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California Workers' Rights: A Manual of Job Rights, Protections and Remedies

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Coral del Mar Murphy-Marcos

New ways for organizers to lead

At the latest Labor Center Lead Organizer Training 19 organizers strengthened their organizing skills and learned to cultivate new leaders within their organizations. The frontline leaders from teacher, grocery, and flight attendant unions, and Black, Latino, and Filipino worker centers, among others, learned to adapt different leadership approaches to different circumstances.

Sara Hinkley

California’s public sector staffing crisis

Until the state can make much-needed improvements to its property and commercial tax structure, officials will continue to propose drastic service cuts. Eliminating or freezing vacant positions in state and local budget processes may be a convenient way to cut expenses, but without substantive staffing analysis the impact of leaving those positions empty could pose a severe burden on existing staff, Californians, and the economy.

Annette Bernhardtand Sara Hinkley

What Workers and Unions Stand to Gain from Recent Executive Orders on Artificial Intelligence

We outline core principles for how government action on AI can benefit public and private sector workers, and comment on how two recent executive orders reflect those principles. Our goal is to help inform the significant work that lies ahead for federal, state, and local governments in their efforts to model responsible use of AI.

Lisa Kresge

Negotiating Workers’ Rights at the Frontier of Digital Workplace Technologies in 2023

Workers and their unions took center stage in 2023 by negotiating landmark agreements that address emerging workplace technologies. Alongside establishing fundamental rights regarding the adoption of new technologies, unions negotiated protective measures for workers, provisions ensuring workers share in the benefits of these advancements, and even reined in certain technological applications. Here’s a closer look at some of the major technology bargaining agreements reached this year.

Miranda Dietz, Srikanth Kadiyalaand Laurel Lucia

Extending Covered California subsidies to DACA recipients would fill coverage gap for 40,000 Californians

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.

Laurel Lucia

Many California family child care providers will now be better able to afford health care

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.

Lisa Kresgeand MT Snyder

35 Years Under Electronic Monitoring and Still Waiting for Worker Rights

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.