Fabian Nunez
Speaker of the Assembly
Speech to the SBCTC 59th Convention
Thank you very much.
First of all, I want to just thank each and every one of you for sticking around. You know, in the labor movement we get things done and we get rolling and we get moving. So I really appreciate the fact that you all are here.
The last time Bob Balgenorth and I met was in Sacramento and he sure had some steam when he communicated a couple things to me. First of all, let me tell you. This man is a tremendous leader for the Building Trades Council. Not only does he know when the right time is to reach his hand out and shake someone else's and say, "This is in our best interests." But he also knows when to be firm and how to be firm. And that's really important to do. Because I'll tell you, being in the Legislature, first I was one of 80, now I have to represent 80.
But in fact I have to represent my 47 Assembly Democratic constituents. They're my members. Those are the members I've got to try and represent. And so there will be times when we're not going to be on the same side of every issue. But I've got to tell you, it's not going to be very often that that's going to be the case. And when it comes to your core values, when it comes to the issues that you care about, like making sure that we don't contract jobs -- state jobs, you better know that I'm going to be there. And I'm not just going to be there to vote. I'm going to be there to fight like hell to make sure that we protect your interests.
So Bob came to me the other day and said to me, "Look, we've got a difference with you." And he was very firm. And it was over an Assembly race. And I've got to tell you, I have more respect for him now than I did before we had that conversation, because when a man understands that respect for workers is at the core of the labor movement's vision, you cannot step away from those values.
And this is a man who really understands those values and fights hard to represent your interests. And he makes me proud that he is a labor leader. He's someone I can look to. He's someone I can pick up the phone and call when we have an issue or a concern.
But I've got to tell you, brothers and sisters, we have a lot of work to do in these next several months, as we look towards the month of March and we go through the summer and looking at what happens in May when we get a May Revise. A lot is at stake in the next several days. But a lot really is at stake during this legislative year.
Why do I say that? If you look at the Governor's budget, what he's looking at doing to cut back programs that encourage the investment that California has always made in the future. Not just the investment in education, for example, at the K-12 level, but the investment so that your children when they grow up and are ready to go to college, you can afford to pay their tuition at the California State University or at the University of California because you make sacrifices in your work, in your jobs day in and day out to make sure that they have a better life. And when you look at the Governor's budget, it's not reflective of that value.
But also when we look at the future of our children in other areas, like what kind of a society we're building for them, what kind of a legacy we're leaving behind for them. And you look at what the Governor is proposing in the area of transportation, it is to me by no surprise that the Republican intransigence during the last year's budget was the result of $2 billion in cuts to Proposition 42; money that was diverted from real transportation projects that create jobs, transportation projects that in essence are an investment in our future.
And they're an investment in our future because they're not just creating jobs for workers today, meaningful jobs that pay good wages with good benefits, because that -- after all, that's what America's working class really is the base of the economy in this country. But yet we continue to diminish the standard of living of workers.
And so it's important that we create those jobs. But it's also important as an investment in the future; and that is because if we do not continue to invest in our roads and our highways, then the message we're sending our children is we want a first class society with a third class physical environment for them. And that is not what our children deserve.
With the congestion that we're facing -- if you look at -- the legislative analysts propose that perhaps we look at a new gasoline tax. She says that if we have a new gas tax, that we can totally fund infrastructure in the State of California; and that, in essence, over the next four or five years it's going to save taxpayers money.
Now, it's hard to communicate that to a taxpayer. I've got my friend over here shaking his head saying no. But I've got to tell you it's hard to communicate that to a taxpayer. But if you look at what you pay in gasoline and use and abuse of the car when you're on the freeway -- it took me an hour and ten minutes to get here from L.A. I was at another union rally this morning. And I thought I'd be here by 9:30, 9:45. But if you look at the traffic congestion these days, even on the weekends, it's hard to get from point A to point B.
But if we make the type of investment in other forms of transportation and the types of investments in roads and highways to allow more free access between one place and another, whether it's home and work, whether it's business moving -- business services and business products from one place to another, those things are important. They help the economy. They create good paying jobs. And it's an investment in our future.
Yet, our Governor proposes to do away with much of that. And a lot of these cuts, if you look at them, are penny wise and pound foolish. They're penny wise because they save a little bit of money now. But they're pound foolish because in the long run they end up sinking California in a deeper debt. Because when we do have a little bit more resources in the coffers -- and I'm hoping that day is maybe a couple years away, hopefully, we don't continue to face these types of budget gaps for too long.
And I'm hoping that we're going to work successfully with folks on both sides of the aisle. Because, I'll tell you, there is one thing -- one message voters did send pretty loud and clear to the Legislature, and that's that they're tired of the political bickering. They don't know why -- what it's cost. They don't know that sometimes the differences that we have are deep rooted in our own convictions of things that we believe in.
We support unionization. Many of them don't. We support making sure that we provide affordable housing for those who can't afford it. They support doing away with business regulations that create enforcements upon the way housing is built. But if you look at that issue in itself, then perhaps if there are too many regulations, we ought to look at how we can facilitate that.
