UNITE-HERE Local 11, which represents Aramark food service workers at the Honda Center, has been pushing to impose a Los Angeles-style “retention” ordinance on Anaheim Arena Management (AAM).
A retention ordinance requires that when a city changes contractors, the new contractor has to pay the old contractors employees for a period of time — usually 90 days — and provide other benefits. Obviously, this is a significant barrier to outsourcing city services.
UNITE-HERE Local 11 is desperate to avoid the loss of members (i.e. revenue) that will result from AAM bringing food service in-house (in an effort to provide better food service to its customers) — as well as the additional $3.50 to $4.00 per hour/per employee the union receives for its expensive health care plan overhead. Their protests are about the union’s bottom line, not the supposed loss of jobs to UNITE-HERE members who work at the Honda Center — only about half of whom have applied for jobs under the new arrangement.
Enter the liberals who are running the asylum known as the California Legislature. According to the OC Register, they are trying to impose a retention policy on Honda Center:
The Honda Center would be required to pay hundreds of food workers employed by one of its vendors for at least 60 days, and then offer them jobs, under budget-related legislation currently before Gov. Jerry Brown.
The provision, which Republican lawmakers criticized Thursday as unnecessary and heavy-handed, came in response to arena management’s plans to hire 500 new food service employees after its concession contract with Aramark ends June 30 and the vendor lays off its unionized workers.
Earlier this year, Assemblyman Tom Daly, D-Anaheim, proposed that the budget include a provision to specifically prevent operators of the Anaheim Ducks’ arena from receiving enterprise-zone tax credits for terminating workers and replacing them with lower-paid employees.
Assembly Bill 76, approved by the Legislature last week, does include that provision, but it has since been learned that the bill also includes language requiring the Honda Center’s operator, Anaheim Arena Management, to pay Aramark’s former employees for a period of time and offer them jobs.
Where are we? Venezuela? Cuba? This is the kind of left-wing governmental action engaged in by left-wing South American caudillos. As Sen. Marco Rubio observed regarding a different left-wing lunacy, this is an example of the kind of government policies immigrants come to America to get away from!
I wish I was surprised by this, but I am not since the state legislature is dominated by politicians who not only do not comprehend free enterprise, but are ideologically hostile to it and under the impression they can succeed where the Soviets failed and operate a function command-and-control economy.
Here’s an idea: makes this legislation apply to members of the state legislature. When a new legislator takes office, require him or her to keep his/her predecessor’s staff for at least 60 days. I have a feeling they wouldn’t think retention is such a good idea in their case.
Anaheim Arena Management is a private company. This legislation seeks to force AAM to give severance packages to individuals who aren’t even AAM employees — and then give them jobs! This attack on free enterprise is contrary to the nature of free and limited government. This is one of those “red lines,” and how Anaheim’s elected officials — local, state and federal — react to it will be a testament to which side of the free enterprise v. planned economy divide they are standing.
Pretty sure they landed on “planned economy” with that $158MM giveaway.
Would LOVE to hear how that’s a fair entry into the free market and an example of limited government, but this isn’t.
Just as I would love to hear you expound on how your opposition to Chevron’s development of its Coyote Hills property in Fullerton is an example of the free market and limited government.
Or is that different?
I mean, you really aren’t going to claim Anaheim using future TOT revenues from a single hotel to help finance the construction of that hotel is the same as the state telling a private company it has to provide a 60-day severance package to people who aren’t even its employees — and then give them jobs.
But I have a feeling you are going to do exactly that.
Sure, people voted on it. Done and done.
Don’t dodge the question, Matt. Do better: Answer it.
The Gardenwalk giveaway mandated who would do the construction. In simple terms, it guaranteed the work would be done by a union.
So that’s OK? The state can interject and say: “THOU SHALT EMPLOY A UNION” but it can’t interject and say you can’t fire one?
Explain away, sir.
I’m not dodging anything. You’ve basically appointed yourself arbiter of what is and isn’t consistent with free markets and limited government. If you’re going to do that, then you should explain how your opposition to Coyote Hills is representative of free markets and limited government. Saying “the people voted” is not an answer.
Sure it is. You just don’t like it. The people have a constitutional right in this state to determine their own zoning laws. They exercised that right through a vote.
Not exactly a complicated concept, Mr. Cunningham.
And, for the record, you’ve dodged it twice now. Care to go a third round?
It’s not an unlimited right, Ryan. You can’t use zoning laws to take property or absolutely deny its use. Bottom line, you were on the anti-property rights side, which makes your lecturing here hollow. Not to mention off-topic.
. . . no kidding it’s off topic. Talk to Mr. Cunningham about that.
You can’t CHANGE zoning laws to deny use. Of course you can use existing zoning law to deny use. That’s why there isn’t a strip club next to your house.
