Business

Finding love for $300,000: Inside the business of a matchmaker to the rich and famous

Published

3 years ago

March 13, 2022

Finding love for 0,000: Inside the business of a matchmaker to the rich and famous

MONTECITO —

Amber Kelleher-Andrews is in search of a husband: ideally engaging, ideally profitable and, above all, indisputably wealthy.

She has simply the proper girl lined up for him.

“Her face is extra stunning than any girl you’ve ever seen in your life. It was, like, beautiful,” Kelleher-Andrews says of her latest consumer, a 29-year-old from London whom she’d simply met for lunch on the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. “She simply sits down and says, ‘Hiya hiya, I’m going to lastly meet my husband.’ And I’m like, ‘Sure, we’re!’”

They are saying you’ll be able to’t put a value on love, however the elite matchmaker has put a value on discovering it for you: $30,000 to $300,000 a yr for her firm’s providers. “I do know it seems like some huge cash,” she says, “however it’s pocket change to the rich.”

As co-chief government of Kelleher Worldwide, one of many nation’s largest matchmaking corporations, Kelleher-Andrews, 52, has been pairing off super-rich singles for greater than half of her life. The corporate’s clientele is a tabloid’s dream lineup of Hollywood entertainers, Silicon Valley founders, skilled athletes and coaches, politicians and Wall Avenue tycoons. The listing is after all confidential, although a number of recognizable names — Terrell Owens, Cheryl Tiegs, Hoda Kotb and Bode Miller — have copped to being members at one level.

John Berg, left, co-CEO of Kelleher Worldwide, founder Jill Kelleher, and Kelleher’s granddaughter, Tallulah Andrews.

(Michelle Groskopf / For The Instances)

There isn’t a minimal web price required — having the ability to pay the membership charge is proof sufficient — however shoppers should be critical about wanting long-term dedication. It’s not, Kelleher-Andrews says, “exhibiting up for a hookup.”

Earlier this month, she was conducting enterprise poolside on the Rosewood Miramar Seaside resort, trying first-date prepared in a sheer mini-dotted black gown and chunky Versace sun shades, cherry-lacquered mani-pedi matching her vibrant crimson lips, striped straw hat perched atop platinum blond curls. The seashore just under, her 16-year-old daughter, Tallulah, says, is the place Travis Barker lately proposed to Kourtney Kardashian whereas kneeling in an infinite coronary heart made out of roses.

This has been Kelleher-Andrews’ momentary work setup for months after relocating the corporate from its longtime headquarters in Marin County to Montecito in the course of the pandemic. Whereas development is ongoing on the agency’s new workplaces subsequent door — she’s changing a part of the house right into a “mini retreat” for shoppers to return mingle — the nook cabana on the lavish five-star resort is the place she typically takes matchmaking calls and hosts digital employees conferences.

Kelleher-Andrews and her mom, Jill Kelleher, who based the corporate in 1986, panicked at the beginning of COVID, fearing it meant the demise of their enterprise. Their crew of matchmakers virtually at all times met in individual with potential shoppers to get to know them and to remove liars, losers and low-incomers. Apart from, may sparks actually fly over Zoom?

They might. The $5-billion U.S. courting trade surged in the course of the pandemic. Kelleher Worldwide recorded its finest yr ever in 2020; income then almost doubled in 2021, to $12.4 million. The agency is on observe to prime $18 million this yr.

Instances of disaster have typically translated to an sudden growth in enterprise for the corporate.

“We did rather well in 2001 when the World Commerce Heart went down. We had been so busy,” says Kelleher-Andrews, a former actress who has appeared on “Baywatch” and “Melrose Place.” “After which when the recession hit, we had been so busy. After which when COVID hit, we had been so busy. Persons are reevaluating. Bush stated, ‘Go house and hug your loved ones,’ they usually’re like, ‘I don’t have a household, I’ve been engaged on Wall Avenue.’”

A split photograph with a man holding a glass, left, a woman's legs with white shoes, right.

Three generations, from left: Tallulah Andrews, Amber Kelleher-Andrews and Jill Kelleher.

