Get ready to fight this election year
By Fabrizio Sasso
Executive Director, Sacramento CLC
Tax the billionaires. It’s not as controversial as some want you to believe.
Recently, the California Federation of Labor Unions held its biennial convention and I’m very proud to say that this united body of unions, with more than 1,000 delegates present, endorsed Proposition 40, the measure that would impose a one-time tax on our state’s ultra-wealthy.
California is home to some of the richest people in the world, while working families are struggling to afford housing, health care, child care and the basic necessities of life. Proposition 40 would ask those billionaires to chip in their fair share just one time, with 90% of the revenue going toward health care and the remainder toward food assistance or education-related programs. The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst estimates that the measure could generate tens of billions of dollars over several years.
For Labor, this is fundamentally about priorities. We should be investing in the health and well-being of working people and their families, not continuing to allow enormous concentrations of wealth to grow while working people are asked to do more with less.
But that wasn’t the only crucial endorsement that came out of this gathering. Closer to home, one endorsement stands out: Dr. Richard Pan for Congressional District 6.
Dr. Pan has a long relationship with Labor. From the State Assembly to the State Senate, he has proven to be a friend to working people in our region and has stood and fought with us on the strike lines and in the Capitol.
This race is the Sacramento Central Labor Council’s priority race this November. It is also a priority race for the California Federation of Labor Unions.
Why?
It is the culmination of years-worth of work put in by our unions and members, starting when Dr. Pan was first elected with our support back in 2010, when he and we defeated then-incumbent Assemblymember Roger Niello, a staunch anti-union politician, in a race nobody thought was winnable.
And now he’s facing his biggest challenge in Congressional District 6, and so are we.
Back in 2021, then-Assemblymember Kevin Kiley led the charge to recall Governor Newsom. Regardless of your feelings about our Governor today, at the time, this recall posed a major threat to the Labor Movement. Labor answered the call, and we stood shoulder to shoulder convincing voters to reject the recall attempt.
You would think that a major loss like that would have ended Kiley’s political career. Ever the opportunist, he leveraged that moment, pledged his allegiance to union-busting Donald Trump and ran for Congress in 2023. He won big in a district that was already very pro-Trump.
Since he won, he’s been on a mission in Congress to harm working families and tear our unions apart. He introduced legislation to make it easier for workers to be classified as independent contractors, potentially denying workers the protections that come with employee status.
He opposed the appointment of California’s former Labor Commissioner and our ally, Julie Su, to be the nation’s Labor Secretary. In fact, Kiley made opposing Su one of his major causes in Congress.
He has also fought federal efforts to strengthen worker protections around independent-contractor classification.
He stood by Trump when he stripped federal workers of their jobs and supported the privatization of those jobs to for-profit corporations. Kiley stood down when Trump decided to abolish collective bargaining rights for our labor siblings in AFGE who protect us at the airport and care for our military veterans at the VA. And he remained silent when those same airport workers had to work without pay for weeks during not just one, but two Trump-led government shutdowns.
But wait, there’s more!
He voted for H.R. 1, the Big Ugly Bill that cuts roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and Medicare, forcing millions to potentially lose their health care coverage. Why? So they can pass the savings on to billionaires in the form of tax cuts.
I guess Kiley thought it was more important that his billionaire buddies can buy another yacht rather than ensuring our grandparents and children receive the medical care that keeps them out of bankruptcy.
Kevin Kiley has been on the wrong side of every single vote that would lift up working people. He has led the charge on every single vote that puts profits over workers.
The reason why every single union in the Sacramento Central Labor Council came out in force last year for Prop 50 is because we knew we stood a chance at removing Little Lord Scab Kiley from Congress with the newly redrawn maps.
With Dr. Pan as our unified endorsed candidate, voters have a clear choice in who they want to represent us.
We need to ensure Kiley’s reign of terror on the working class ends this November.
Collectively, we’ve been working so hard for so many years for this moment. This is not the time to let up. It is time to double down on our efforts.
If you are concerned about the massive gap between the super wealthy and the rest of us, join us.
If you care about making sure workers have a fair chance at achieving the American Dream, join us.
If you want to protect our unions, our schools, our fire stations, our hospitals, and repair our crumbling infrastructure, join us.
This is a fight for our jobs, our families, and our future.
On September 19, we will be kicking off our campaign to get Dr. Pan elected, and we want everyone to join this fight.
Together, we can make a difference.