Unions fail to overturn democracy in California — this time

While Democrats complain about “threats to democracy,” they and their union allies were attempting to overturn election results in California. That effort has now, thankfully, failed .

The election in question was the 2020 statewide vote on Proposition 22, which would have exempted rideshare companies such as Uber or Lyft from the state’s destructive anti-worker law that forced independent contractors across multiple industries to become employees. This law forced freelancers out of work entirely and is one Democrats want to export nationwide.

Uber and Lyft pushed back on the law, though, getting an exemption on the ballot. In an election in which more than 16 million Californians voted, the exemption passed with 59% of the vote. But Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who authored the law, declared that “it doesn’t matter if it was a fair election” and that the will of the voters should be tossed out. The Service Employees International Union attempted to do exactly that with a lawsuit, temporarily getting the will of the voters thrown out by the courts.

That saga has come to an end, though, as the California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the exemption could stand. The SEIU has been defeated, as has Gonzalez, who ran from her seat in the legislature to become the president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO.

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That doesn’t change what happened though: Gonzalez and California Democrats passed a bill to empower and enrich labor unions by forcing contract workers, many of whom were content with their independent status, to be classified as employees. Many lost their jobs entirely as a result and found their freedoms restricted. When voters decided to use California’s ballot propositions to carve out an exception, the unions then tried to have their votes thrown out to cement their own power.

The fact that national Democrats want to copy this law nationwide should tell you everything you need to know. Democrats make their labor policy based on what unions want, not what actual laborers desire, which is why the party wants to eliminate right-to-work policies that let workers opt out of paying union dues to unions that funnel money back to the Democratic Party’s political machine. Some labor unions are a bigger threat to democracy than anything Democrats complain about now, but Democrats are fine with it because the unions are on their side.