Matchmaking within the period of free courting apps appears virtually quaint, however Kelleher-Andrews insists the 2 don’t evaluate — significantly for those who’re well-known and loaded. It’s considered one of some ways the wealthy use their cash to insulate themselves from annoyances visited on common people, whether or not it’s business flights, airport safety, house cooking or caring for their very own children.

“It’s crucial job of your life; why not have somebody do the legwork?” Kelleher-Andrews says. The rich are “busier, far more profitable and have far more to lose, and don’t like placing themselves on the market publicly as a result of they might have gold diggers or stalkers.”

Priming the pump

On a Tuesday morning in January, the Kelleher Worldwide crew has gathered on Zoom. They’re a glamorous and gregarious bunch of almost all ladies, the tiled display screen resembling a hair salon lookbook as an alternative of a company weekly all-hands assembly.

Picture, Kelleher-Andrews says later, “is every part.”

“We’re not promoting a automobile; we’re promoting a way of life,” she says. “And if we don’t match their life-style, they don’t perceive how we are able to discover them their match.”

The corporate completely closed its department workplaces in the course of the pandemic and now its 40 staff — matchmakers, entry-level community builders who concentrate on vetting, relationship coaches and membership salespeople amongst them — work remotely. Many are positioned in Southern California, its largest of greater than a dozen markets together with San Francisco, New York, Dallas, Denver, Miami, Atlanta, Toronto and London.

“So lots of the shoppers truly do have COVID,” one of many matchmakers, Molly Davis, stories in the beginning of the decision. However they’re being “significantly protected by way of how they’re transferring about, even with the luxurious of personal transportation.”

After Kelleher-Andrews reminds her employees to promote shoppers on upcoming member occasions — an intimate retreat to Richard Branson’s Necker Island resort in April and varied Grammys and Oscars events — the crew turns to consumer challenges. One community developer bemoans a British man who was excellent in each means, save for one flaw.

“It’s the most important task of your life; why not have someone do the legwork?” Kelleher-Andrews says.

Four people stand for a portrait in a living room.

“He was a man that we liked, he had an incredible persona, general very engaging,” she says. “However we saved getting the identical suggestions: ‘He’s so nice, however his tooth.’ It’s one thing that lots of people couldn’t get previous.” (She finally handed alongside the criticism, with a delicate suggestion to get them mounted.)

Nearly all of the agency’s 800 inquiries a month come from on-line search visitors, and a few third from referrals. To make the lower, Kelleher-Andrews and her crew probe a possible consumer’s funds, schooling, marital standing, courting historical past, household background and profession trajectory, and conduct interviews to gauge dedication and attraction.

Fewer than 5% are accepted; as we speak, there are about 600 shoppers all over the world below one- to three-year contracts, an almost even break up of prosperous women and men. Larger-priced membership ranges imply a wider pool of matches, entry to relationship and life teaching, an outdoor seek for individuals not already within the firm’s database and particular person consideration from Kelleher-Andrews.

I figured, properly, gee, let’s prime the pump somewhat bit…. I labored laborious to get the place I’m, and the place else am I going to make use of my cash?

Benson Riseman, co-founder of Inexperienced Dot Corp. and a former Kelleher Worldwide consumer

Matchmakers are full-time staff and incentivized with bonuses for relationship milestones; an engagement is price $2,500. Kelleher-Andrews says the corporate has been chargeable for hundreds of marriages, with 87% of her shoppers “discovering love.”

Benson Riseman, co-founder of monetary expertise agency Inexperienced Dot Corp., is without doubt one of the fortunately ever afters. Forward of the corporate’s 2010 IPO, he says, he started considering the following stage of his life and figured hiring a matchmaker may assist him discover the proper girl.

“The entire thought was international to me of discovering another person to characterize me, however I figured, properly, gee, let’s prime the pump somewhat bit, let’s see some people and meet lots of people,” Riseman, now 65 and a philanthropist, says. “I labored laborious to get the place I’m, and the place else am I going to make use of my cash?”

He signed with Kelleher Worldwide in 2011, courting ceaselessly for the primary few years.

