California’s revived Industrial Welfare Commission will prioritize those industries that have 10% or more of their workers living in poverty. About 15% of fast-food workers live in poverty, twice the rate of the overall workforce, according to a 2021 study from the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

That’s why labor consultant and author Jane McAlevey recommends that unions today follow the example of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) organizers. In the post-war era, she reports, they better appreciated the fact that former service members had “strategic value” in strike-related PR campaigns, not to mention “experience with discipline, military formation, and overcoming fear and adversity,” all very useful on militant picket-lines.

According to data compiled by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, 80% of the estimated 145,000 skilled nursing facility workers in California (as of 2019) are women, and 72% are people of color. More than half, about 80,000, earn less than $20 an hour.

Why has the higher wages movement exploded in California? How might the fight for higher minimum wages impact the 2022 mid-terms? And what’s next for the movement?