Recent ile items

The Hidden Public Costs of Low-Wage Jobs in California

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

California’s new economy is fostering far more growth among high- and low-wage jobs compared to middle-income jobs. The development of the hourglass economy means that there is a growing number of low-wage workers who cannot support their families even if they work full-time. As a consequence, they must turn to public assistance to meet the basic needs of their families. This study by Carol Zabin, Arindrajit Dube, and Ken Jacobs is the first to quantify how much it costs the public to provide what paychecks don’t. In California, two million working families received public assistance in 2002. The price tag for this assistance was $10 billion per year, with most support going to families with full-time workers who earned near the minimum wage.

The authors analyzed the ten largest means-tested public assistance programs that Californians participate in: Medi-Cal, the Earned Income Tax Credit, CalWORKs, Food Stamps, Free or Reduced Price Lunch, Women, Infants, and Children...

Recent Developments in California Labor Relations

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

In recent years, California has seen a number of high-profile work stoppages such as an extended dispute in Southern California supermarkets. Despite this, the state does not seem more dispute-prone than other states when California’s unionization rate is taken into account. About half of California’s unionized workers are in the public sector, where recent pay settlements seem to reflect the state’s fiscal crisis. In the private sector, NLRB charges tend to reflect California’s industrial composition and areas where organizing activity is occurring, such as building services. A special sample of state union contracts suggests that they have relatively long durations, often years or more. Only 13% have escalator clauses reflecting the relative low and stable inflation rate of recent years. Close to a third have two-tier pay provisions.

California unions generally opposed the 2003 recall of Governor Gray Davis. When Davis was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, however,...

Paid Family Leave in California: New Research Findings

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Ruth Milkman and Eileen Appelbaum examine one of California’s most important recent legislative initiatives: the paid family leave law that was passed in 2002 and took effect in mid-2004. California is the first state in the nation to provide paid family leave to its workers. The authors review the developments leading to the establishment of this new program, which builds on California’s longstanding State Disability Insurance system. The paid leave program covers virtually all private sector workers (unlike the federal Family and Medical Leave Act which is restricted to relatively large employers), and thus should in principle provide universal coverage. The authors use data from two surveys: the Golden Bear Omnibus survey, which investigated public attitudes about paid leave, public awareness of the state’s new paid family leave law, employees’ previous experience with family and medical leave, and employees’ expectations about future needs for leave; and the Survey of California...

Immigration, Union Density, and Brown-Collar Wage Penalties

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Previous research focusing on the impact of immigration on native-born workers demonstrates that workers experience wage penalties when they are employed in local occupations with a large share of immigrants. Does unionization mediate such pay penalties? Lisa Catanzarite utilizes the 2000 5% Census Public Use Microdata Sample in conjunction with pooled unionization data from the 1998-2002 Current Population Surveys to investigate the impact of union density on pay penalties in brown-collar occupations (with overrepresentations of recent-immigrant Latinos). The results indicate that unionization, particularly in the private sector, significantly eases the downward pressure on wages in brown-collar fields for both native workers and earlier-immigrant Latinos, net of individual and occupational characteristics. The analyses focus on the greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Areas (California’s primary immigrant destinations) and also use data on immigrant-receiving Consolidated...

About the Contributors

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

List of contributors for the 2004 volume of The State of California Labor, an annual publication of the UC Institute for Labor and Employment.

Preface and Acknowledgments

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Ruth Milkman summarizes the contents of the 2004 issue of The State of California Labor, an annual publication of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment.

Upgrading California's Home Care Workforce: The Impact of Political Action and Unionization

Mon, 22 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Candace Howes examines the recent history of one of California’s rapidly growing occupations: home care. As the author’s analysis demonstrates, home care has been extensively transformed in recent years through large-scale unionization and coalition-based political action, which have led to major improvements in wages and benefits. Apart from providing many home care workers with better pay, the upgrading of this occupation has also improved the quality of care that clients receive, since higher wages make for lower turnover. The improved working and living conditions that result benefit caregivers and those they serve alike. The author’s empirical analysis has obvious ramifications for low-wage employment generally, particularly in the burgeoning health care and personal services sector.

California Union Membership: A Turn-of-the-Century Portrait

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This analysis of California union membership draws on data from the 2001–02 California Union Census (CUC), a new survey of local unions conducted by the Institute for Labor and Employment, as well as selected data from the Current Population Survey. The focus is the recent divergence of California from the United States as a whole: while union density has continued its long decline nationwide, in California it has increased over the past few years. This divergence reflects not only the ways in which labor’s political strength in the state has facilitated recruiting new union members but also California’s distinctive labor history. The relatively large share of union membership held by the Service Employees (SEIU) in California yielded disproportionate growth for the state’s labor movement in the 1990s, as this union became the nation’s single most rapidly growing labor organization. The authors also examine variation in union membership by industry, region, and across key...