“I jumped in with each ft and each time the cellphone rang they usually stated, ‘We all know this woman …’ I stated, ‘OK, let’s go,’” he remembers. “It was entertaining, and for probably the most half it was extra enjoyable than sitting at house consuming Frosted Flakes in mattress.”

In a split photograph, two women are seen posing for a portrait.

In 2014, Riseman was matched with a girl who labored in luxurious actual property. They chatted on the cellphone twice earlier than assembly in Las Vegas for dinner. They had been each divorced and every had an older son and a youthful daughter, a commonality that helped forge a bond from the beginning; they married three years later. “It was a superb slot in each means,” he says.

One other former consumer, a 55-year-old Emmy-winning actress and producer from Encino, joined after going by way of a divorce.

“I used to be at all times afraid of happening any of the courting websites,” she says. “Being a semi-public determine — I’m not a Nicole Kidman or one thing — I used to be at all times like, ‘What if there’s a serial killer on the market?’ I wished extra background checking.”

She was additionally annoyed by L.A.’s courting scene.

“It was laborious to search out somebody on this city who a) doesn’t wish to solely date 30 and below, and b) is critical about in search of an actual relationship and isn’t simply buying and selling up and buying and selling in each month or so,” she says. “I wanted some assist weeding these guys out of the combo. And these guys at Kelleher had been critical about discovering love as a result of they’d simply dedicated a crap-ton of cash towards doing that.”

Straight away she was matched with a Silicon Valley tech co-founder whom she was with for nearly half a yr; the 2 finally broke up due to the lengthy distance. She met a handful of different males after that — all fabulously wealthy, some obnoxiously so: “If a man leads with a jet, he’s a douchebag,” she says — and one has change into a detailed buddy, although it didn’t work out romantically.

Just a few consumer relationships have turned bitter. In 2017, Kelleher Worldwide settled with a former QVC government who stated she had paid a $150,000 membership charge solely to go on a string of unhealthy dates, together with one with an Australian entrepreneur who took her to Costa Rica and Panama after which whisked his ex on one other journey the identical day she returned house. One other man, listed within the lawsuit as “the Serial Lothario,” was a Fortune 500 government who allegedly ghosted her after a number of months of courting.

Amber Kelleher-Andrews and her husband, Nico Andrews, have been married for 22 years.

In a split photograph, a man's boots, left, and a dog on a balcony, right.

Love is within the middle

Standing on a balcony at her opulent Montecito house, a seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom Colonial set on 2 acres in a gated group, Kelleher-Andrews opens up about her personal wealth.

“Most of it got here from actual property,” she says, searching at a terraced yard that results in a non-public tennis court docket backed by rolling hills and a cover of dense bushes. There are two Porsche convertibles parked within the roundabout driveway, flanking a three-tiered fountain, and a visitor wing by the pool. “It has nothing to do with Kelleher.”

She rattles off the acquisition and sale costs of each house she has ever owned, an escalating spiral of added zeroes. “All my shoppers — after they’re spending $200,000, $300,000 — they count on me to have cash.”

She joined the household enterprise in 1995 after quitting the leisure trade, launching her personal department in Los Angeles whereas her mother operated out of the Bay Space. The look-alike duo quickly turned fixtures of airline in-flight journal adverts, and in 2013 Kelleher-Andrews starred in an Eva Longoria-produced actuality tv matchmaking present on NBC, “Prepared for Love,” that was canceled after three episodes.

All my shoppers — after they’re spending $200,000, $300,000 — they count on me to have cash.

Amber Kelleher-Andrews, co-CEO of matchmaking agency Kelleher Worldwide

In June she employed a co-chief government, John Berg, to assist develop the corporate. They’ve aspirations to convey Kelleher Worldwide to Asia, an enormous marketplace for matchmaking providers, and to broaden its clientele to incorporate the LGBTQ group.

However her most important precedence proper now’s to maneuver past courting.

She’s properly conscious of a basic weak spot within the matchmaking enterprise mannequin: A profitable match between shoppers means two misplaced clients. In contrast to common courting app Hinge, whose tagline is “the courting app designed to be deleted,” Kelleher-Andrews isn’t in search of a one-off relationship together with her deep-pocketed, well-connected shoppers.

