Named for labor leader, UC program fights for funds - The workplace institute's new title honors the late Miguel Contreras. Some want to cut its budget; his friends take that personally.
During state budget deliberations each year since 2003, Republican lawmakers have tried to scuttle funding for a University of California institute dedicated to studying organized labor and workplace issues.
And each year labor leaders and Democratic lawmakers have rallied to the program's defense. But this year, the fight is different. This year it's personal.
In January, the UC Institute for Labor and Employment was renamed the Miguel Contreras Labor Program, after the late labor leader.
The institute's foes argue that the state should not pay academics to teach unionization, but the program's supporters say attacks on the institute amount to affronts to Contreras' legacy.
"He was a favorite son of ours, a brother to us, someone who truly championed the return of the attention in our state to labor. We've certainly said that this is personal as well as political for us," said State Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles). "We can fund $6 million to honor the legacy of one of our own, and that's why we will fight for this."
Contreras was a close ally of many leaders in the Legislature, including Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles), who proposed the name change in his capacity as a UC regent. After the name change in January, Nuñez released a statement saying he was "glad to be in a position" to preserve the funding.
That funding would allow the Miguel Contreras Labor Program "to function in a manner that lives up to its name," he said.
Contreras' widow, Maria Elena Durazo, former president of Unite Here Local 11, said renaming the program after her husband "fit like a glove" because, as part of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, he had been one of the institute's most vocal supporters.
Republican lawmakers say they want to eliminate the program because "the state should not use taxpayer funds to help a special interest group," according to a list of proposed cuts to the 2007-08 budget that Senate Republicans are pursuing.
"We'd like to see it deleted," said Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine. If universities "want to teach business classes, that's fine," he said. "They have business administration and financial planning classes. When it comes to labor, I think that's left to people when they get out" of college and "start getting out in the real world."
Durazo finds such talk troubling.
