The UC Berkeley Labor Center studied one High Road program developed in collaboration with major health-care providers and the statewide health-care workers’ union. It found that workers who came through the program were 40 percent more likely to get promoted, with an average wage increase of 36 percent.
A California oil refinery shut down during the pandemic. A year later, former employees were not all right.
Groups of impassioned but inexperienced activists can often struggle to do little beyond merely existing. Achieving power in the U.S. requires more than angry individuals, Jane McAlevey told me; it needs “a well-built organization that can actually channel people’s rage effectively.”
The Prop 22 episode reveals the tectonic shift undergone by American liberalism—and the Democratic Party—since the 1980s.
The benefits of a $15 minimum would greatly outweigh the costs.
To help folks stand on their own two feet, the government can’t just make people work. It has to make work pay. The cost of low wages is too high for the country’s working families. And it’s too high for Uncle Sam as well.
