Two huge California unions clash over money, political clout this election season

In 1863, just 13 years after California became a state, its superintendent of public instruction, John Swett, founded the California Educational Society with 100 members, all men.

It was the genesis of what became the California Teachers Association, a trade union that achieved, through laser-like focus, substantial political power long before the state’s public employee unions gained collective bargaining rights a half-century ago.

The CTA collects dues from its more than 300,000 current members and spends much of its revenue on campaign contributions to friendly politicians and lobbying for and against legislative bills and the occasional ballot measure.

There are thousands of interest groups pressing their causes in the Capitol, but the CTA is generally regarded as the most influential. Its shining achievement was the 1988 passage of Proposition 98, a constitutional guarantee of state support for elementary, high school and community college education, offsetting the decline of local property taxes from Proposition 13 a decade earlier.

Each year, as the governor and legislators haggle over a new state budget, the process begins with calculating how much the complex Prop. 98 formula requires to be allocated to schools, after which the remainder of state revenue is divvied up among other programs and services.

If the politicians come up short, they’re allowed to cut the school money but must later restore it.

In recent years, however, another segment of the budget has risen to challenge education for fiscal dominance: health care coverage for 14 million low-income Californians — more than a third of the state’s population — through Medi-Cal.

The state is spending nearly $200 billion on Medi-Cal in the current fiscal year, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2026-27 budget ups that to $217 billion. Most of that money comes from the federal government, but it’s still one of the budget’s larger state commitments, about $50 billion.

Reductions in federal aid have put pressure on Newsom and the Legislature to cover the shortfall. Much of that pressure comes from a union that rivals the CTA in single-minded pursuit of its goals: SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which claims 120,000 members.

Inevitably the interests of CTA’s teachers and those of SEIU-UHW’s health care workers have collided since there’s only so much money to go around unless taxes of some kind are increased.

This year’s race for governor is one arena for that rivalry. Service Employees International Union, the parent of SEIU-UHW, is backing former Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the leading Democrat. The CTA has supported billionaire Tom Steyer, who has repeatedly pledged to pursue one of the teachers’ holy grails, removing Prop. 13’s property tax limits on commercial property, which would generate more money for schools.

The two unions also are at odds over details in the state budget, such as financing preschool programs. The state Senate’s version of the budget would shift preschool support into the Prop. 98 segment of the budget, thus freeing up money that could go to health care. CTA sees that as a raid on school funds.

Their biggest clash of all is over a ballot measure sponsored by SEIU-UHW that would levy a 5% tax on the wealth of California’s roughly 200 billionaires and devote nearly all of its revenue to propping up health care.

CTA leaders not only dislike being excluded from a pot of new tax money; they worry that having it on the November ballot would undermine support for the teachers’ union ballot measure, which would make permanent a surtax on incomes of the state’s wealthiest residents, which was first approved by voters in 2012. Approving it would maintain as much as $15 billion in annual tax revenue.

For unions which usually align on issues, it’s becoming a clash of the titans.