According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, 5.6 million California workers were paid less than $19.69 per hour in 2022.

Ken Jacobs suggested the labor-action surge goes back even further, pointed to huge teachers’ strikes in the southern U.S. in 2018 as its start. A subsequent strike that year by thousands of Marriott hotel workers added impetus to the movement, Jacobs said.

Ken Jacobs, who chairs the UC Berkeley Labor Center, said trucking associations should have readied their drivers for AB 5 after years of court wrangling indicated that their legal claims would not stand.

The rise in scams comes as one in three Californian seniors already lack the money to meet their basic needs, according to UC Berkeley’s Labor Center.

Sara Hinkley, of the UC Berkeley Labor Center, contended Thursday there’s no clear evidence that taxes or any other single factor drives business decisions to locate somewhere or move.

“Employers can give wage increases, but they can also take them away — so this puts in a floor for that,” Lopezlira said.

“I do think that we are starting to see a crisis,” said Nari Rhee, director of the Retirement Security Program at UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education, “in terms of seniors not being able to stay in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.”

Enrique Lopezlira, director of the low-wage work program at the Labor Center, discusses how the so-called “labor shortage” isn’t quite a shortage.

In the chaotic early weeks of the pandemic, health officers from six Bay Area counties took a bold step to slow the spread of the virus. They directed millions of residents to stay home in what amounted to the nation’s first — and at the time strictest — shelter-in-place order. But those first orders held a critical flaw: They didn’t include clear strategies to protect essential workers whose jobs made it impossible for them to stay home. In California, 55 percent of Latinos work in those front-line essential jobs, according to an analysis from the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center.

A world-class university needs to represent the interests of all the people of California, including the vast majority of its residents who are working people. On this Labor Day 2009, we should ensure that labor research and education will be maintained and expanded to serve the needs of California and our economic recovery.

Despite Janus court challenge, funded by Koch brothers and right-wing groups, labor may yet come out stronger.

Much of the automation-driven jobs losses that basic income seeks to remedy may still be decades, if not generations away. In the meantime, it’s important to remember that work will remain the primary source of income for workers and families now and for the foreseeable future. Good jobs still matter.