California budget cuts provoke resistance

Workers and communities throughout the U.S. already facing record unemployment are now being pressed to bear the brunt of state and local budget shortfall “solutions.” However, resistance is bubbling up as workers push back with demands for foreclosure and eviction moratoriums, house take-backs, labor union civil disobedience, marches and non-cooperation.

Nationally the focus against Wall Street is sharpening with the Bail Out the People demonstrations called for April 3 and 4–the anniversary of the day Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave his life defending Memphis sanitation workers.

California, the state with the eighth biggest economy in the world, is a snapshot of this crisis and response.

With workers already reeling from record mortgage foreclosures, unemployment in California officially surged to 10.1 percent in January, up nearly 1.5 percent in one month and increasing by 257,000 workers from a month earlier. Cuts in crop planting due to a persistent drought in the state will cost 70,000 additional agricultural jobs hitting migrant workers, and likely raising food prices.

With both tax and fee increases across-the-board, the California state budget signed on Feb. 20 hits the poorest hard. On April 1, the sales tax will increase by 1 percent. Personal income tax goes up a quarter percent and the dependent credit is reduced, thereby siphoning off the federal stimulus income tax reduction that promised some relief for paycheck-to-paycheck workers struggling to cover basic living costs. The Vehicle License Fee nearly doubles, making it harder to get to work in a state with limited mass transit.

California-based banks slurped up $27.6 billion in the direct Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout, but no shift of these funds to the state deficit is planned. However, the budget reduces taxes for multi-state corporations, movie production and purchase of newly constructed homes.

The state’s strategy, aimed at increasing production, ignores a fundamental global crisis of overproduction, while failing to implement a direct jobs program at a real living wage. A May 19 special election puts some features of the new budget to a vote.

John Parker, an organizer of the Bail Out the People Movement Fightback Conference held Jan. 24 at the SEIU Local 721 hall in Los Angeles, said: “None of the ballot proposals address the basic issue. All working-class people are suffering, including immigrant workers who are among the lowest paid and most exploited. None of us are getting a bailout, not for our homes and communities shattered by foreclosures, not for the epidemic joblessness, not for health care or education so essential for the future of our youth.

“We support the April 3 and 4 march on Wall Street to demand the bailout for the people, where it is needed the most. The banks are not only getting the federal bailout, but debt service from state and local borrowing.”

Parker continued: “Although the focus has been on the California budget, Los Angeles, like city and county governments across the country, has a projected $1 billion deficit. Why? The city worker pension funds are being looted by Wall Street’s economic crisis so more tax dollars need to be poured in to guarantee the benefits workers paid for and earned. In so many ways the working class is underwriting the banks and corporations. We say, ‘Enough!’ and call on people to stand up and resist.”

California spending cuts hit transportation, cost-of-living increases to supplemental income and other low-income-directed programs, education funding from pre-school to university, and more. California’s public schools, colleges and universities are facing more than $11 billion in state budget cuts, and teacher layoffs and school closings are already sparking resistance.

The United Teachers of Los Angeles stopped proposed health benefit cuts, but the union is still in contract negotiations. Teachers plan civil disobedience at the school board meeting on March 10, and a Pink Friday action on March 13 to protest more than 16,000 preliminary statewide teacher layoffs.

On March 16 UTLA members are marching on the state capitol in Sacramento with other public service unions, students and community organizations. This protest will follow a March 15 statewide conference organizing to stop the attacks on public workers, students and the people using public services at Sacramento City College supported by UTLA, AFSCME D.C. 57, AFT Local 2121, the San Francisco Labor Council and more.