This cycle, Democrats are hammering him for supporting Trump’s budget cuts that impacted healthcare programs, a critical issue since roughly two-thirds of the population in his district is covered by Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in the state, the most of any district in California, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

The UC Berkeley Labor Center anticipates 70,000 people in Santa Clara County could lose coverage in 2027.

In a region with more than one hundred years of manufacturing history, the Green Empowerment Zone established a board with more than 40 members from labor unions, state policy groups, Congressional offices, workforce boards, environmental justice organizations and others to plan for an energy transition that grows good jobs in the renewable sector.

“This is one of the key concerns, especially for nurses,” Khan said, noting a worry that algorithms are taking over decision-making. With increasing remote monitoring of patients and automated handoffs, “health care workers are really concerned about what this is doing to the quality of in-person care and their connection with their patients.”

Security staffing is a labor-intensive business with thin margins and high turnover and federal projections point to roughly 157,000 openings a year, most of them replacements rather than new positions. That is precisely the kind of industry where automation could deliver meaningful cost savings at scale.

An October 8, 2026 report from the UC Berkeley Labor Center and partner groups describes digital systems that measure performance, assign work and schedules, and inform decisions about pay, discipline and termination; it also cites research finding that 41% of workers received no communication from their employer about workplace data collection or AI use.

“Digital technology has been used for decades to increase extraction of labor from workers and degrade working conditions,” said Mishal Khan. “Even if they don’t lose a single job to AI, it doesn’t mean there are no harms to workers.”

A 2018 report from the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center estimated that autonomous trucking could eventually eliminate up to 294,000 long-haul driving jobs nationwide. The report also suggested that some drivers could shift into shorter routes, transporting trailers between local destinations and autonomous truck hubs.

The number of Californians without insurance may potentially double to almost 15% by 2030, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

The researchers describe how digital monitoring can increase pressure on employees, shape workplace decisions and leave workers unsure about what information their employers collect or how they use it.

More than 2 million Californians under age 65 could lose health coverage over the next four years as a result of the state and federal policy changes, according to recent estimates by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

“Workers are increasingly part of that movement, speaking up about the fear of job loss and the dehumanizing experience of being surveilled and controlled by an algorithm,” said Annette Bernhardt, senior tech policy adviser at UC Berkeley Labor Center.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around” for expensive healthcare, said Miranda Dietz, director of the Health Care Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. But hospital costs make up the largest share of premium spending – about 40 cents of every premium dollar.

“It’s important for workers to have a stronger voice, because they are the front line,” said Enrique Lopezlira, who directs the low-wage work program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “The more confidence they have in their ability to speak up without fear of losing their job or hours, then the safety and security of the Oakland airport improves. And that’s a benefit for everybody.”

The UC Berkeley Labor Center, which has extensively researched this topic, puts the current number of low-wage workers in the state at 5.7 million — nearly 35% of all of California’s workers.

An analysis by the UC Berkeley Labor Center and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research projects that by 2030, 4.6 million Californians under the age of 65 will not have health insurance, an increase of 2.2 million uninsured people, doubling the state’s current uninsured rate.

Supporters of the tax cite research from the UC Berkeley Labor Center, which reported in 2019 that every dollar spent in early care and education generates as much as $1.88 in increased economic activity.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Labor Center describe a broader move across the industry in which chains treat their locations as dispersed mini-warehouses, shifting labor away from the sales floor and toward back-room picking, packing, and processing returns.

According to research from UC Berkeley cited by the union, more than two thirds of Bay Area security guards qualify as low wage workers, earning a median of around $20 an hour, less than half what a typical worker in the region makes.

Median pay for security workers in California remains around $20 per hour, according to an analysis by the UC Berkeley Labor Center. While median pay for security officers is higher in the Bay Area—closer to $24 per hour—that’s still significantly lower than the median wage for all workers in the region, which crosses $42 per hour.