of all workers but especially those who don’t have protection outside of a collective bargaining contract.”

“It’s all done with this idea of balancing the budget. What they won’t tell you is it won’t save a dime for the city of San Diego,” Gonzalez said.