RELEASE: Pandemic-Related Trends in Warehouse Technology Adoption
A predicted boom in warehouse automation did not materialize, according to this new report.
“California is the first and only place where employees are getting critical info about their data, UC Berkeley Labor Center Director Annette Bernhardt told the board during public comment ahead of the vote, and recent amendments threaten to deprive workers of agency over algorithmic tools.”
“Intense monitoring can push warehouse workers to the point of injury, biased hiring algorithms can shut women and workers of color out of opportunity, and gig platform workers can end up making below the minimum wage,” said Annette Bernhardt.
Why did fewer people retire last year? One likely explanation is people who would’ve retired in 2023 instead took early retirement during the height of the pandemic, said Nari Rhee.
Veritas, the largest landlord in San Francisco, has defaulted on another loan and is losing 23 apartment buildings. Our practitioner in residence Brad Hirn discusses Veritas, the Union-At-Home ordinance, and ongoing tenant organizing.
Many of Sonoma County’s hiring challenges and strategies are echoed in the findings of a report published last month by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Retirement in the U.S. is a patchwork system with “a really big gaping hole” for self-employed people such as Kropp, who never worked for a large employer that offered 401(k) matching contributions, said Nari Rhee.
Higher wages will increase expenses for some fast-food chains, but “they don’t have to raise prices,” Lopezlira said. “They’re making lots of revenue” — profits of 6% or more for Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and nearly 10% for McDonald’s.
A 2023 study from the University of California Berkeley Labor Center found the majority of unionized oil workers laid off from a refinery in Northern California in 2020 were able to find new work — mostly in the petroleum industry — after the facility suddenly shuttered, but took pay cuts amounting to nearly a quarter of their previous salaries. Only 43 percent of their new jobs were unionized.
The recent upsurge in organizing is worth celebrating, but workers can’t afford to rest.
A 2018 study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center defined low-wage workers as those earning less than two-thirds of the median full-time wage in California. About 32% of California’s workers, some 4.9 million, earned less than $14.35 an hour in 2017.
“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.
Ken Jacobs said, “The preponderance of academic 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.”
“I think we know that health care is unaffordable, but to see how much that problem has gotten worse in 20 years is really something,” said Miranda Dietz, a policy research specialist at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and co-author of the report. “The costs are taking up more and more of a family’s budget.”
Ken Jacobs and others discuss the new California Fast Food Workers Union, a “minority union” of SEIU that cannot yet collectively bargain but that will have unique opportunities to implement change through the California fast-food council.
A recently published study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center found that costs like deductibles are becoming more common. In 2002, 33% of private sector workers enrolled in coverage through their job had a deductible. By 2022, 77% of workers did.
“Raising the health care minimum wage to $25 an hour would help reduce these working families’ need to rely on safety net programs, thereby reducing state Medi-Cal spending as many affected workers become eligible for federally subsidized insurance through Covered California,” Laurel Lucia.
Sara Hinkley said that changing degree requirements is “one small part” of the solution to the civil service vacancies problem in California.
Lucia said intertwined concerns about the cost of SB 525 and the state budget deficit drove Newsom to request a collaborative revision of the law. However, she added that the UC Berkeley Labor Center’s cost estimate for SB 525 is far lower than the circulating estimates, falling in the range of several hundred million dollars rather than billions of dollars.
“It is likely we’ll see a continued push for both more sectoral labor standards … as well as the use of labor standards boards in certain industries, where the structure of the industry makes traditional collective bargaining more difficult,” said Ken Jacobs.
A study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center shows that there are 520,000 uninsured Californians — the population that Community Health Ruedaflores says the Community Health Care Program was created for.
A predicted boom in warehouse automation did not materialize, according to this new report.
Monterey County has some of the highest hospital costs in the state. To better understand why health care costs are so high in this Central Coast county, there is an urgent need to collect and analyze data that can help point to causes and solutions to the problem.
A new report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center finds that defined benefit pensions—especially public pensions—are critical to providing adequate retirement income for California seniors, especially for women, Black, and Latino retirees, and those without a four-year college degree.
This report provides the first in-depth look at the labor market for agricultural truck drivers in California and the first study of this workforce anywhere in the U.S. in almost 30 years. It finds that, while there is not a shortage of people interested in truck driving, the industry faces challenges with retaining drivers, with turnover being especially high for long-haul drivers.
A study by the UC Berkeley Labor Center finds that union members are more likely to be women and people of color than 20 years ago.
A new UC Berkeley Labor Center policy brief finds that the state cost of a proposed $25/hr minimum wage for health workers would be offset through reduced safety net spending on those workers and their families.
A new UC Berkeley Labor Center report looking at pre-pandemic data in the San Francisco East Bay area shows that many workers and their families struggled to make ends meet even before COVID hit.
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.
A new Labor Center report looks at the impacts of a proposal to raise the health care minimum wage in California to $25 an hour.
An unprecedented ongoing $13 million allocation will fund five new centers, expand labor studies and occupational health programs across UC
The UC Berkeley Labor Center seeks an Operations Director. Apply now!
We are pleased to welcome labor organizers Jaz Brisack and Brad Hirn to the Labor Center for a year-long residency.
The UC Berkeley Labor Center seeks a Program Coordinator for its Student Engagement Program.
Teachers union leader Alex Caputo-Pearl has begun a year-long practitioner-in-residence appointment at the Labor Center, building on the Leadership Development Program’s partnerships with the NEA, United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), and other educator unions.
One-hundred thirty-four students are participating in internships throughout California in the first UC-wide Labor Summer 2023 program.
An unprecedented ongoing $13 million allocation will fund five new centers, expand labor studies and occupational health programs across UC
We are pleased to welcome labor activists Seema N. Patel and Sam Appel to the Labor Center for a year-long residency.
Meet the 2022-2023 Student Advisory Committee Members
Join us for an in-person event celebrating the release of Saket Soni’s first book about the astonishing story of a group of immigrants entrapped in the largest human trafficking scheme in modern American history.
The Skills to Win Workshop is a six-week series for rank and file members and staff of unions, worker associations, worker centers, and community organizations that are embarking on, or in the midst of, organizing campaigns.
This four-day, in-person workshop is offered to individuals in labor and community-based organizations who are lead organizers and want to strengthen their skills in effectively managing their team.