Is California failing to provide state worker unions data as required by law?

A 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that outlawed mandatory public-sector union fees changed how unions do business. By not collecting dues from nonmembers, a gap was created in many unions’ pocketbooks, requiring those representing California state workers to adapt.

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To buffer the anticipated fallout, labor advocates proactively turned to the California Legislature the year before and Assembly Bill 119 was signed into law. The measure required public employers to grant union representatives access to new-employee orientations and regularly provide workers’ contact information.

Now several state worker unions say California isn’t following that law.

Flawed contact data has turned an organizing lifeline into an administrative liability. In extreme cases, one organizer reports noncompliance resulted in them dialing rank-and-file workers — only to have their supervisor answer. More broadly, the state’s noncompliance can delay outreach efforts, potentially stripping unions of the new members they need to offset the revenue losses delivered by the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Janus v. AFSCME.

“These are legal obligations, not optional courtesies, and we’re holding the state accountable,” SEIU Local 1000 President Anica Walls said.

Under the previous framework, unions generally collected “fair-share” fees from nonmembers to cover the costs of contract negotiations. Under the Janus ruling, for example, a union with a 60% membership rate would lose fee revenue from the remaining 40% of the bargaining unit.

SEIU Local 1000’s revenues dipped by nearly a third — from $67.4 million in 2017 to $47.5 million in 2024, according to tax filings. Others, like the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, have maintained a steady income, in part, due to higher membership rates and industry culture.

Having access to orientations and employee contact information helps close the gap by providing union recruiters a direct line of communication.

Within 30 days of a new staffer starting, state departments must provide the appropriate union with the new employee’s name, job title, department, work location, personal email, home address and home, work, and cell phone numbers. That same information is required to be sent every 120 days for all workers.

The California Attorneys, Administrative Law Judges, and Hearing Officers in State Employment union reports more than 50 departments don’t fully comply. SEIU Local 1000 also reports widespread noncompliance.

How it affects state workers

When union officials don’t have complete information, SEIU Local 1000 steward Susan Rodriguez said, organizers generally use what they have.

SEIU Local 1000 uses contact data to visit worksites and call workers when recruiting members and addressing site-specific issues, according to Rodriguez. She also said having personal phone numbers provides a more direct line of communication, and incomplete or inaccurate data can cause awkward moments.

In an interview with The Sacramento Bee, Rodriguez said there’s been a few instances where the work phone number listed was general to a team. There’s a case where an employee’s boss answered.

“All of a sudden, that person’s like, ‘Why is the union calling my supervisor when they should be calling me?’” Rodriguez said. “That’s because maybe I don’t have the accurate information from the employer on how to accurately contact that individual.”

Similarly, Rodriguez said she’s arrived at worksites with a different number of SEIU-represented workers than what she expected. Finding out where missing employees are is time-consuming, she said. There are also situations where there’s been more workers present than documented.

Differences among departments

Compliance with AB 119 requirements varies by department, according to Professional Engineers in California Government and the lawyers’ union. That could mean missing certain contact items, such as personal phone and emails — an omission noted by SEIU Local 1000 and CASE. It could also mean missing deadlines, such as a 10-day notice of a new employee orientation.

It can also vary within departments, PECG Executive Director Ted Toppin said, using the California Department of Transportation as an example. He said that’s in part due to staffing turnover at departments.

“District 8 in San Bernardino is very good at giving 10-day notice (of orientations) because they have people there who have done it for a long time, and then we’ll talk about District 3 in Marysville,” Toppin said. “They don’t always do 10 days.”

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Variations within departments are also noticed by the psychiatric technicians, according to CAPT President Eric Soto. He said prisons in more remote areas tend to lag behind other facilities.

Soto said psychiatric technicians are usually concentrated at a worksite and often run into each other, allowing the union to maintain a membership rate around 90%.

Many unions shared similar concerns about new employee orientation notifications. Toppin said shortfalls in this category go beyond recruitment tactics.

“(An orientation) also gives the employee a chance to understand, ‘If I’m going to need a source about what this job entails and what I’m going to be paid and what my pension benefits are, nobody knows that better than PECG,’” Toppin said.

Unions go about handling noncompliance differently. Toppin said the engineers take an educational approach by building relationships with department staff to ensure they get missing information.

SEIU Local 1000 takes a similar path, but shifts gears when it sees fit. The union said it will first reach out to departments in noncompliance. If a resolution isn’t made, Walls said SEIU Local 1000 has taken legal action. It has filed at least eight related charges with the Public Employment Relations Board, which referees public labor disputes, against agencies like the California State Lottery.

The Lottery did not include the work location or phone number for all 698 employees to the union in late May, according to a letter reviewed by The Bee from SEIU Local 1000 to the department. Personal cell phone information was not provided for nearly 620 of those employees and personal email addresses weren’t listed for 115 staffers.

“When departments continue to ignore their legal obligations, we take action,” Walls said.

Angela Musallam, a spokesperson for the California Department of Human Resources, said the “state takes its responsibilities under the Public Employee Communication Chapter of the Government Code seriously.” She said the agency cannot provide further comment due to active litigation.

The Lottery and Caltrans did not respond to The Bee’s inquiry in time for publication.

Implementation of AB 119

Many California public employers, which also includes cities and counties, already had processes in place before AB 119 to distribute employee contact information, according to public labor attorney Tim Yeung.

“Even before this law, the union was entitled to contact information for their own union members … so it wasn’t a huge lift for most employers,” he said.

Assembly Bill 119 compliance isn’t something that regularly comes up, according to Yeung. When issues arise, he said, they’re usually corrected.

Those corrections are typically executed using a relationship-based approach.

“If there’s something missing, the unions will just contact the employer, and hopefully the employer will fix it,” Yeung said. “At least for smaller employers, that’s typically what happens.”

But even when a remedy is made, it doesn’t come without a cost, SEIU Local 1000 steward Rodriguez said.

“That takes time and energy when we should be getting accurate information from our employer,” she said.

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