Meanwhile, public service workers gained more power in the mid-1970s when schoolteachers were granted the right to strike — followed, in 1977, by the rest of the workforce. Today, they are organised into 21 different bargaining units. Two examples of this concentration of power are the catastrophic 1999 legislative decision to give state employees a retroactive pension increase and the fact that 40 per cent of California’s General Fund must be spent on K-12 education — a tribute to the strength of the teachers’ union. Yet the standard of public education in California trails the national average.
In addition, the state is responsible for around $200bn of unfunded pension liabilities for state employees. Unlike their private sector counterparts, state employees don’t have to plan for their own retirement as their plans are guaranteed by the state. Those Californians without a retirement safety net are also on the hook for more than $85bn in associated retiree and health benefits for state workers. In 1961, the state contributed about $5 per employee per month to cover the same bills.
It would be one thing if, even with the highest taxes in the country, the state had delivered for its citizens — but it has failed on almost every count. California has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, its highest homeless population, its highest median housing prices, and its highest gas and electricity prices (save for Hawaii). Tragically, student tuition fees at what was once a beacon for public education, the University of California, Berkeley, have risen from about $1,000 a year in 1980 to about $17,500 today.