Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Dismantling Disparity: Breaking Barriers to Employment explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the systemic discrimination Black workers have long faced. From March to December of 2020, 84% of the Black labor force in California filed for unemployment. Institutionalized racism leads to Black people being overrepresented in incarcerated and homeless populations and at risk for a number of health and educational disparities. These factors create economic insecurity and barriers to employment that are difficult to overcome without strategic support.The California Workforce Development Board’s (CWDB) Breaking Barriers to Employment Initiative aims to create grant programs that ensure that individuals are equipped with skills training and educational services that will reduce barriers to employment. Authors note the need for state and federal funding allocated to workforce development prioritize addressing the barriers that impact many Black workers.

The High Road to Economic Prosperity offers a macro analysis of the California Workforce Development Board’s (CWDB) High Road Training Partnership (HRTP) initiative. The report defines the HRTP model and evaluates the successes and challenges of adopting the high road approach, including recommendations on how to strengthen the HRTP framework and model as the initiative expands. The report finds that HRTPs offer a more inclusive definition of industry leadership and build collective power. HRTPs bring together employers, labor, and community actors to look at their industries from a bird’s eye view and use their collective expertise to find mutually beneficial industry solutions. This values-based approach prioritizes underlying systemic issues like racial inequality. HRTPs move beyond diversity initiatives by identifying racial inequalities and creating tailored workforce development interventions, including sustainable long term policies that can be widely adopted to address the needs of disadvantaged communities. The initiative offers an innovative model for public programs that are responsive to change. HRTPs are continuously experimenting, learning, and refining their interventions, which allows them to respond to external shifts, such as economic downturns and climate change, in real time and work toward solutions that meet the needs of firms, workers, and communities. The HRTP approach advances a shift in measuring workforce development success. Traditional workforce development metrics often measure success by the number — not quality — of job placements. HRTPs also associate success with promoting worker voice and power, systems change, culture shifts, and other qualitatively measured indicators of high road success.

The County of Los Angeles faces an extraordinary task in the coming weeks as it attempts to reduce its record COVID-19 rates while fostering a beleaguered economy. Health officials observe that workplaces throughout LA County are focal points of transmission, as enforcement of public health orders has lagged in a climate of desperation and fear. Lack of access to information and inadequate reporting mechanisms for public health order violations, particularly LA County’s detailed, industry-specific “Reopening Safer at Work and in the Community” (County Health Order) jeopardize public health and economic recovery. Meanwhile, the County’s Department of Public Health (DPH) lacks sufficient investigators to pose a credible threat of a compliance check at the county’s 244,000 businesses.

This report examines the costs and benefits of an innovative LA County proposal to recruit frontline workers in the fight against COVID-19 transmission. The proposal requires businesses to permit employees to form public safety councils who meet with management to plan and troubleshoot compliance and report regularly to the DPH. Workers who participate would be free from retaliation. The DPH in turn would designate organizations to convene, train, and assist public health councils to spot and report violations.

Young workers are vital to the future of California, the fifth-largest economy in the world. Workers between the ages of 18 and 29 make up a quarter of all employees in the state. Young fast food and retail workers played a critical role in California’s organizing campaign to increase the minimum wage to $15, which will raise low-wage workers’ lifetime earnings by over 20% and could increase their retirement incomes by roughly half. Young Californians represent an influential force in shaping current public debates around the future of work, student debt, access to safe, quality schools, immigration reform, and affordable housing.

Despite the 2018 Supreme Court decision Janus vs. AFSCME, which attempted to weaken public sector unions’ efforts to organize workers, raise wages, and provide sick pay, a recent Gallup Poll indicated that 66% of people aged 18-34 approve of labor unions, and millennials are responsible for the gains in current union representation. Ultimately, young workers are at the heart of California’s success; they are taxpayers, voters, parents, decision makers, consumers, and contributors to the social and cultural vibrancy and well-being of the state.

Yet, young people continue to face higher unemployment rates compared to older workers, as well as wage stagnation— even with a college education. Moreover, the quality of jobs that young people are able to secure has also declined, even though educational attainment has more than doubled for these workers over the last four decades. Young workers, however, still occupy predominantly low-wage jobs and frontline positions, such as cashiers in retail stores or servers in fast food establishments. As the cost of living, housing, and education increase, and median household incomes decrease, young workers face a crisis: higher education and quality career pathways become increasingly unattainable. According to the Pew Research Center, Americans now owe over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, and nationally, 1 in 3 young people have student loan debt. Young workers are disproportionately impacted by labor market swings such as higher unemployment during a recession or less access to quality jobs during an economic boom.

More than a century ago, before there was a national legislative consensus around paying workers a fair day’s wage, California took the lead to establish minimum wage and working conditions for workers. Since then, the state has remained a national standard bearer, enacting laws that help workers recover stolen wages, access paid leave from work, and enforce safe and humane working conditions.

However, these rights fail to deliver economic security to working Californians unless accompanied by strong enforcement mechanisms. Workers lose an estimated $15 billion in minimum wage violations alone every year — far more than retailers lose to shoplifting. In just three cities, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, workers lose an estimated $56.4 million per week to wage theft violations when employers fail to pay minimum wage and overtime or provide meal and rest breaks.

