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Spotlight

Christian Science Monitor

Minimum wages rise: Here’s where the changes matter most

“Research finds that minimum wage laws do what they’re intended to do. They improve low-wage workers’ earnings, which has a full range of positive impacts, both on workers and on society,” says Ken Jacobs, who co-chairs the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center.

Coral del Mar Murphy-Marcos

New ways for organizers to lead

At the latest Labor Center Lead Organizer Training 19 organizers strengthened their organizing skills and learned to cultivate new leaders within their organizations. The frontline leaders from teacher, grocery, and flight attendant unions, and Black, Latino, and Filipino worker centers, among others, learned to adapt different leadership approaches to different circumstances.

Sara Hinkley

California’s public sector staffing crisis

Until the state can make much-needed improvements to its property and commercial tax structure, officials will continue to propose drastic service cuts. Eliminating or freezing vacant positions in state and local budget processes may be a convenient way to cut expenses, but without substantive staffing analysis the impact of leaving those positions empty could pose a severe burden on existing staff, Californians, and the economy.

Miranda Dietzand Laurel Lucia

Measuring Consumer Affordability is Integral to Achieving the Goals of the California Office of Health Care Affordability

Consumer health care affordability has deteriorated over the past two decades in California due to rising premiums along with increasingly common and increasingly large deductibles for job-based coverage. This report documents these trends and their implications for Californian’s health and financial well-being, and recommends how California’s new Office of Health Care Affordability can monitor consumer affordability metrics in order to ensure that consumers benefit from the office’s efforts to control growth in per capita health care spending.