And there are areas where there are some deep differences. But there's areas where we can find common ground. And I've got to tell you, Democrats -- we don't want to cut social programs. Republicans don't want to raise taxes. But if we all agree to say let's put everything on the table and let's assess each and every cut based on whether it's fiscally responsible, and then let's take that same measurement and then let's assess whether that cut is socially responsible. And if we're able to come together, one Democratic principle, one Republican principle, maybe we can find some common ground on some of these things.
I've got to tell you, I think we're going to do that in the area of workers'comp. I've said to the Governor, "If you're serious about doing workers' comp reform, then let's do it." But here's what we're not going to do: Assembly Democrats will not walk the path of reducing benefits, long-term benefits to employees that are injured on the job. We're one of the lowest in the country, one of the lowest in the country in terms of benefits to workers. Yet premiums for employers are one of the highest, if not the highest, in the entire nation.
So we've seen premiums skyrocket in the last two years and in some cases as much as 300 percent for employees. Small businesses are having a difficult time with that.
And so we think, well, we've got to sit down and try to fix the problem. But here are the two guiding principles. Let's try to reduce premiums for employers. But we need to make sure that that does not happen on the backs of workers who get injured on the job. And we're going to fight for that to make sure that that's the case.
Let me just tell you a couple more issues I want to touch upon. And that is that we've got to have a strong working families agenda in California. And when I got sworn in as Speaker of the Assembly just two short weeks ago, in my speech I talked about how my parents came here from Mexico in the 1950s and how people come to this great state across rivers and across seas and come here to make a better life for themselves.
But there's one thing about the California dream that's different than the American dream, because the California dream is one that rewards people for their hard work. The California dream is the dream that says that if you come to California, if you work hard, that you ought to have a life where you're treated with dignity and respect. That is the dream of California. That is why many people come here. And we used to reward hard work. But the politics of hard work has kind of been shelved under a lot of different other things. And for many years we've forgotten about that.
But that's really what the Democratic Party was about. That's where the Democratic Party gained its strength in the '40s and '50s. It was because it was the voice for workers. And it was the voice for workers because it defended workers' rights, because it defended the right of workers to be able to have a place to work, to make a meaningful wage, to be able to provide for their children, and to provide opportunity for their children as well.
And that's the Democratic Party that we need to bring back to California. We can't be looked upon as the party that simply looks to provide services. We want to provide services. We care about people. That's why we want to do it. But that's not at the core of what our values are. Our values stem from hard work, from people who want to go -- who want to work for a living. And, yeah, why not? Let's give us an opportunity to unionize, to bargain collectively so that we can make sure that we're treated with the dignity that we deserve at the workplace.
I've got to tell you that I was very pleased to read in the newspapers just two days ago that the strike has finally been settled for those retail clerks. Those folks spent so many months, so many days out of their lives to go on strike and to make the sacrifice. But one thing that I really value and that which they did is that they made the ultimate sacrifice of knowing that perhaps fighting for health care benefits wasn't going to yield more money in their pocket, and many of them paid a huge, huge price for it. Many folks lost their homes.
So as we say, "Oh, this is great that the strike is settled," well, it's great from one perspective. But from another perspective these are workers that are continuing to hurt, because often -- I heard from many of them that said that they had to pull their children out of private schools, those that had their children in private schools, and put them in public schools. And we've got to fight to make sure our public schools in this state are as good, if not better, than most of our private schools.
But the point I want to make with the strikers is that we have to have a lot of respect for those folks. They knew that they were making a sacrifice that at the end it may not yield more money in their pockets. But one of the reasons why they went out there and fought is because at the core of -- when we sit and bargain for a contract, it's to make sure that we have health care benefits that meet the demands of the day. Because for too long we have allowed certain insurance carriers to dilute and diminish the quality of the health care that they provide.
So if you're walking around with a child -- a poor child, for example, that's on Healthy Families, you think, well, you're on MediCal or Healthy Families or one of these other carriers that, you know, it's a low-cost carrier, many doctors won't take those patients. And actually some of the PPOs, they want to take the folks that have good health care, where they know they're going to get their money back. They don't want to have to lose when they see a sick patient.
And it is so important and so vital to the construct of what we build in the future. Because if you look at what's happening to health care premiums in this state, this is going to be the new crisis that we face. Yeah, we may have an energy crisis down the road, but I've got to tell you, if you look at what's happening to managed care, the costs are out of control. Employers are saying, "We've had enough."
Now, they want workers to pay a bigger share of those costs. And workers can't afford it, especially when you're asked to have to dig in and take 20 percent of your total paycheck every other week just so that you can have health care for you and for your family and for your children. That is not what a first-class society offers its citizens, because first-class society offers its citizens first-class health care insurance without having to make the sacrifice that we're making these days.
And so one of my goals in my tenure as Speaker -- and hopefully it will be a four to five year speakership and we'll bring some stability to the Legislature, we'll bring some stability to the Speakership, and we'll make sure that we have a stronger hold on the issues that the Assembly deals with on an annual basis.
But one of my goals in my tenure as Speaker is to do something about this health care crisis that we're feeling. And that the first people who stepped up to the plate to try and fight the good fight on health care were these retail clerks who I prayed for every day because they deserve our solidarity. Those folks were out there. They were fighting. They didn't get everything they wanted, but they sure as hell showed what it means to have integrity and to have dignity.
Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.