In addition, with the rapid expansion of forced arbitration by employers, workers’ ability to pursue justice in court through class-action lawsuits has been severely undercut. Two-thirds of non-union workers in California have already lost the right to sue, and the number is projected to grow.5 In this context, it is critical that the state has adequate capacity to investigate, prosecute, and monitor employers who skirt the law.

Fortunately, when California enacted the Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) in 2003, the state established an innovative model for enforcing workplace rights — a model that other states are now considering. The Private Attorneys General Act allows workers to bring a representative action in the name of the state and recover civil penalties for violations of the California Labor Code, even if they’ve signed a forced arbitration agreement. These cases also allow the state to collect millions of dollars in penalties from lawbreaking employers who would otherwise profit from exploiting workers. As this report details, in 2019, the state collected over $88 million in PAGA penalties.

Through new data supplied by California’s Labor & Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), as well as assessments of practitioners, this brief explores PAGA’s impact on California’s workforce. While some employer-backed lobby groups have articulated strong concerns about PAGA, we find no evidence of a negative effect on the economy or a flood of frivolous litigation. Instead, PAGA has boosted the economy by helping California workers, especially those workers most vulnerable to workplace exploitation, fight wage theft. PAGA has demonstrably enhanced Labor Code compliance among employers, built enforcement capacity among state agencies, and ensured that violations of the law have a meaningful remedy

Undocumented students face a multitude of barriers when pursuing highereducation. This report examines what universities can do to promote theeducational equity of undocumented students. We focus on the Universityof California system, nine undergraduate educational institutions thathave supportive institutional policies and are located in a state that offersaccess to in-state tuition and state-funded financial aid. Drawing on focusgroups and interviews with 214 undocumented University of Californiaundergraduate students and an original survey with 508 respondents, weoutline how these educational institutions have successfully closed someresource gaps by creating undocumented student programs. We thenexplore four persisting barriers: financial need, academic distraction, mentalhealth, and limited postgraduate preparation. We end by outlining policyrecommendations.

Workers and residents in Ontario are not benefiting as much as they could from the city’s economic development projects. Ontario’s politicians have overlooked the community building potential of economic development projects found in other California cities where politicians have engaged residents in negotiations to incorporate community benefit agreements (CBAs) or project labor agreements (PLAs) into public agreements with developers. The model CBAs and PLAs in other California cities that we review show how they involve community stakeholders in on-going monitoring and oversight of the completion and implementation of the economic development project. Here we contrast these “best practices” for economic development as well as Measure JJJ in Los Angeles City with the 2015 operating agreement between the City of Ontario and QVC, Inc., an on-line and shopping channel retailer, regarding its distribution center located in Ontario. That agreement establishes Ontario as the “point of sale” (or location of sale) for QVC goods stored in its Ontario distribution center, allowing the city to collect sales tax revenue when consumers purchase those items. In exchange, the City has agreed to return to QVC an astounding 55% of total sales tax revenue collected, up to $500 million and 60% thereafter, in addition to 60% of sales taxes on QVC’s purchases of goods and equipment. The political process also lacked transparency and inclusivity, which limited the ability of local community stakeholders to be involved in crafting the agreement. This operating agreement is an example of just how little local officials expect from developers and retailers. We argue that this “low road” approach to economic development contributes to the city’s high level of poverty, keeps the city’s tax base low, and fails to capitalize on civic engagement to improve the quality of life for workers and residents.

In 2013, the California Legislature passed and Governor Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 241 which established a bill of rights for domestic workers in the state of California. The enactment of Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (DWBOR) in California is part of the general diffusion of these policies across states. The report surveys DWBORs in U.S. states and Western European countries. Based on a review of the enforcement mechanisms in DWBOR legislation, the report concludes enforcement is vexed because it depends on low-waged workers themselves to initiate complaints without any guarantee of speedy redress and the risk of retaliation against workers. Since the enforcement mechanisms reflect structures of antagonism between domestic workers and their employers, civil organizations and state agencies play an important role in ensuring worker complaints are properly expedited and adjudicated in accordance with state labor standards.

Brazil is currently suffering economic stagnation and a political crisis. The economic growth that buoyed Brazil through most of the 2000s has stalled, and the ruling Workers’ Party, which through three presidential terms led Brazil toward relatively worker- and union-friendly policies, is under fierce political attack. These circumstances make it an apt time to evaluate the challenges currently faced by workers and their unions in Brazil. This Brief undertakes that evaluation by placing the current situation in a longer historical context.

In this brief, I review the impact of wage inequality on total income inequality and how the liberalizing reform of industrial relations is an important driver of economic inequality in the United States. The purpose of the brief is to renew the discussion on how the nature of work explains the rise of income inequality in the United States. At the center of this discussion is the role of occupational polarization in exacerbating income inequality amongst workers. Despite a growing interest in the proliferation of "good" and "bad" jobs, decision-makers are less concerned with developing labor policies aimed at mitigating wage differences within and between sectors. Accordingly, I suggest contemporary labor movements and progressive policy-makers need to advocate for alternative reform measures in reshaping the industrial relations system in the United States. The goal of these alternative reform measures is to mitigate wage inequality through building strategic partnerships between organized labor, employers, and state agencies in key economic sectors and establishing general national frameworks for negotiating collective agreements.