IRLE Year at a Glance 2020/2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Labor Studies at Cal

Professor Ferus-Comelo did an amazing job creating an environment where we can engage in the theoretical and academic writings on the labor movement and learn skills for our future careers... This is honestly the most useful and inspiring class I have taken at Berkeley.

— Fall 2020 Labor Studies student

The Labor Center’s popular Labor Studies courses, taught by Anibel Ferus-Comelo, allow students to hone and apply community-engaged research and organizing skills for social justice while earning academic credit. Last year the courses received two campus honors: “Work, Justice, and the Labor Movement” was awarded a Berkeley Collegium award to narrow the gap between teaching and research, and "Labor Research for Action and Policy" was awarded a Berkeley Changemaker curriculum grant.

Faculty Research Awardees

• Travis Bristol (Education), An Exploration of a Professional Learning Community for Novice Male Teachers of Color
• Sydnee Caldwell (Business & Economics), Examining the effects of automation on the labor market and on individuals’ political beliefs
• Ellora Derenoncourt (Economics & Public Policy), Regenerating Opportunity: Black Suburbanization in the South, 1970-2020
• Supreet Kaur (Economics), High worker turnover and absenteeism: the role of labor supply
• Erin Kerrison (Social Welfare), Tricycles and Trapdoors: A Mixed-Method Study of Overt and Covert Exclusionary Discipline in Preschools
• Jonathan Kolstad (Business and Economics), Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and the process of diagnosis and documentation in medicine
• Claire Montialoux (Public Policy), Racial disparities in Brazil
• G. Cristina Mora (Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies ) & Tianna Paschel (Sociology and African American Studies), The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on California’s ‘Barely Making It’
• Ricardo Perez-Truglia (Business), The Old Boys’ Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap
• Benjamin Schoefer (Economics), Short-Time Work and Unemployment Benefits During COVID-19 / Labor Demand Effects of Financing Constraints and Wage Rigidity
• Sameer Srivastava (Business), What role does the mobility of organizational leaders play in shaping corporate culture?
• Guo Xu (Business and Public Policy), The Economic Costs of Employment Segregation: Evidence from the US Federal Government
• Conrad Miller (Business), Why Are Larger Employers More Racially Diverse?
• Elizabeth Linos (Public Policy), Reducing Case Worker Burnout to Improve Job Seeker Outcomes: A Field Experiment
• Avi Feller (Public Policy), Understanding mechanisms driving long-run impacts of 1990s reforms to the safety net
• Danny Yagan (Economics), The Rise of Pass-Throughs and the Decline in the Labor Share
• Neil Fligstein (Sociology), Tracking the Impact of Domestic Outsourcing on Employment Outcomes in the United States, 1992 to 2017

Minimum Wage and the Public Cost of Low Wages

IRLE research is informing the public debate on raising the federal minimum wage. Recent studies have shown the high public cost of a low minimum wage and the downstream benefits of higher minimum wages, including reductions to racial wage gaps and deaths of despair.

The Labor Center's Ken Jacobs, along with Anna Godøy, formerly of the Center for Wage and Employment Dynamics, authored a review paper for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, finding that public policies that raise family incomes, like the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit, have broad, positive, and long-lasting effects on working families.

In op-eds last year, CPL’s Jesse Rothstein argued that full COVID recovery requires raising the minimum wage; CWED’s Michael Reich outlined how a higher minimum wage would benefit the federal budget; and the Labor Center's Ken Jacobs explained how raising the minimum wage reduces dependency on safety net programs by lifting working families out of poverty.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

• Racial Inequality and Minimum Wages in Frictional Labor Markets (CWED)
• The Downstream Benefits of Higher Incomes and Wages (Labor Center and CWED)
• Effect of a Federal Minimum Wage Increase to $15 by 2025 on the Federal Budget (CWED)
• Are Minimum Wage Effects Greater in Low-Wage Areas? (CWED)
• Teacher Pay Penalty Dips But Persists (CWED)
• Minimum Wages and Health: A Reassessment (CWED)

Deepening Child Care Crisis

The already-strained U.S. early care and education system is collapsing under the pressures of the pandemic, with early childhood educators especially hard hit. The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) continues to provide state and federal policymakers with groundbreaking analysis of workforce trends, including COVID impacts. Building on decades of research, CSCCE experts developed widely circulated policy recommendations for transformational reform to build an effective public early care and education system that secures gender, racial, and economic justice for early educators.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

• The American Rescue Plan: Recommendations for Addressing Early Educator Compensation and Supports
• The Consequences of Invisibility: COVID-19 and the Human Toll on California Early Educators
• California Child Care in Crisis: The Escalating Impacts of COVID-19 as California Reopens

The Future of Work

As technology, the pandemic, and the climate crisis alter the landscape of work, IRLE researchers are looking to shape a better future for U.S. workers.

