Gavin Newsom’s mind-boggling record of giveaways to unions

A friend recently told me he was impressed that Gov. Gavin Newsom was standing up to California’s public employee unions by requiring state workers to return to the office at least four days a week.

But if he thought that meant Newsom had generally been tough on California’s powerful unions, I told him there was a lot more to the story — and he was about to get a lesson in seven years of union favors he wouldn’t forget.

Start with the California Teachers Association.

Soon after taking office, Newsom signed AB 1505 and AB 1507, strengthening traditional school districts’ power over charter schools.

A friend recently told me he was impressed that Gov. Gavin Newsom was standing up to California’s public employee unions by requiring state workers to return to the office at least four days a week. Anadolu via Getty Images

Assemblymember Mike Gipson speaks at a press conference to announce a historic UC unionization effort with SEIU Doctors United at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. (2026 Getty Images) Getty Images for SEIU Doctors United

CTA called it a “historic win after 27 years.”

Then came COVID.

As schools around the country reopened, California’s teachers unions continued demanding extraordinary conditions before returning to classrooms. Newsom spent months unwilling to seriously confront them while California children remained home.

By the time Newsom and the unions came to terms, California was among the last states in the country to fully reopen its public schools.

Fast forward to today.

As schools around the country reopened, California’s teachers unions continued demanding extraordinary conditions before returning to classrooms. Newsom spent months unwilling to seriously confront them while California children remained home. MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Beginning next year, the new federal Education Freedom Tax Credit will provide taxpayers up to a $1,700 federal tax credit for contributions to scholarship organizations. States must opt in.

As of this month, 29 states have elected to participate.

California isn’t one of them — a win for the CTA, which opposes directing scholarship dollars toward private-school alternatives to unionized public schools.

Newsom still can opt us in. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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Then there are the state employees themselves.

In 2023, Newsom negotiated contracts covering most of California’s rank-and-file workforce estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion over three years.

Roughly 100,000 SEIU Local 1000 employees received 3% general raises in 2023, 2024 and 2025, along with numerous special salary adjustments and additional benefits.

When California’s budget problems forced Newsom back to the bargaining table in 2025, SEIU still protected that final raise. Workers accepted a temporary payroll reduction in exchange for additional leave, while Newsom suspended their retiree health-care contributions and temporarily paused his return-to-office policy through July 1 of this year.

California isn’t one of them — a win for the CTA, which opposes directing scholarship dollars toward private-school alternatives to unionized public schools. REUTERS

Newsom also signed the Public Employee Health Protection Act, requiring government employers to continue providing health insurance to public employees and their families while those employees are on an authorized strike.

So government employees can stop working because they’re striking against the government — and taxpayers keep paying for their health insurance.

Newsom hasn’t just rewarded existing union members. He has expanded organized labor’s reach.

He gave roughly 40,000 family child-care providers collective-bargaining rights with the state, expanded farmworker organizing, and last year created a path for more than 800,000 California rideshare drivers to organize and collectively bargain.

His generosity toward organized labor doesn’t stop with public employees.

Remember AB 5?

Newsom signed the disastrous 2019 assault on independent contracting that attempted to push enormous numbers of Californians into traditional employer-employee relationships — exactly the workforce model organized labor prefers.

The backlash was immediate. Sacramento carved exemption after exemption into the law, and voters passed Proposition 22.

Governor Gavin Newsom speaks during a press event to welcome back students to a new school year at the Schafer Park Elementary School in Hayward, California, on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. The event highlighted transformational education reforms. (2026 Anadolu) Anadolu via Getty Images

Newsom also signed major SEIU priorities establishing a $20 fast-food minimum wage and putting healthcare workers on a path toward $25 an hour.

This isn’t a governor who occasionally happened to sign something unions liked.

This is a record.

And the unions themselves keep score.

In 2022, the California Labor Federation gave Newsom an 88% rating on its legislative priorities. In 2025, it celebrated a “banner year” after Newsom signed all but one of its key priority bills.

Of course, I told my friend, all of this matters even more because California is in the middle of a very real affordability crisis.

Richer government contracts and expanded public employee benefits don’t come from nowhere. 

They land on taxpayers — the same taxpayers already staring down the nation’s highest gas prices, some of the steepest home insurance increases in the country, and a cost of living that keeps pushing people out of the state entirely.

Maria Nicholas, president of the Associated Administrators of LA/Teamsters, speaks during a press conference announcing UTLA, SEIU and AALA strike authorization against Los Angeles Unified School District at the L.A. County Federation of Labor in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 1, 2026. Nicholas said it will be the first time in AALA’s 45-year history that they may strike. (MediaNews Group RM) MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Higher mandated labor costs work the same way in the private sector. 

When Sacramento raises the wage floor for an entire industry or hands a new class of workers collective-bargaining leverage, those costs don’t vanish — they show up in the price of a burger, a rideshare, a hospital visit.

Californians pay either way: once as taxpayers, once as consumers. And they’re paying both bills at exactly the moment they can least afford either one.

What matters is the direction of the record.

One fight doesn’t erase seven years of history.

After I finished, my friend paused.

“Oh wow,” he said. “I guess Newsom sucks after all.”

Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com