Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is incapable of getting his employees to show up to the office more than two days a week. This is an indictment of his leadership and reveals a flaw that should be fatal to his presidential aspirations. It is also an indictment of the California Democratic Party, which has shown itself to be a wholly owned subsidiary of powerful government unions.

This March, just weeks before the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office projected current and “persistent” deficits of between $10 billion and $20 billion a year, Newsom issued an executive order directing all agency heads to update telework policies to require staff to be in their offices four days a week rather than two days, as is now the case. Agency heads were given three months to get this done, with an implementation deadline of July 1.

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California’s government unions, SEIU Local 1000 most prominent among them, vowed to block Newsom’s order, and many elected Democrats in Sacramento joined the fight on the unions’ side. Several government employee unions filed grievances with the state, while others sued. The unions spent more than $30,000 on billboards that were posted in Sacramento attacking Newsom for supposedly creating traffic jams by forcing workers to go to their place of work.

Sure enough, Newsom buckled under this pressure and capitulated. He delayed the return to work by a year, giving unions more time to flex their political muscles and prepare for another fight.

Government unions are big business in California. Combined, the California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, California School Employees Association, American Federation of State and Municipal Employees, SEIU 1000, and other public safety unions have more than a million members in the state, paying more than a billion dollars a year in dues.

Between 15% and 25% of this money is spent maximizing the unions’ political power, including direct donations to Democratic Party campaigns, ballot measures, political staff, lobbyists in Sacramento, and “issue advocacy.” That comes to $150 million of union dues spent every year influencing government policy.

No other special interest groups in the state come close to spending that kind of money and acquiring such influence — not Silicon Valley, not Hollywood, not the tourism industry. The government employee unions are a unified political machine. Not even the Democratic Party of California comes close to spending that kind of money to wield power.

With this airtight monopoly on political power, government unions control who gets elected, so when they “negotiate” over collective bargaining agreements, they are across the table from people they handpicked for the job. The far Left hand has a firm grip on the other Left hand. Any elected Democrat in California who dares oppose a government union in a collective bargaining negotiation signs their own political death warrant. Negotiating with government unions in California is like negotiating with the mob while Luca Brasi has a gun to your head.

Considering their overweening political power, it is not surprising that the average government union retiree in California collects a pension of $70,000 a year while the state’s pension funds are underfunded by hundreds of billions of dollars.

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The California Teachers Union has no incentive to improve education in California. If test scores go down, which they have, it is used as another reason to demand more money. The American Federation of State and Municipal Employees has no incentive to ensure trash gets picked up on time or potholes are filled in. Nothing pushes government unions to deliver public services better or more cost-effectively. Their only incentive is to bleed taxpayers dry quickly before another union gets a better deal.

California has become unaffordable, as Newsom is demonstrating, and is losing thousands of middle-class residents every year. Government unions, which Newsom has proved powerless to govern, are a major reason why.