So she’s making ready to launch an unique social membership this summer time, a separate membership designed for singles and {couples} that prices $50,000 to hitch (present matchmaking shoppers can be grandfathered in). It’ll be a mixture of philanthropy, supper events and opulent journeys meant to foster deep friendships between members — and a extra lasting tie to the agency itself. If romance blossoms, all the higher.

“We’re working with a gaggle of animals and how one can assist rescue them and protect this space of the world,” Kelleher-Andrews says of an upcoming tour to Antarctica for charity. “You may have a bunch of vacationers go down and say, ‘Oh, have a look at the penguins,’ or ‘Oh, wow, have a look at the polar bears,’ or you might convey a bunch of rich individuals they usually’ll say, ‘We may also help repair this.’”

She believes the social membership may change into a 3rd of the corporate’s enterprise.

“I really like working with rich individuals as a result of we’re transferring the needle and making a distinction on the earth,” she says, “and love is at all times within the middle.”

A woman applies makeup in a mirror in a bathroom.

As for her personal private life, Kelleher-Andrews has been married for 22 years to Nico Andrews, a jiujitsu champion she met when she was 21 when each had been working on the Roxbury on Sundown Boulevard (he was head of safety; she was a cocktail waitress).

“He’ll play a flute that he makes from bamboo whereas he’s using a horse after which he can kick some critical ass in jiujitsu. So you’ll be able to’t actually place him,” she says. “What I didn’t marry was a typical PhD Harvard man from Wall Avenue, which is what we characterize.”

Certain sufficient, round midafternoon, Andrews could possibly be discovered within the grandiose kitchen downstairs, pouring himself a shot of mezcal whereas wearing a cowboy hat and boots with spurs.

Requested if he has any relationship knowledge of his personal, he provides two items of recommendation: “All the time be sure to’re the caretaker of your associate’s house. And in addition, any massive choices, just remember to’re each concerned.”

The couple have three kids; Tallulah, the youngest, wish to observe in her mom’s and grandmother’s footsteps and change into a matchmaker herself.

“It’s so excellent that it’s like a line of blonds, the following technology. I’m simply their little mini,” the highschool sophomore says. Then she pauses, leans in shut and whispers, “I even have brown hair.”

At the moment Kelleher, 77, is essentially a figurehead for the corporate she based greater than three a long time in the past, aiding staff on difficult matches and chiming in on employees Zooms with such Hallmark-isms as “comfortable spouse, comfortable life.”

She is single herself, one thing that Kelleher-Andrews, ever the matchmaker, wish to treatment.

“We discuss matching my mother on a regular basis,” she says. “She gained’t freaking do it.”

Watch L.A. Instances At the moment at 7 p.m. on Spectrum Information 1 on Channel 1 or reside stream on the Spectrum Information App. Palos Verdes Peninsula and Orange County viewers can watch on Cox Programs on channel 99.

Business

As Art Sales Fall, Christie’s and Sotheby’s Pivot to Luxury

Published

6 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

As Art Sales Fall, Christie’s and Sotheby’s Pivot to Luxury

When art works fetch spectacular auction prices, like the record $450.3 million for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” in 2017, the world’s focus turns for a moment to the arcane goings-on of the international art trade. But with the market in a downturn for the last two years, there have been few attention-grabbing sales at the world’s two biggest and oldest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

An exception came at November’s marquee auctions of modern and contemporary art in New York, when the world’s media — and social media in particular — were momentarily enthralled by the seeming absurdity of a cryptocurrency investor spending $6.2 million at Sotheby’s for a duct-taped banana. But there is a big difference between $6.2 million and $450.3 million.

Sales at Sotheby’s and Christie’s were down for the second year in a row in 2024, according to preliminary figures released by the companies in December. With both supply and demand for big-ticket art in a slump, the auction houses are making major bets on selling luxury goods and niche experiences to make up the shortfall.

Sotheby’s estimated it would have turned over about $6 billion in auction and private sales by year-end, a decline of 24 percent on 2023. Christie’s announced projected aggregate sales of $5.7 billion, down 6 percent year-on-year. Back in 2022, Sotheby’s and Christie’s posted annual turnover of $8 billion and $8.4 billion.

