PERB, the Public Employment Relations Board, turns 50 this year! Join us September 19 for a half-day conference celebrating public workers, their unions, and PERB!
A report from the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, including research from the UC Berkeley Labor Center. This edition of the “State of the Unions” report offers readers insight into how California unions are faring in the face of an unfriendly federal administration, a militarized deportation campaign, and a continuing cost-of-living crisis.
This Roosevelt Institute report identifies 15 policy changes that could put the US on a trajectory to a high-road, resilient clean energy economy. These include specific incentives, regulations, technical assistance, clarifying existing statutes, and improving coordination both within and beyond government. Underpinning all is attention to building the high-road advantage the US will need to succeed, and supporting broad distribution of the gains it delivers.
Social Security isn’t just a “safety net” for the elderly; it is California’s economic bedrock. In 2024, the program injected almost $138 billion into our state—more than the gross domestic product of California’s computer and electronics manufacturing sector, and more than double the economic output of the motion picture and television industry and agriculture.
SSRC’s Just Tech program. What does it mean to have a “human-in-the-loop”? Including examples from the 2026 legislative session, in this piece published by SSRC’s Just Tech Platform, senior researcher Mishal Khan dives into the many different HITL provisions being proposed in legislatures across the country today, highlighting their impacts on workers.
Enrique Lopezlira appeared on KQED Forum to discuss our new report finding security guards face a high risk of injury and death on the job and are more likely to be underpaid and undertrained for the work they’re expected to do in stores and hospitals, schools, and office buildings.
“This is an essential workforce that’s being asked to do more and more,” said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the UC Berkeley Center’s Low-Wage Work Program. “Yet the pay, training and other labor standards of the job have not kept up.”
Researchers Annette Bernhardt and Lisa Kresge wrote in the report that ADS technology, which commonly employs AI, can be used in workplaces to give workers directions about their job tasks, predict workers’ future behavior and rank workers.
Should Becerra cruise to victory in November, as polling suggests, he will face what may be the steepest decline in health insurance coverage in a generation, one that will land especially hard in his home state.
Updated August 17, 2026 with new Medi-Cal and Covered California enrollment maps by district and county. Labor Center researchers have analyzed the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts on California and the importance of the Medi-Cal program to our state.
Join the UC Berkeley Labor Center this Fall! Find out more about the labor movement and social justice work by attending our panel discussions, free film screenings, partner event talks, and more.
Join us for a screening of the short film Partners: How Starbucks Baristas Started a Labor Revolution, followed by a dynamic panel and Q&A with labor organizers and workers in the coffee and retail industries—including those in the film!