The Labor Center's Green Economy work highlights a path forward for a nationwide economic recovery that advances high-road principles of economic equity, climate resilience, and job quality.

The pandemic has upended the so-called 'gig economy', with hundreds of thousands of app-based rideshare drivers losing work even as reliance on gig workers to home-deliver necessities to consumers has grown dramatically. CWED and Labor Center researchers continue to evaluate the impact of misclassifying workers as independent contractors, finding that misclassification allows app companies to pay workers less than the minimum wage.

A series of reports from the Labor Center’s Technology and Work Program offer a framework for understanding the broad range of data collection strategies and algorithmic systems currently in use or being developed for the workplace, and a snapshot of how unions leverage their collective bargaining agreements to address technological change. Annette Bernhardt, director of the program, co-authored a memo providing recommendations for federal administrative actions to protect worker rights and promote equity in the use of new workplace technologies.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

• Future of Work in Food Retail (Labor Center)
• Change & Uncertainty, Not Apocalypse: Technological Change & Store-Based Retail (Labor Center)
• Pay, Passengers and Profits: Effects of Employee Status for Ride Share Drivers (CWED)
• The Effects of Proposition 22 on Driver Earnings (CWED and Labor Center)
• Data and Algorithms in the Workplace: An Overview of Current Public Policy Strategies (Labor Center)

Social Safety Net

IRLE researchers provide timely analysis of state and federal safety net programs and policy proposals.

California Policy Lab researchers continued to shed light on barriers that prevent eligible, and often vulnerable, Californians from accessing important safety net programs, including CalFresh, unemployment insurance, and federal stimulus payments.

In the lead up to the U.S. Supreme Court's California v. Texas ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Labor Center researchers published a series of briefs on how a potential ACA repeal could lead to job losses and a drop in the state GDP as well as a reversal in health coverage gains for low-income Californians.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

• California’s Health Coverage Gains under the Affordable Care Act: What’s at Stake in California v. Texas? (Labor Center)
• Why Extended UI Benefits were Turned Off Prematurely for Workers in 33 States (CPL)
• California can’t afford to repeat the Great Recession: State spending is critical to economic recovery (Labor Center)
• Pushed Out by Paperwork: Why Eligible Californians Leave CalFresh (CPL)
• High Utilizers of Multiple Systems in Sonoma County (CPL)

COVID Impacts in California and Beyond

IRLE's long track record of empirical inequality and public policy evaluation left our experts well-positioned to provide rapid analysis on how existing inequities shaped workers' experience of the unfolding COVID-19 crisis and what is needed to rebuild a just economy in the wake of the pandemic. IRLE researchers having been providing policymakers and the public with essential insights into the inequitable health and labor market impacts of COVID-19 across industries and demographics, as well as strategies to protect the state's most vulnerable workers.

Analyzing the full range of occupations in California, Labor Center researchers found that workplace social distancing not an option for most California workers, with risk of exposure varying depending on gender, race/ethnicity, and wages.

Researchers at the California Policy Lab continued to provide policymakers with timely snapshots of the pandemic's impact on workers in California and throughout the country using data from the California Employment Development Department and the US Department of Labor.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

• Physical Proximity to Others in California’s Workplaces: Occupational Estimates and Demographic and Job Characteristics (Labor Center)
• Economic and Health Benefits of a PPE Stockpile (Labor Center)
• The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Workers in California: An Overview of Research to Date (Labor Center)
• Fast-Food Industry and COVID-19 in L.A. (Labor Center)
• California Unemployment Insurance Claims During the COVID-19 Pandemic (California Policy Lab)
• Daily Effect of COVID-19 on Hourly Workers at Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (California Policy Lab)