“The auction houses have major problems,” said Christine Bourron, the chief executive of the London-based company Pi-eX, which analyzes art sale results. “They really need to do some thinking about how they can bring some life into their auction business. People who have an interest in art want to have an experience,” added Bourron, who, like many followers of the auction market, finds both Sotheby’s and Christie’s live and online sales increasingly predictable.

Sotheby’s is owned by the French-Israeli telecoms magnate Patrick Drahi, whose beleaguered Altice group is burdened with $60 billion of debt. Sotheby’s deteriorating performance led the auction house to reach out to Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, A.D.Q., for a $1 billion cash-for-equity bailout and to lay off more than 100 employees in December. This followed some costly infrastructure decisions: Sotheby’s $100-million purchase of the Breuer Building in New York’s Madison Avenue, the opening of a new headquarters in Paris and the development of a futuristic exhibition and retail space in Hong Kong.

Sotheby’s website now abounds with opportunities to buy pre-owned luxury items at auction or by “instant purchase,” as if in a store, ranging from real estate, classic cars and dinosaur fossils, to smaller prestige collectibles like designer handbags, jewelry, fine wines and game-worn N.B.A. jerseys.

Josh Pullan, Sotheby’s global head of luxury, said sales of such goods draw in wealthy clients who may, in time, start to buy high-end art. “Luxury categories are for us a vital gateway for new, often younger, collectors,” he added.

Last year, luxury generated about 33 percent of sales at Sotheby’s, compared with 16 percent at Christie’s, according to the companies’ communications teams. But the category attracted more buyers than art did.

Guillaume Cerutti, the chief executive of Christie’s, spoke to reporters last month during an end-of-year media call. “Luxury has an advantage, because of the model and the price points,” he said. “Luxury and art will merge with each other,” he added, hinting at future synergies of presentation and categorization.

Christie’s is owned by the luxury goods billionaire François-Henri Pinault, whose Kering conglomerate has also been hit by flagging sales. After introducing handbag auctions back in 2014, Christie’s is now having to catch up with Sotheby’s offering of luxury items and trophy collectibles, like dinosaur skeletons. In September, Christie’s announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire the California-based classic car auctioneers Gooding & Co., setting up a rivalry with Sotheby’s car business, RM Sotheby’s, which last year turned over $887 million in classic auto sales.

“The luxury resale market presents a compelling opportunity for auction houses,” said Daniel Langer, a professor of luxury strategy at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “Storytelling is a critical success factor in the luxury industry. Auction houses excel in this area — take the recent banana auction as an example,” he added. Sotheby’s marketing, like that of a luxury brand, had skilfully woven a narrative around the sensation that the banana sculpture, by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, created when first exhibited at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair in 2019.

However, this opportunity comes with “significant challenges,” according to Langer. He pointed out that unlike luxury brands, auction houses don’t produce and price all of their own inventory; profit margins on new luxury items are often much higher than their resold equivalents; and unlike conglomerates such as LVMH and Kering, auction houses can’t scale their transactions through a network of retail outlets. These disparities between retail and resale “could limit the overall financial impact of luxury for auction houses,” he said.

Changing spending patterns among the wealthy could also affect demand.

Global sales of luxury flatlined in 2024 for the first time since 2008 (excluding 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic), according to a recent report by the management consultants Bain & Co. The report’s authors said consumers were prioritizing “experiences over products” in these uncertain times and that the luxury goods market, rather like the art market, is suffering from buyer fatigue.

“The super-wealthy in their 30s, 40s and 50s are spending their money on luxury experiences,” said Doug Woodham, a former Christie’s executive who now advises on art-related finance. “That’s money that isn’t being spent on a Matisse drawing,” he added.

“With superluxury experiences, the social cache is so much higher,” said Woodham, who pioneered handbag sales at Christie’s in 2014. “For half a million dollars I can have my 10 best friends on a lavish yacht. They will remember that more than sitting in my house with a Rothko on the wall.”

The global luxury yacht charter market grew to an all-time high of $16.3 billion in 2024, a 6 percent increase on the previous year, according to the Business Research Company. It said that growth has been driven by the popularity of “exclusive and exotic travel destinations” and the “ongoing trend towards experiential luxury.”

