The effects of a widening wealth gap in the United States are magnified in the Black Community because of the persistence of institutional racism, resulting in constricted labor market opportunities for African Americans. Black communities suffer from the broad impacts of racism, transformed neighborhoods and networks after de-segregation, and rapidly changing demographics in metropolitan areas. While many localities struggle against these forces, few communities engage in campaigns to improve the numbers of jobs and also the quality of jobs held by African Americans. Millions of Black workers toil for low wages, few benefits, little prospects for advancement, and no on-the-job protection. The Black Worker Project at the UC Berkeley Labor Center focuses on job quality issues in the Black community. We are especially concerned with how to support local community organizing with useful tools, including high quality research and leadership training, which can lead to concrete policy solutions that have a real impact on the jobs situation locally and nationally.
This brief summarizes the Great Recession’s impact on public employment and the public sector job losses driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Our analysis points to the importance of focusing on the public sector as policymakers respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
Steven is known to many across California and nationally in the labor movement. He came to the Labor Center in 2001 from Houston, Texas, where he had received his Ph.D. in economics with an emphasis on urban economics from the University of Houston and had been active as an organizer, activist, and professor.
The Labor Center understands that workers are whole human beings whose lives go beyond their workplace and whose work lives are deeply affected by what happens in their communities. When Black people suffer racist attacks in their communities—whether the attacks come in the form of police and extrajudicial violence, or underfunded public education, or exposure to environmental degradation, or mass incarceration—these are workers’ rights issues.
In this report, we present data for the state of California on the union advantage in wages and employer-sponsored health and retirement benefits for women, workers of color, and immigrants.
A new study from UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education (Labor Center) shows that workers in California have higher wages and greater access to benefits when covered by a union contract, and those workers who earn the least in non-union workplaces—women, people of color, and immigrants—gain the most.
Danielle Mahones
Director, Leadership Development Program