You’re missing applying the term “property rights”. Property rights do not include the perpetual ability for a immortal corporation to re-designate the intended use of a parcel without the consent of neighboring mortal property owners, whose enjoyment of their own private property would be impinged by the illegal change. Such an ability is properly defined corporate absolutism as a result of state sanctioned corporate welfare.
In short, Chevron doesn’t have a right to swing its fist at Fullerton’s face just because they feel like it. But as you said, way off topic.
Matt, don’t waster your time with Ryan Cantor. He’s one of those pretend conservatives from Fullerton who think they’re better and more pure than everyone else.
But I’ll educate Ryan on a big difference: the Honda Center legislation is a mandate. It’s coercive. The GardenWalk deal is a voluntary agreement between the city and the project developer.
I’m pretty sure the CBA is also a voluntary agreement. As is the contract allowing AAM to operate in a publicly owned facility. No one forced AAM to get into business, to operate in a public sphere, to sign a CBA, or to fire its workers. That’s all voluntary.
Law, by nature, is coercive NOC.
I’m sure we haven’t met, but thanks for the compliment.
Also, Matt– get me off the auto-moderate list. That’s just mean, man.
I googled you Ryan. You are a business development analyst at Tesoro, an oil company. So why are you spending your whole day commenting on blogs?
And you endorsed a GREEN PARTY candidate for Fullerton City Council last year!
You’re no conservative. You have zero cred to tell anybody what’s conservative and what isn’t.
Um, OK . . .? I’m flattered you looked me up?
When did this thread become about me and my credentials? Guess I must have said something right.
**Note, I haven’t told anyone what is or is not “conservative” on this thread. We’re supposed to be talking about when it’s appropriate for the state to intervene in private affairs with regard to labor contracts re: AAM and/or Gardenwalk.**
And Jane’s a fantastic candidate who values individual liberties. I’d endorse her again in a heartbeat.
Sorry, Ryan. You can’t be a Green Party member and care about individual liberties – unless drug legalization is your thing. Greens like government. Lots and lots of government.
Who made you the king of what this tread is supposed to be about? Matt posted about the Honda Center legislation, which you have yet to even address, Mr. Thread Hijacker. As someone already pointed out to you, it’s amazing how you fail to distinguish between a voluntary agreement between the city and a developer, and the state forcing a private company to provide payment and jobs to people who were never its employees. You really aren’t as smart as you obviously think you are.
Know a lot of green party members do you now? Well, if my endorsement of Jane disqualifies me as a conservative in your book, so be it. She’s that good. You’ve clearly got some assumptions about anyone who chooses to register to vote in party primaries. Perhaps you ought to challenge them a bit.
If your barrier between the public/private sphere is so permeable that the mere existence of an agreement is grounds to grant the state authority to interfere in the market . . . and worse if the private sector objects (say to regulation) that the state has no authority to intervene, I’d suggest that perhaps you ought to reexamine your rules. But hey, if dragging me through the mud makes you feel better, do what you gotta do.
The cooperative/coercive qualification for permeability doesn’t stand up to a simple red face test. But hey Matt, this is really your question to answer. Just how does the council justify awarding a union contract for the Gardenwalk but can’t intervene in a union issue on city owned property? Feel free to jump back in anytime! Water is warm!
Ryan:
“So long as the focus of our economy is on profit and corporate growth, we will not be able to protect and respect ourselves and our resources.”
“Our goal is direct, participatory, grassroots democracy centered around deeply democratic community assemblies and bioregional confederations.”
“The Green Party therefore proposes basic changes in the electoral system:
– Public financing of elections and free media access to level the playing field for getting candidates’ messages to voters.
– Reject the notion that money in political campaigns is free speech, as interpreted by the Supreme Court decision in Buckley vs. Vallejo.”
Those are representative selections from the Green Party of California platform, Ryan. You might try reading it. As a Green Party member, that’s the kind of thing Jane Rands believes, and that ain’t pro-individual liberty. Or, she’s belongs to a party while having no idea what it stands for.
As for the rest of your so-called argument: as you noted, the GardenWalk deal is an “agreement” – as in, it is voluntary. The Honda Center legislation is not – it is coercion, it is forcing a private company to pay people it has no obligation to pay, and compelling them to hire people it has no obligation to hire. it is amazing you refuse to see the difference between a subsidy and a mandate. You have dodged the topic of Matt’s post all day long. If you are as smart as you think you are, stop bobbing and weaving and deal with the topic at hand, instead of continually trying to change the subject.
OK, CR. You win. I’ve been ducking the topic all day.
I brought up Chevron, Coyote Hills, property rights, my qualifications as a real or fake conservative, who I work for, who I’ve endorsed for what office in some other city, the green party, and the green party platform all in a thread dedicated to something about corn dogs and red vines.
:-/