In September, Sotheby’s collaborated with the Marriott International hotel chain and the fashion house Alexander McQueen to offer a sealed bid auction, in which bidders can’t see the rival offers. The winner got a two-night stay one of the group’s 5-star London sites as part of an experience that the Sotheby’s website said would “transport guests to where a teenaged McQueen first learned the art of tailoring.” Also included were a five-course fine-dining meal for two, a bespoke tour of London with a private visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum and a personalized photo session with Ann Ray, a longtime McQueen collaborator. Classifying the auction as a private sale, Sotheby’s declined to reveal how much the winning bidder paid for this unique luxury experience, but the presale estimate was $12,000 to $18,000.

Could selling memories, instead of art, be the future of the auction business?

Business

Column: California employers wrap themselves in the 1st Amendment to kill a pro-worker law

Published

7 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Column: California employers wrap themselves in the 1st Amendment to kill a pro-worker law

It’s always heartening to see the business establishment stand up for constitutional principles.

Well, almost always. Among the exceptions is when business leaders wrap themselves in the Constitution to secure their own privileges at the expense of the public interest.

That’s the case with a curious little lawsuit the California Chamber of Commerce and California Restaurant Assn. dropped in Sacramento federal court on New Year’s Eve. Their target is Senate Bill 399, otherwise known as the California Worker Freedom from Employer Intimidation Act, which was signed by Gov. Newsom on Sept. 27 and took effect on New Year’s Day.

It should be clear…that a captive-audience meeting is an extraordinary exercise and demonstration of employer power over employees.

— National Labor Relations Board

The law is straightforward. It bans “captive audience meetings,” which are those scheduled by employers to ply workers with religious, political and (especially) anti-union propaganda. Nothing in the law bars employers from holding such meetings when worker attendance is voluntary. The “captive” part, the law specifies, is when employees face “discharge, discrimination, retaliation, or any other adverse action” for failing to attend.

As my colleague Suhauna Hussain has reported, 10 other states have implemented similar bans. So far, they’ve survived legal challenges. Bans on captive meetings are under consideration in at least five other states. They also were outlawed by the National Labor Relations Board with a ruling on Nov. 13, overturning an anti-union policy dating from 1948. The 3-1 ruling, with the board’s Democratic members in the majority and its sole Republican in dissent, involved Amazon.com’s campaign against a union organizing drive at New York-area facilities. Amazon has said it will appeal the ruling.

Captive audience meetings are among “the most pernicious and coercive tactics an employer can use to browbeat and intimidate workers into voting against a union,” says William B. Gould IV, an emeritus professor of law at Stanford and a former chairman of the NLRB and the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

The NLRB’s November ruling applied to captive meetings involving unionization drives, which fall within the board’s jurisdiction. The California law goes further by bringing meetings involving political and religious matters into the mix. But the state laws and the NLRB’s ruling make the same distinctions between meetings at which attendance is voluntary, and those that workers are required to attend on pain of discipline. The first are legal, the second illegal.

Since they were seemingly blessed by the NLRB in 1948, captive audience meetings have become “a common feature” of corporate anti-union campaigns, the board observed in the Amazon case. A 2009 study of 1,004 NLRB-supervised union representation elections cited in its ruling found that captive audience meetings had been held in 89% of cases; more than half of the employers had held more than five “in the runup to an election.”

The Amazon campaign is a good example. In opposing the unionization drive, which was ultimately successful, Amazon scheduled mandatory meetings every 45 minutes, six days a week at the Staten Island, N.Y., warehouse where the drive originated. At these meetings, company representatives delivered speeches attacking unions in general and the Amazon union drive specifically.

The NLRB found that “managers personally notified employees that they were scheduled to attend, escorted them to the meetings, and scanned their ID badges to digitally record attendance.”

Amazon’s activities prompted the board to reconsider the 1948 policy, which was set forth in a case involving the boiler company Babcock & Wilcox. The board noted that the 1948 finding that captive audience meetings didn’t violate labor law was “largely unexplained” and “flawed” under the law. So it was bound to be overturned.

