Posts tagged California Labor Federation
How California reached the unthinkable: A union deal with tech giants
September 15, 2025 // In roughly six weeks, three California Democrats, a labor head and two ride-hailing leaders managed to pull off what would have been unthinkable just one year prior: striking a deal between labor unions and their longtime foes, tech giants Uber and Lyft. California lawmakers announced the agreement in late August, paving a path for ride-hailing drivers to unionize as labor wanted, in exchange for the state drastically reducing expensive insurance coverage mandates protested by the companies. It earned rare public support from Gov. Gavin Newsom and received final approval from state lawmakers this week.
Dozens of UC Workers, Labor Leaders Arrested While Protesting Understaffing, Unfair Wages
May 20, 2025 // Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the California Labor Federation, and Teresa Romero, the national president of United Farm Workers, joined about 20 union-backed UC workers who were zip-tied and removed from the William J. Rutter Center at UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus just after 9:30 a.m.
Op-ed: California Legislature should drop latest attack on gig workers
April 21, 2025 // “The bill’s utter lack of detail is a problem,” William Messenger told us; he’s vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which defends workers’ right not to be controlled by unions. “It’s almost like they’re giving that department the authority to just sort of make up its own labor law.” He contrasted that with Massachusetts, whose voters last November passed Question 3, which enacts gig driver rules, but runs to 33 pages and, among other things, details a hearing and appeals process.
Business groups sue over California’s new ban on captive audience meetings
January 4, 2025 // The law violates these protections by "discriminating against employers’ viewpoints on political matters, regulating the content of employers’ communications with their employees, and by chilling and prohibiting employer speech," the lawsuit said. Employers "have the right to communicate with their employees about the employers’ viewpoints on politics, unionization, and other labor issues."
How California’s nonprofits got dragged into a fight between unions and local governments
June 19, 2024 // It was the latest salvo in a big-money lobbying fight between labor unions and local governments over the hiring of private contractors that perform services for the state’s 4,800 counties, cities, special districts and schools. Local governments rely on contractors to perform a wide range of services paid with taxpayer funds. Contractors run animal shelters and after-school programs. They provide health care in local jails as well as homeless, legal aid and immigration services. Contractors cut fire breaks around rural communities, perform engineering services for public works projects, build affordable housing and fix government computer systems.
Biden Takes a Destructive California Idea National
February 4, 2024 // The Biden administration appears undeterred by the lessons of recent history. The California law unleashed chaos in the state’s politics and courts. Politicians delegated to union leaders the power to hand out exemptions to politically favored groups. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, dentists, podiatrists — almost anybody with an advanced degree was exempt. When newspapers editorialized against the new law — noting that they rely on freelance photographers, reporters, editors, designers, and delivery people — they, too, were excluded from the new regulations. Suddenly free from the dead hand of state regulators, the newspapers turned as one and editorialized in favor of the new law. A federal judge said the process was shot through with “corruption,” “backroom dealing,” “pure spite,” and “naked favoritism.” But more important, A.B. 5 crushed tens of thousands of California business owners — those who operate as independent contractors as well as those who employ or otherwise rely on them. Now Biden and Su plan to bring the crazy to every American state.
Newsom vetoes bill to expand worker layoff protections to contract labor
October 10, 2023 // The bill would have extended the WARN-required notice period of impending layoffs, closure or relocation — which applies to companies of a certain size — to 75 days from 60 days. For the rules to apply to employees of labor contractors, they would have been required to work at least six of the 12 months and at least 60 hours preceding the date on which a mass layoff notice is required. Employees of a labor contractor completing a temporary project with a defined end date would have been exempt. Newsom also questioned the bill’s expansion of the kinds of companies that would be subject to the WARN Act to include chain businesses, even when such layoffs might be geographically far apart and unrelated.
After years of setbacks, California legislative workers win the right to unionize
October 9, 2023 // Several factors gave supporters hope this year. Chief among them was the Legislature’s leftward shift after the 2022 midterm election, which brought in a fresh class of diverse, progressive and labor-friendly Democrats. McKinnor amassed 42 co-authors from both chambers, including Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and Senator Dave Cortese (D-Santa Clara), chair of the Senate labor committee. Last month, California lawmakers in both chambers approved AB 1 by more than a two-thirds majority. Many of the Democrats champion unions and labor issues, a point of contention among some staffers who argued the members should play by the same rules as the rest of California’s employers.
Labor forged Laphonza Butler. Could unions ‘sling-shot’ her Senate bid?
October 9, 2023 // Already, the primary field is crowded with the three labor-friendly Democrats, whose policy takes on worker issues are barely different from one another. “We have an embarrassment of riches here,” Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, leader of the California Labor Federation, said at its May candidate forum. Butler, however, would be the only candidate to have lived and breathed union organizing. The longtime political consultant served as the president of both the SEIU California State Council — the political coordination arm of the union — and SEIU Local 2015.
California Public School Students Will Learn About Labor Rights Under First-of-Its-Kind Law
October 4, 2023 // Under A.B. 800, all public high schools in California will hold "Workplace Readiness Week" as part of their curriculum. Students will gain a "strong understanding of their rights as workers, as well as their explicit rights as employed minors" and learn about their right to join or organize a union in their workplace.