By Matthew Harper in The Orange County Register

April 1, 2016

A recent column on these pages described the challenges of low-income and working Californians and suggested that a labor institute at UC Irvine could help make life better for workers. It is true that working Californians are struggling and that something must be done to address the challenge of poverty and underemployment in our state. But it would be mistaken to think that forming a labor institute at UCI will do anything to help Californians.

California already has two taxpayer-funded labor institutes, one at UC Berkeley and one at UCLA. These “think tanks” were created at the behest of the California Labor Federation and supposedly study labor and employment issues in California. They receive millions of taxpayer dollars per year and have been controversial since they were created.

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