In its detailed analysis of the topic, the board cited numerous past board rulings and Supreme Court decisions that say that employers have the right to express their opinions about unions and unionization, but not to compel employees to listen.

“It should be clear,” the board found, “that a captive-audience meeting is an extraordinary exercise and demonstration of employer power over employees,” especially when the employees’ decisions on whether to join the union is at issue.

That brings us back to the lawsuit the Chamber and Restaurant Assn. filed in Sacramento federal court. The lawsuit asserts that any ban on mandatory meetings infringes the employers’ free-speech rights as enshrined in the 1st Amendment. (State officials haven’t yet filed a response.)

“Because of SB 399,” the plaintiffs say, “employers in California are now subject to liability, penalties, and other administrative action when they exercise their federal constitutional and statutory rights to talk to employees.”

We think the plaintiffs do protest too much, to quote Shakespeare. The California law does nothing of the kind.

“Under the bill, employers are not prevented from speaking to employees in any way on any subject, including about religious and political matters,” the AFL-CIO stated in a legal memo for the California Labor Federation, which supports the law.

It’s worth remembering that employers — notably restaurant owners — aren’t above using dubious claims to attack pro-worker initiatives. Back in June, I reported that fast food franchise owners asserted that California’s $20 minimum wage for fast food workers had cost the state 10,000 jobs in that sector, going back to September 2023, when Newsom signed the law.

I documented that the statistic was false; it was the product of a misinterpretation of government employment statistics that appeared initially in the Wall Street Journal and was repeated by UCLA economics professor Lee Ohanian for an essay on the Hoover Institution website. (Hoover subsequently retracted Ohanian’s essay, which had been specifically cited by the fast food camp for a newspaper ad.)

The plaintiffs may have a stronger argument in their assertion that California’s law governing employer rights in unionization cases is preempted by federal law, namely the 1935 National Labor Relations Act.

The AFL-CIO memo argues that California, like any state, has the right to set “minimum employment standards” for workers in the state. The examples it cites, however, are matters such as child labor laws, minimum wages and occupational safety and health standards, though it also maintains that since states can bar the firing of workers for improper reasons such as race, it can bar discharges for failing to attend a mandatory meeting.

Gould, for one, thinks the plaintiffs may have a point, based on a 1959 Supreme Court ruling that gave the NLRB exclusive jurisdiction over unionization issues unless the board disavows an interest. The issue might well be headed for the Supreme Court for another look.

That might not matter if the NLRB’s decision in the Amazon case stands. But a Trump-dominated labor board, which appears to be preordained, could overturn the Amazon ruling, just as the Biden board overturned Babcock & Wilcox. That might not be the worst change in labor policy for workers as Trump succeeds Biden, who may have been the most pro-union president in history. But it won’t be good.

Business

Tax Cuts or the Border? Republicans Wrestle Over Trump’s Priorities.

Published

14 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Tax Cuts or the Border? Republicans Wrestle Over Trump’s Priorities.

Republicans are preparing to cut taxes, slash spending and slow immigration in a broad agenda that will require unifying an unruly party behind dozens of complicated policy choices.

For now, though, they are struggling with a more prosaic decision: whether to cram their policy goals into one bill or split them into two.

It is a seemingly technical question that reveals a fundamental divide among Republicans about whether to prioritize a wide-ranging crackdown on immigration or cutting taxes, previewing what could be months of intramural policy debate.

Some Republicans have argued that they should pass two bills in order to quickly push through legislation focused on immigration at the southern border, a key campaign promise for Mr. Trump and his party’s candidates. But Republicans devoted to lowering taxes have pressed for one mammoth bill to ensure that tax cuts are not left on the cutting-room floor.

President-elect Donald J. Trump met with Republican senators in Washington on Wednesday, as those lawmakers sought clarity on his preferred strategy. He has waffled between the two ideas, prolonging the dispute.

“Whether it’s one bill or two bills, it’s going to get done,” Mr. Trump told reporters after the meeting.

