Angie Wei is the legislative director for the California Labor Federation. She also serves as chair of the
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Labor's Edge Articles by Angie Wei
6/14/10
A Deal is Never a Deal With Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
by Angie Wei
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is holding a gun to the heads of over 300,000 California state employees. He’s salivating at the opportunity to drop state employee pay to federal minimum wage if a budget isn’t enacted by July 31st. He’s also announced that he won’t sign a budget unless it includes worker concessions on their pensions.
That’s right. The federal minimum wage at $7.25 an hour, 75 cents below CA’s $8 an hour minimum wage. Sacramento’s economy would come to its knees. Local restaurants, car repair, grocery stores, landlords, banks, would all lose revenue as a result.
6/7/10
Labor’s Legislative Update: June 2010
by Angie Wei
With an important legislative deadline passed, Labor’s sponsored bills continued on their path to enactment. Overall, our bills easily garnered the support they needed to pass on majority votes. But with two senators (Oropeza and Wiggins) out with illness, several bills died at the hand of moderate Democrats. Their return late in the session helped squeeze out key bills with just 21 votes, the bare majority needed in the 40-member Senate. Click here for a quick breakdown of our bills.
5/26/10
Assembly Democrats Put Up a Budget Worth Fighting For
by Angie Wei
Finally, there’s a budget proposal worth fighting for, and it couldn’t have come at a more critical time.
On Tuesday, Assembly Democrats, led by new Speaker of the Assembly John Pérez, proposed an innovative budget plan that closes the nearly $18 billion budget gap while focusing on jobs, as an alternative to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s job killing, all-cuts budget.
This proposal takes the economic high road by saving hundreds of thousands of jobs for teachers, police, firefighters and other workers, and creating jobs in the private sector that will spur economic growth and new revenues for the state without raising taxes on working families.
4/5/10
What’s Wrong With California’s Economic Development Plan?
by Angie Wei
If a business wants to contact someone in state government to bring jobs to California, where would they start? The answer is a lot more complicated than you might think. The Trade and Commerce Agency used to be the de facto point of entry for employers to state government, but it was dismantled in 2003, and now there are over 100 separate economic development plans among more than a dozen state government agencies.
This disaster known as California’s economic development plan is what inspired the California Labor Federation to sponsor SB 1259 (DeSaulnier) which would create a cabinet-level Office of Economic Development and Job Creation to streamline and focus the state’s economic development activities.
3/31/10
Ten Facts You Should Know About California’s Unemployment Insurance Program
by Angie Wei
California's unemployment insurance program is our state’s frontline defense for our state’s economic recovery. Every day, Claifornia's Employment Development Department (EDD) pays out, on average, $80 million in unemployment insurance checks, and over 1.4 million laid off Californians depend on these UI benefits to get by.
With unemployment at 12.5%, EDD’s infrastructure is falling apart. Laid off workers must call dozens of times before they can get through on the phone lines. No one at EDD”s one-stop offices can help with unemployment insurance claims. And despite the high need for services, the Governor has failed to appoint a leader to the EDD.