The University of California Board of Regents was expected to devise a plan to eliminate University hiring restrictions for undocumented UC students by November, but that didn’t happen.
Labor Center 2023 Practitioner in Residence Sam Appel is urgently looking at how the transition to a sustainable and green economy can be anchored in equity for workers and communities in California.
In a groundbreaking move, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 800 into law on September 30, an initiative that equips high school students with the knowledge to safeguard their workplace rights and defend against potential abuses.
The challenges facing undocumented students at UC Berkeley, like Diana Ortiz Aguilar, extend beyond academic pursuits, impacting their financial security as well. She hopes the UC Regents will take action soon to ease that burden.
Monterey County has some of the highest hospital costs in the state, and working families are struggling to pay their health care bills. To better understand why health care costs are so high in this Central Coast county, there is an urgent need to collect and analyze data that can help point to causes and solutions to the problem.
The Labor Center sat down with Seema Patel to ask more about the work she is passionate about, what she’s been working on during her residence, and what “movement lawyering” really means.
Union membership today is different than a generation ago. It’s not your grandfather’s union anymore.
Young workers on college campuses around the country are supporting unionization at levels not seen in decades. Labor organizers speculate several factors are leading to this historic cascade of strikes and drives for union recognition.
In April, the Biden Administration announced a proposed rule that would allow an estimated 40,000 uninsured DACA recipients in California access to subsidized health coverage through Covered California. This fills an important gap in health coverage options, but it renders access to Covered California contingent on DACA status—which itself is at risk of being overturned by the courts.
Undergraduates spend spring break learning firsthand about Bay Area labor history during the 2023 Solidarity Spring at UC Berkeley.
Despite being applauded for their essential role and dedication during the COVID pandemic, many low-wage health care workers struggle to make ends meet. A recent UC Berkeley Labor Center Study study looks at what a proposal before the California State Legislature to raise the health care minimum wage to $25 an hour would mean for workers, patients, and industry.
This blog post outlines the assistance offered by the recently-established Child Care Providers United California Workers Health Care Fund, summarizes recent findings from a David Binder Research/ California Health Care Foundation survey that underscore the need for this new health care investment for family child care providers, and discusses how the program will improve affordability for providers and benefit California as a whole.
Berkeley Blog post. Employers are increasingly using digital technologies to hire, manage, and monitor workers, largely without any regulation. But on January 1, California took a first step towards worker data rights when new amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect and covered workers at large businesses.
A 1987 report from the federal Office of Technology Assessment recognized the potential for employers to misuse and abuse new technologies resulting in adverse effects for workers, but recommended a “wait and see” approach due to lack of data to justify regulation. This blog post reviews decades of research since publication of the report that finds electronic performance monitoring (EPM) systems do increase worker stress and cause other harms.
Labor Center research was used in a years-long campaign by health and immigrant advocates to bring health coverage to undocumented Californians.
The California Legislature has passed AB257 and it now heads to the Governor’s desk. The FAST Recovery Act provides a way for the state’s fast-food workers to have a voice in the development and implementation of labor standards in their industry.
After decades of inaction and failed attempts, the U.S. has finally passed federal legislation addressing climate change. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is groundbreaking not only in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also in how it demonstrates that we don’t have to choose between good jobs and action on the climate. By including strong labor standards in incentives for clean energy and energy efficiency work, the IRA will help build a high-road green economy, creating good jobs and clear pathways into them.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) currently being considered by Congress would improve health care affordability for many Californians by addressing high and rising drug prices and by extending the improved premium affordability assistance to Covered California enrollees that began in 2021. The extension of federal premium assistance would also unlock additional state-financed affordability help to reduce how much Covered California enrollees pay out-of-pocket when they access care.
This blog post highlights some of the findings from our just-released update to our chartbook “California’s labor market in the times of COVID-19,” which explores labor market trends in California over the past two historic years.
In this blog we will use the Low-Wage Data Explorer to dispel some myths about the one-in-three workers in California who are paid low wages.