Republicans are planning to ram the partisan fiscal package through the Senate over the opposition of Democrats using a process called reconciliation, which allows them to steer clear of a filibuster and pass bills with a simple majority vote. But for much of this year, Republicans will be working with a one-seat majority in the House and a three-seat majority in the Senate, meaning they will need near unanimity to pass major legislation.

That has left some worried that it will be hard enough passing one bill, much less two.

“There’s serious risk in having multiple bills that have to pass to get your agenda through,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority leader, said. “When you know you’ve got a lot of people that want this first package, if you only put certain things in the first package, they can vote no on the second and you lose the whole second package. That would be devastating.”

Adding to the urgency of achieving their policy goals, Republicans are facing a political disaster should they fail to deliver. Many of the tax cuts they put into place in 2017, the last time Mr. Trump was president, expire at the end of the year. That means that taxes on most Americans could go up if Congress does not pass a tax bill this year.

Passing tax cuts can take time, though. While much of the Republican tax agenda involves continuing measures the party passed in 2017, Mr. Trump and other Republicans have floated additional ideas, including no taxes on tips and new incentives for corporations to manufacture in the United States. Ideas like that could take months to formulate into workable policy.

Then there is the gigantic cost. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that simply extending the 2017 tax cuts would cost more than $4 trillion over a decade — a price tag that would grow if other tax cuts, like Mr. Trump’s proposal to not tax overtime pay, are included.

Further complicating support for the legislation is that Republicans plan to raise the debt limit through reconciliation, another sensitive issue for fiscal hawks.

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have said they would not support any legislation unless the costs it introduces are offset by spending cuts. While most Republicans support reining in federal spending, agreeing on which federal programs to slash always proves harder than expected. In an attempted workaround, Republicans have instead begun to explore ways to change Washington’s budget rules so the tax cuts are shown to cost less.

The complexity of pulling together a tax bill that can secure the necessary votes has some Republicans hoping to hold off until later in the year and first charge ahead with a smaller bill focused on immigration, energy and military issues. Republicans have not yet publicly sketched out what that bill would look like.

Proponents of that strategy argue it would deliver Mr. Trump an early political victory on immigration and treat a top Republican campaign issue with the urgency it deserves.

“The No. 1 priority is securing our border,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida told reporters on Tuesday. “In my opinion it’s the top priority, and everything else is a close second.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Budget Committee who will be overseeing the reconciliation process, has also pressed for a two-bill approach. “If you hold border security hostage to get tax cuts, you’re playing Russian roulette with our national security,” he said.

Republicans have looked to Mr. Trump to intervene and set a clear direction for the party. On Sunday, he wrote on social media that Congress should pass “one powerful Bill,” an apparent victory for lawmakers like Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who had championed that approach. Mr. Trump’s equivocation since then, though, has left Republicans still unsure of which strategy they should pursue.

Mr. Trump’s meeting with top Republican senators on Wednesday will be followed by a discussion with various House Republicans in Florida over the weekend.

In a sign of how politically complicated the tax cut discussion could get, one of the sessions is expected to focus on relaxing the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT.

Republicans included the $10,000 limit in the 2017 tax law as a way to contain the cost of that legislation. But the move angered House Republicans from high-tax states like New York and New Jersey, many of whom voted against the entire 2017 tax bill as a result. Such defections are a luxury that Republican leaders can’t afford this year given their narrow majority.

G.O.P. lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and California could tank a tax bill if they are unsatisfied with how the provision is handled. They are now pushing to lift the cap as part of the party’s tax bill. Eliminating the cap entirely could add roughly $1 trillion to the price tag of the legislation.

Maneuvering ambitious policy agendas through Congress has often been a messy and time-consuming process for presidents. A Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act during Mr. Trump’s first term collapsed after more than six months of discussion.

After quickly passing pandemic relief measures in 2021 under President Biden, much of Democrats’ broader agenda was stymied for almost two years before a second party-line measure passed that was far narrower than many in the party had hoped.

This time around, Republicans will be grappling not only with a historically slim margin in the House, but also a president prone to sudden changes of heart.

“You can argue the merits of both” strategies, said Representative Jodey Arrington, a Texas Republican who leads the House Budget Committee. “He has to tell us what he wants and what he needs.”