California is leading the Labor Movement

By Fabrizio Sasso
Executive Director, Sacramento CLC

Hotel workers. Actors. Baristas, delivery drivers and nursing home workers. Could there be any greater proof that California is the epicenter of the American Labor Movement than this summer of good trouble?

Across the state workers are standing up for themselves, their communities and our collective futures.

Enough with the rhetoric that people don’t want to work. People don’t want to be exploited in their work, and they are making their rightful anger heard.

In Los Angeles, multiple unions across industries have taken to the picket lines. First, it was hotel workers. Then SAG-AFTRA went on strike, bringing Hollywood to a halt. Hospitality and entertainment, the lifeblood of Los Angeles and so much of California, shut down.

While it may seem on the surface that these two unions must be fighting for different things, it quickly became clear that their concerns were the same: Workers can no longer afford to live where they work.

The same is true here in Sacramento, where state workers with SEIU 1000 are attempting to negotiate a new contract, though CalHR has failed to face the truth—paychecks are not meeting our costs of living. It is a sad reality that some SEIU members—working full-time at the jobs that keep California running—cannot afford food and instead frequent food banks. State workers like Norma Murillo, a Staff Services Analyst for the Department of Justice, resort to filling their fridges with the help of the Salvation Army. The UC Berkeley Labor Center did a study that found that more than two-thirds of SEIU 1000 state workers do not earn enough to support themselves and a child on their own. Let that sink in—the state of California is paying wages so low that a single parent can’t live off of them while working full time.

It’s the fundamental problem with employment today. Workers everywhere are scraping by as the costs of survival continue to increase. We all feel it when we go through the checkout stand in the grocery store (the line with the human clerk) and when we write the check for our ever-increasing rents. Home prices continue to be out of reach for most young workers, and older workers can’t afford the costs of healthcare, never mind retirement.

Income inequality defines us right now, and unions have once again risen to be the vital counterbalance to American greed. As frustrated as many of us are, I am also deeply proud to see the Labor movement invigorated and standing in solidarity. These are the moments that unions were created for.

In Los Angeles, actors went on the strike line with hotel workers to show support. With more strikes looming—most urgently the potential strike by Teamsters against UPS—that solidarity is more important than ever.

It is absolutely, irrefutably true that our strength cannot be overcome when we stand together—as union members and as sisters, brothers and siblings in the fight for justice, whatever that justice may be.

Here in Sacramento, we are exploring the ways we can fight the root causes of that underlying inequity. How do we create not just more housing, but fair housing? How do we ensure that one accident doesn’t bankrupt a union worker? How do we use our strength and our resources to grow our power and our community?

But we are also focused on the fight. This Labor Council stands with workers everywhere as we battle not just for better jobs, but better lives.

What we win today will change the future for the next generation.

And we will win, because that’s what happens when Labor fights.