The rise to a $15 hourly wage has had a “real, measurable effect on workers’ pay in the state,” said Ken Jacobs. Still, “costs have continued to rise.”
Annette Bernhardt, Lisa Kresge, and Reem Suleiman of the UC Berkeley Labor Center argue that companies should be required to reveal “which activities will be monitored, the method of monitoring, the data that will be gathered, the times and places where the monitoring will occur, and the purpose for monitoring and why it is necessary.”
Carol Zabin said she and her team — which included a chemical safety expert — found little difference between the cost of a solar system installed by a firm using certified electricians and a firm not using certified electricians.
A study by UC Berkeley’s Labor Center projected that the added subsidies will enable 135,000 Californians to obtain insurance in 2022, and would cut the costs faced by an additional 1.5 million enrollees — about 150,000 of whom had not qualified for subsidies before because their incomes were above the previous cutoff.
“Is it strong enough to build the momentum to win some part of labor law reform that would allow for greater success in organizing?” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. “That’s the real question.”
“They’re put through a gantlet by employers who make all sorts of threats,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. Growers will sometimes fire organizers, even though that’s illegal; penalties are modest and rarely enforced.
Race is part of the debate over AB 701. Latino and Black employees constitute 66% of warehouse staff, although workers of color account for just 37% of the total U.S. labor force, according to a UC Berkeley study.
“It’s great that the state saw a sixth consecutive month of 100,000-plus job growth. But many workers are still on the sidelines. Employers need to improve the quality of jobs, not just wages.”
“When the labor market does its thing, we produce tremendous wage inequality and tremendous growth in low wage jobs,” said Carol Zabin, who directs the Green Economy Program at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center.
California should be encouraging the creation of blue-collar jobs with good pay and benefits. Residential construction used to be a solid middle-class career, but now the work can pay near-poverty wages.
Converting to a single-payer system would cause enormous upheaval, however, and the Legislature has balked at bills to mandate it. Instead, in 2019 it created the Healthy California for All Commission to study its feasibility. That work is starting to bear fruit.
Latino workers have the highest rate of employment in essential frontline jobs, where there’s a higher risk of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
The country’s three largest grocery providers, Walmart, Kroger and Albertsons, together earned an additional $6.8 billion in profit in the first three quarters of 2020 compared to 2019 — an average increase of 98%. “The industry is doing extraordinarily well in the pandemic,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Latino workers have the highest rate of employment in essential front-line jobs, where there’s a higher risk of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Latino workers have the highest rate of employment in essential front-line jobs where there’s a higher risk of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
The difficulties of midwives in getting vaccinated raise questions about how independent workers in other professions deemed essential will gain early access to the vaccine once more supply is shipped.
For state lawmakers, 2020 “was a year that started out with lots of aspirational plans,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “But it became a year about saving lives.”
Latino workers have the highest rate of employment in essential frontline jobs where there’s a higher risk of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center; 55% of Latinos work in such jobs and 48% of Black residents do as well, compared with 35% for white residents.
Keep in mind, 55% of California’s Latino residents work in essential front-line jobs where there’s a higher risk of coronavirus exposure, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center. That’s the highest such employment rate in the state; Black residents come in second, at 48%, compared with just 35% of white residents.
Latino workers have the highest rate of employment in essential frontline jobs where there’s a higher risk of exposure to the coronavirus, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center; 55% of Latinos work in such jobs and 48% of Black residents do as well, compared to 35% for white residents.
As Ken Jacobs and Michael Reich of the UC Berkeley Labor Center have pointed out, the $15.60 minimum shrinks to only $5.64 when conditions and specifics are factored in.
California receives some $27 billion a year from the federal government to subsidize insurance coverage for low- and moderate-income Californians, an amount roughly equivalent to what the state spends annually on prisons, colleges and universities, according to estimates by the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Reich has a more optimistic view than Uber and Lyft of their ability to transition. He predicts that in California, prices would increase 5% to 10%, while labor costs would go up 25% to 30%.
While every thinking person is rightly worried about the prospect of a third U.S. wave of COVID-19 cases and deaths, one should take a moment to contemplate a pandemic-related disaster in which the first wave is just beginning. That’s the meltdown of state and local government budgets produced by the higher costs of dealing with the crisis combined with the collapse of revenues.
Let’s doff our hats to Uber, Lyft and their fellows in the gig economy. Having created a model of exploiting workers and obnoxiously browbeating local officials to get their way, they have now set a record for spending on a self-interested ballot proposition.
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