There is a burnout factor of employees in hospitals and schools facing the hazards of the pandemic propelling decreased health and education employment, according to Enrique Lopezlira, who directs the low-wage work program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

In 2017, California occupations with high rates of low-wage work ranged from “service jobs (such as food preparation workers, home care workers, and janitors), as well as jobs in the goods-producing sector (such as farm workers and warehouse workers),” according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, joined Capitol Weekly’s John Howard and Tim Foster to chat about a number of labor issues, including the ongoing uproar over at SEIU 1000 following the election of outsider candidate Richard Louis Brown; the latest fallout from Proposition 22; and The PRO Act: what is it, and how will it impact California workers if passed?

According to the Labor Center study, Proposition 22 only requires payment for time spent on the way to a customer or with a customer in the car. This means that all the time that drivers have to spend driving home or have to wait between orders is left unpaid for. Additionally, the $0.30 per mile payment was decidedly lower than the amount needed to cover the costs of driving and maintaining a car.

An analysis by the UC Berkeley Labor Center released in May indicated that had AB 5 been in place between 2014 and 2019, Uber and Lyft would have paid $413 million just in unemployment insurance.