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New York Times

California’s Statewide Minimum Wage Is Now $16 an Hour

“Our minimum-wage laws are still lower than what workers need to really get by,” Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center, told me. “These higher minimum wages have made a real difference in workers’ lives, but I think one of the reasons you’re now seeing a push for taking those wage levels higher is to address the increased cost of living in California.”

New York Times

Tech Fears Are Showing Up on Picket Lines

“If technologies are not developed with the user in mind, they often fail,” said Lisa Kresge, a research and policy associate at the University of California Berkeley Labor Center, who has written about union responses to technology.

New York Times

‘Most Pro-Union President’ Runs Into Doubts in Labor Ranks

Strikes with strong backing from union membership “are the only way to win standard-setting contracts, and winning standard-setting contracts is the only way to rebuild the labor movement,” said Jane McAlevey, a scholar and longtime organizer. Her coming book, “Rules to Win By: Power and Participation in Union Negotiations,” documents the importance of aggressive labor actions in improving pay and working conditions.

New York Times

Amazon Workers Who Won a Union Their Way Open Labor Leaders’ Eyes

Ms. McAlevey also questioned an approach she called “mobilization,” in which the union takes on an employer primarily through the efforts of a professional staff, consultants and a cadre of activists rather than a large group of rank-and-file workers. “The staffers see themselves, not ordinary people, as the key agents of change,” she wrote.

New York Times

Does the Amazon Union Win Portend a Comeback for Organized Labor?

Professional union strategists, such as Jane McAlevey, often argue that successful union campaigns require visits to workers’ homes so that conversations can be had without employer supervision. They also stress the need to persuade a supermajority of workers — typically 70 percent or more — to sign authorization cards, which often function as a preliminary statement of interest in union membership before an official election.

New York Times

Why Do British Uber Drivers Deserve Better Benefits?

When the pandemic settled in, many drivers realized they had no safety net, as rides slowed to a trickle and they were made to appeal to the federal or state government for unemployment benefits, funds that gig companies don’t pay into. (By one estimate, Uber and Lyft saved more than $400 million in California alone over a five-year period by eschewing the payments.)

New York Times

What Happened in California Is a Cautionary Tale for Us All

A study by three research groups at the University of California at Berkeley found that Uber and Lyft drivers would be guaranteed only an estimated $5.64 per hour. This no doubt would have surprised 40 percent of those in a survey of early voters who said they had supported Proposition 22 to ensure workers earned livable wages.

New York Times

Customers Still Like to Shop in Person, Even if They Get Only to the Curb

A recent report by the Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and the nonprofit Working Partnerships USA predicted that workers would come under new pressure as stores began to resemble Amazon warehouses, and noted that “stock clerks’ jobs seem destined for more radical change than any of the other major retail job categories.”