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California Workers' Rights: A Manual of Job Rights, Protections and Remedies

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Factsheet: Workforce Standards for an Equitable Economy

California’s economy is growing, but millions of workers are being left behind. The state can do more to ensure every Californian has access to a family-sustaining career by incorporating workforce standards into public spending and regulations. This factsheet describes workforce standards and how policymakers can apply them in this critical moment for climate and infrastructure spending.

Sam Appeland Jessie HF Hammerling

California’s Climate Investments and High Road Workforce Standards: Gaps and Opportunities for Advancing Workforce Equity

This report presents a current snapshot of the state’s progress in implementing several of the strategies outlined in our 2020 report A Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030. Specifically, we review existing high road standard policies in California, and assess the reach of high road standards across the state’s proposed climate investments in California’s 2022-23 state budget.

Virginia Parksand Ian Baran

Fossil fuel layoff: The economic and employment effects of a refinery closure on workers in the Bay Area

On October 30, 2020, the Marathon oil refinery in Contra Costa County, California, was permanently shut down and 345 unionized workers laid off. The findings in this report focus on these workers’ post-layoff job search, employment status, wages, and financial security. The Marathon refinery’s closure sheds light on the employment and economic impacts of climate change policies and a shrinking fossil fuel industry on fossil fuel workers in the region and more broadly.

RELEASE: Fossil fuel layoff: The economic and employment effects of a refinery closure on workers in the Bay Area

A new report from the University of California Berkeley Labor Center released Wednesday documents the difficult post-layoff job search and working conditions of hundreds of California fossil fuel workers in the aftermath of the 2020 closure of the Marathon Martinez oil refinery in Contra Costa County, providing an illuminating case study of the perils and needs of workers in the nation’s changing energy landscape.

Jessie HF Hammerling

The Inflation Reduction Act Charts a Path that is Pro-Climate and Pro-Worker

After decades of inaction and failed attempts, the U.S. has finally passed federal legislation addressing climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is groundbreaking not only in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also in how it demonstrates that we don’t have to choose between good jobs and action on the climate. By including strong labor standards in incentives for clean energy and energy efficiency work, the IRA will help build a high-road green economy, creating good jobs and clear pathways into them.

California Workforce Development Board

RELEASE: Putting California on the High Road: A Jobs and Climate Action Plan for 2030

With the pandemic-induced economic downturn and uncertainty hurting Californians across the state – and with the fires a reminder of the urgent need for climate action – the California Workforce Development Board (CWDB) today submitted a new report to the Legislature highlighting a path forward for an economic recovery that advances the Administration’s high road principles of economic equity, climate resilience, and job quality.

Robert Collier, Sanderson Hull, Oluwafemi Sawyerr, Shenshen Li, Manohar Mogadali, Dan Mullenand Arne Olson

California Offshore Wind: Workforce Impacts and Grid Integration

Our study addresses two separate but complementary questions for California in the years and decades ahead: 1) what benefits would the emergence of a major offshore wind power sector create for California workers and communities, and what policies might optimize these impacts; and 2) would offshore wind power be a competitive source of renewable energy in comparison to other clean energy sources?

Carol Zabin, Kevin Duncanand Erica Paul

Proposition 39 Job Creation & Quality, 2014-2018: A Report to the Citizens Oversight Board of the California Clean Energy Jobs Act

2019 Update: This update to the February 2017 jobs report estimates job creation based on K-12 clean energy projects that have been approved by the California Energy Commission (CEC) from the start of the program through the final approved energy expenditures at the end of June 2018.

Doug Bloch

Freight drivers deserve better than a race to the bottom

Third in the Guest Blogger Series: Voices of Labor and Allies from Labor in the Climate Transition Conference. “Freight and delivery companies are finding ways to pass on the responsibility of cleaning up fleets to individual drivers, while minimizing their own investments. This is what corporations do when we don’t have policies that protect workers or incentivize companies to do the right thing.”