the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 16, 2023
On October 1, Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s vacated seat in the U.S. Senate. Democrats promote Butler as a pro-labor politician. This is a lie.
Butler started her career as an organizer for nurses in Baltimore and hospital workers in New Haven, Connecticut. In 2009, she joined these unions’ efforts to organize in-home caregivers and nurses in California. Then, Butler’s union bureaucracy career jumped off in a short time. At the age of 34, she became the president of the California Service Employees International Union (SEIU) State Council in 2013.
Butler ended her union career in 2018 when she left SEIU to join a consulting firm, SCRB Strategies, whose website proudly touted the company as “California’s top spin doctors.” This firm tasked Butler to represent Uber against Uber’s drivers.
Uber, Lyft, and other so-called gig companies classify their drivers as “contractors.” As such, these gig companies don’t recognize the rights of these workers under labor laws. In 2019, legislators wanted to change this by passing a bill in the California State Senate to classify these drivers as workers with minimum wage rights, and to require these companies to cover their drivers’ expenses and contribute to state unemployment.
Uber started to negotiate directly with the Teamsters Union and SEIU to undermine this law. To conduct these negotiations, Uber hired Butler. She trained Uber on dealing with these unions in several face-to-face meetings between the gig companies and union representatives. Many of these union representatives were Butler’s friends and co-workers when she worked for SEIU. Butler outright sold workers out so that she could have a political and money-making career.
In 2020, Butler joined another gig company, Airbnb. Butler helped Airbnb avoid hotel-motel taxes by lobbying politicians at the State and Federal Government levels. Through such arrangements, Airbnb avoided paying taxes that support workers, such as unemployment benefits. Airbnb rentals employ workers for their upkeep as contractors with no benefits.
Butler is a politician who uses organizing skills she learned earlier against workers by representing multi-billion dollar corporations such as Uber and Airbnb. With this U.S. Senate appointment, a very rich businessman, Newsom, just rewarded Butler for her anti-worker efforts.