Many people just want to get through 2020, but labor organizer Jane McAlevey believes we can set our sights higher than simply surviving.
California’s Assembly Bill 5 went into effect in January. The law stops companies from misclassifying their employees as independent contractors. As California grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, the new law has illustrated how critical workplace protections are — particularly for those who are misclassified and treated like independent businesses when they are, in fact, employees.
“Right at the same moment that workers are facing greater risk, they are being asked to take cuts. It’s not surprising that you would see a pretty big reaction,” said Ken Jacobs, chair of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley.
Many workers who will benefit from the wage hikes have continued working through the perils of the pandemic, including retail and grocery workers, as well as those in elder care, according to Ken Jacobs of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
A report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, which has been vocal in its belief that drivers should be employees, said that Uber and Lyft would have had to pay $413 million into the state unemployment insurance fund from 2014 to 2019 if their drivers had been employees.
Monica’s story holds true for thousands of other families across California for whom a union job has been the main path to the middle class. These stories demonstrate just how important unions have been for increasing economic mobility.
