|
Issues and Legislation
Times are bleak for California’s working families. We’re losing 50,000 jobs a month, spiking California’s unemployment to a post-World War II record. For those who still have a job, wages have failed to keep up with the cost of living. Budget cuts, furloughs, and foreclosures have unhinged our state’s once stable middle class. Food banks and shelters now overflow with families who can no longer make ends meet. Our social safety net has shredded and no longer supports the most vulnerable among us.
The perfect storm of job loss, slashed wages, massive cuts in state spending and skyrocketing health care costs threatens to drown any chance of an economic recovery. In construction, our members are seeing unemployment rates of up to 30 percent. Tens of thousands of school employees have lost their jobs. State workers are suffering from a 15 percent wage cut due to furloughs and are working without a contract. Public and private sector workers are being paid less to do more, facing additional layoffs, wage and benefit reductions and the constant fear of losing their jobs. The only way for California to emerge from this deep, dark recession is to invest in the creation of good jobs with decent pay and benefits.
Labor's 2010 Legislative Agenda focuses on attracting good jobs to the state, putting Californians to work, repairing the state safety net, promoting corporate transparency and accountability, protecting workers rights and implementing a Middle Class Bill of Rights. Read the complete 2010 Legislative Agenda.
Green Jobs
As Californians seek products and services that will minimize their impact on the environment, green businesses are arising to meet consumers’ demand for everything from solar panels to environmentally certified building materials. Demand is also being created by state and local legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32.
Ensuring Paid Sick Days For All Workers
No worker should have to choose between going to work sick or staying home to take care of themselves or a loved one, but that is the choice facing millions of workers in California who do not have the ability to take a day off when they or someone in their family is ill.
2010 Budget Revision
California is in an economic crisis. Unemployment, home foreclosures and bankruptcies have skyrocketed. Yet Governor Schwarzenegger chose to cause even more misery in the May Revision to the 2010-11 budget. Program spending reductions make up two-thirds of the solutions proposed by the Governor. This budget cuts state programs, agencies and services to the bone, yet the three corporate tax breaks from the 2008 and 2009 budget remain untouched.
Help For Jobless Workers Losing UI Benefits
The State of California and partner organizations provide a wide range of services to help people who have exhausted, or may soon exhaust, their unemployment insurance. Unemployed individuals may be eligible for assistance to meet basic needs as well as other services such as health care, counseling, employment and training assistance.
Economic Recovery
Labor's five-point Economic Recovery Agenda focuses on creating jobs through infrastructure projects, investing in workforce training, enacting a Middle-Class Bill of Rights, repairing the state safety net and developing and implementing a sustainable economic vision.
Employee Free Choice Act
With our economy in shambles, it’s more important than ever for workers to bargain collectively for a better life. The Employee Free Choice Act would finally restore workers' freedom to form and join unions free from employer harassment and intimidation.
Middle Class Bill of Rights
Even though we are paying out fair share in taxes, working families are getting less in return and bearing the brunt of the state’s drastic budget cuts. The Middle Class Bill of Rights clearly defines our demands as the people of this state to protect and promote responsible stewardship of our public dollars so that we can return California to a first-class place to live, work and raise a family.