LEGISLATION AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA By Dave Puglia, President and CEO
Anyone familiar with the apps that allow people to rate everything from restaurants to doctors to airlines has seen the tags: “cannot recommend” and “can recommend,” coupled with a rating of zero to four stars. I don’t think we have an app like that for something as arcane as university research, but maybe we should, especially for research that impacts public policy development and decision making. The University of California system is a critically important source of research that can inform public policy. Somewhat surprisingly, we recently have been given good reason to apply a four-star rating and a “can recommend” comment to UC research in the area of labor policy. Specifically, the research from UC Berkeley’s Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics being led by Dr. Alexandra Hill. Dr. Hill’s impressive academic credentials include three degrees in agricultural economics, and she has published several peer-reviewed papers on issues related to ag labor. Dr. Hill captured our attention with a 2023 extension paper presenting early evidence that California’s ag overtime law (AB 1066) led to decreases in weekly working hours and earnings for California farmworkers. Dr. Hill estimated that in 2019 and 2020, the first two years under the new overtime requirements, California farmworkers worked between 15,000 to 45,000 fewer hours per week and earned $6 million to $9 million less on their weekly paychecks because of the law’s impacts. Given the AB 1066 phase-in scheme was not fully implemented for large employers until Jan. 1, 2022, and small employers until this year, expect this downward trend in hours and pay to persist as newer data is released. None of this should come as a surprise. In 2016, as the overtime bill was working its way through the California Legislature, we commissioned an economic study on the likely impacts of AB 1066. The report from Highland Economics, a reputable and non-partisan economics consulting firm, predicted AB 1066 would reduce farmworkers’ income by 16 percent, or $1.5 billion statewide. The legislative majority dismissed this research as tainted because it was commissioned and paid for by industry groups like Western Growers. In the Legislature, who funds research determines whether it can be judged on its merits. Though Dr. Hill’s most recent research findings have been acknowledged – barely – within the state Legislature, her data and conclusions largely have been dismissed. This is troubling for obvious reasons; the economic harm resulting from this statute will continue and perhaps worsen absent a well-informed course correction or mitigation authorized by the Legislature. But never dismissed or diminished in the Legislature are the voluminous reports that flow from the many “Labor Centers” within the UC system.
Created in the 1960s through an agreement between the UC and the California Labor Federation, the Labor Centers are explicitly directed to conduct research and outreach activities aimed at growing union membership and advancing pro-labor legislation. Some funding comes from ongoing legislative appropriations – to the tune of $19 million per year – with the rest coming from sources like federal agencies and union-aligned foundation grants. In 2022, the Labor Centers underwent the largest expansion in their history, going from three to nine UC campuses, and now include almost 240 staff and more than 30 interconnected programs, in addition to scores of affiliated faculty members. Predictably, the Labor Center advisory boards are dominated by union officials and allies and a high percentage of staff members work for, or have worked for, labor unions. Given their academic association, one might think the Labor Centers are stacked with doctorate degrees and trained researchers, but only about 10 percent of the staff actually hold research titles, although there are about two dozen Ph.D.’s in the mix. These teams do not report to the central research offices at their respective UC campuses, which are responsible for ensuring the integrity of university research activities. To be clear: the Labor Centers do not claim to adhere to academic or scholarly research standards. That does not dissuade legislators from embracing their research or using it to validate and enact labor union policy priorities with the helpful imprimatur of the University of California. On agricultural policy, the UC Merced Community and Labor Center is among the newest of the centers and leapt into action in early 2024 with a purported counter to Dr. Hill’s ag overtime research. For legislators motivated to understand the real-world consequences of the laws they pass, there is a need to analyze and assess the methodologies, findings and implications of UC research, especially where, as here, there are divergent findings. There are serious people serving in the California Legislature, though advocates who have been around for a long time privately commiserate all the time about the relative decline in the number of such policy- motivated legislators. Many blame term limits, but that’s another column. For now, those of us engaged in advocacy for our industry have an opportunity to shed greater light on the role of the university in shaping public policy, and create greater respect for those courageous UC researchers whose adherence to academic rigor and factual analysis remains paramount.
4 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com January | February 2025
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