Measure will provide more accountability and transparency on how health care workers’ hard-earned dues money is spent on political campaigns
Sacramento, CA — The initiative to give health care workers a voice in how their hard-earned dues money is spent on political campaigns has qualified for the November 2026 ballot.
The initiative, spearheaded by Californians for Health Care Workers’ Right to Vote, seeks to empower California’s health care workers. While health care workers who are part of large health care unions pay $1,800 per year or more on average in union dues, they are left in the dark with little say in how their dues are spent.
The Health Care Workers’ Right to Vote Act does three simple and powerful things:
- Provides health care workers more transparency and accountability by requiring large health care unions to send a detailed account every year to their members clearly showing how their dues were spent on political campaigns.
- Gives health care workers the right to vote on how their dues are spent on ballot measure campaigns. Large health care unions would be required to get a vote of approval from their members in order to spend more than $1 million on a statewide ballot measure or more than $100,000 on a local ballot measure.
- Notifies workers how they can opt out of their money being spent for political purposes, should they choose to do so. Health care workers should not be forced to spend their hard-earned dues on political campaigns they don’t agree with.
“This measure will ensure health care workers have a voice and the transparency and accountability they deserve. All too often, executives spend tens of millions of dollars on political campaigns that are nothing more than reckless political stunts that hurt our workforce and patients,” said Francisco Silva, President & CEO, California Primary Care Association. “With this measure, health care workers will finally have a say in how their dues money is spent, and in a way that reflects their values.”
Too often, health care union executives don’t disclose to their members how they’ve spent their dues on political campaigns, ballot measures and political issues that threaten patients and health care workers.
In the past 15 years, a few large special interest health care union leaders have proposed dozens of cynical and unnecessary state and local ballot measures threatening patient access to quality health care at hospitals, health clinics, doctors’ offices, and other medical providers. These measures also threaten the health care jobs of the very members they are supposed to represent.
Since 2012, the leader of one large California health care union alone has been behind 45 state and local ballot initiatives in California — spending more than $140 million of health care workers’ dues money to push unnecessary and risky initiatives, with most of them failing. That amounts to more than $1,000 per member.
“Health care workers show up every day for their patients and health care unions should be standing behind them,” said Carmela Coyle, President & CEO of the California Hospital Association. “Right now, health care union members have little to no say in how their dues are spent on ballot measure campaigns. It’s time to stand with our caregivers and ensure they have more accountability and transparency in this process.”
The measure now awaits certification from the Secretary of State. For more information, please visit https://healthworkersrighttovote.com/.