Innovations in State and Local Labor Legislation: Neutrality Laws and Labor Peace Agreements in California

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The effective stalemate over national labor law reform that began in the 1970s has prompted employer groups and organized labor to increasingly shift their attentions to legislation at the state and local levels. Unions and their allies have sought to enact, for example, laws that limit the use of public money for pro- and anti-union activities, laws providing card check recognition for certain groups of employees, and responsible contactor legislation. The author examines two of these types of laws: neutrality laws at the state level and labor peace agreements at the local level. In September 2000 California became the first state in the nation to enact a “state neutrality” law with effective enforcement mechanisms. Assembly Bill 1889 prohibits employers from using state money, received in the form of grants, loans, contracts or reimbursements, to promote or deter unionization. The author describes the background to the law, its provisions and impact, and employers’ legal...

Recent Developments in California Labor Relations

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

California’s state budget crisis and soft economy have conditioned its labor relations climate. Roughly half of union workers are in the public sector and so are affected by fiscal distress. Neither employers nor economic forecasters expect a robust economic recovery in the state in the near term. A number of union-supported bills were enacted under Governor Gray Davis, including a new paid family leave program, a hike in unemployment insurance benefits, and a mandated mediation process for union-represented farm workers. Nevertheless, state social programs have come under stress. The California Compensation Insurance Fund, which provides workers’ compensation insurance for employers unable to buy it elsewhere, is having financial problems. Lack of job-based health insurance for many low-wage workers has revived legislative interest in alternative proposals for universal coverage. Because of the budget squeeze, threats of layoffs and demands for pay freezes have marked labor...

Preface and Acknowledgments

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The author summarizes the contents of the 2003 issue of The State of California Labor, an annual publication of the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment.

Unequal Opportunity: Student Access to the University of California

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The University of California (UC) is a pathway into many of the most coveted jobs in the California economy, and the promise that all Californians will have the equal opportunity to acquire a UC education is a core part of California’s social contract. The authors describe UC’s admissions policy and explore inequalities in the access that California secondary schools provide to UC. Their measure of access is the rate of admission, or the percentage of a school’s graduates admitted to UC, circa 1999. By merging data provided by UC with data provided by the California Department of Education, the authors are able to examine the rates of admission to UC from most of the individual high schools in the state. They explore inequalities associated with the race and socioeconomic status of the student bodies of these schools.

The authors find that a small number of privileged schools provide disproportionate access to UC. The average UC admissions rate for nonsectarian private...

Immigrant Employment and Mobility Opportunities in California

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The 1990s were a period of record immigration to California and the United States, with both legal and unauthorized immigrants arriving in the country and state, a trend that will likely continue in the twenty-first century. Many observers have been concerned that a bimodal pattern of immigrant education, with many immigrants either being poorly or very well educated, overlaps too closely with the increasingly polarized distribution of job growth in the country. The authors’ analysis of changing employment patterns and the shifting distribution of bad and good jobs in the 1994–2000 economic boom suggests, however, that immigration is not fundamentally driving the emergence of a polarized job structure in either California or the United States. That structure derives largely from changes among the native born, suggesting that shifts in labor demand explain the pattern, rather than increases in the supply of less-skilled and highly skilled immigrant workers. Immigrants in California,...

Living Wage Ordinances in California

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Living wage mandates legislate minimum hourly wages that are considerably higher than minimum wage rates. Since 1994 living wage ordinances have been passed and, in varying degrees, implemented in over ninety-five local governmental entities in the United States; among them are twenty-one California cities. The author presents a summary of the living wage ordinances in California, including their wage mandate levels and their coverage. He discusses how the minimum wage and the federal poverty standard have failed to keep up with increased living costs, especially in California’s cities, and reviews arguments for and against living wage policies. The author also surveys older academic studies on minimum wage and living wages and then discusses a new generation of research studies on the impacts of living wages. This new set of studies, which includes detailed analyses of Los Angeles and San Francisco, provides a more careful and complete understanding than was previously available....

The State of Organizing in California: Challenges and Possibilities

Fri, 13 Feb 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The authors assess the status of recent organizing efforts in California and examine the challenges that must be overcome if California unions are going to significantly increase union density in the state. Through their analysis of a combination of national and state data on employment, union membership, workforce and union demographics, and public and private sector union organizing activity, they find that unions in California have been more successful than unions in other states in increasing union membership and density in both the private and public sectors. In particular, the California labor movement has made significant strides in organizing immigrant workers, especially in health care and other services. Still, when placed in the context of employment growth, the authors find that organizing gains in California continue to be relatively modest and have been concentrated in a limited number of occupations and industries. Using their findings from a national survey...

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