SACRAMENTO — Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.
The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.
The tape opens with text suggesting introductory comments to be read by a news anchor: "If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state."
The video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to "eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them."
The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks.
The video "is clearly propaganda," said Assembly Labor Committee Chairman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). The tape is "completely one-sided."
He and others cited a law barring the Department of General Services -- which made the tape at the behest of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency -- from engaging in propaganda. "Radio and other communications facilities owned or operated by the state and subject to the jurisdiction of the Department of General Services shall not be used for political, sectarian, or propaganda purposes," the law says.
The administration released the video earlier this month, as it opened hearings on whether California should modify a meal break rule imposed during the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis. That rule gives workers the right to an extra hour of pay if employers don't give them half-hour breaks within the first five hours of a shift.
Jose Millan, deputy secretary of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, is presiding over the hearings and appears in the video speaking favorably about the proposal -- prompting Koretz to charge that the hearings amount to a "kangaroo court."
