SACRAMENTO — Organized labor is betting that a revived emphasis on its traditional bread-and-butter agenda will inspire rank-and-file workers in California to go to the polls Nov. 5 and reject what union leaders see as the anti-labor bias of the Republican Party.
No union leader in Sacramento is more crucial to that strategy than Dean C. Tipps, a little-known, onetime tax reform advocate who has served for most of a decade as the secretary-treasurer of the state council of the Service Employees International Union.
Under Tipps, the state's largest union pumped more than $1 million into successful drives to get two initiatives on the ballot: Proposition 217, which raises the state's top income tax bracket, and Proposition 214, which would change the health care industry.
The politically aggressive SEIU also spent at least $100,000 as part of a united labor effort to back Proposition 210, which would increase the minimum wage.
Labor is flexing its muscle in other ways, too: The AFL-CIO is funneling $35 million nationwide to spotlight the records of targeted GOP members of Congress, including California Reps. Frank Riggs of Windsor and Andrea Seastrand of Shell Beach. Also, for the first time on a statewide level, it is mounting an issue-oriented education campaign among its own members to drum up opposition to Republicans.
The Republican Party has returned the fire. In TV spots, the GOP has blasted "the big labor bosses" who "have a big scheme to buy the Congress." Critics also complain that labor leaders are out of touch with their members.
Tipps, who directed campaigns for Assembly Democrats in 1988, scoffs at that suggestion.
"We have a democratic process," said Tipps. "I just can't go out and make things appear. Our leadership voted to increase the resources we put into initiatives."
With less than three weeks to go before the election, the success of labor's strategy in close congressional and legislative contests could influence which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives and the state Assembly. "The 1994 experience was kind of a wake-up call," Tipps said, citing the GOP election landslide that for the first time in decades swept Republicans into control of the Assembly and House.
At stake is the heart of labor's political agenda. Labor leaders contend that Republicans have advanced proposals that run counter to the interests of their members and are intended to hold down wages, weaken overtime pay requirements, dismantle prevailing wage laws and undermine worker safety standards.
