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Introduction
Low-wage industries in the United States have seen dramatic shifts in labor and employment that have
only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Amid eroding workplace standards,
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the “fissuring” of
the workplace,
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decades-long union decline,
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and occupational segregation, low-wage workers now face
unprecedented workplace challenges. Many of them––farmworkers, restaurant staff, warehouse
stockers, supermarket cashiers—have come to be known in the mainstream as “essential” workers. In
times of crisis, these workers come to the rescue. They are integral to our lives but are often trapped in
industries where they are dismissed as “unskilled” and undervalued for their contributions. This is an issue
of both racial and economic injustice: Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and undocumented
workers are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage industries where labor law violations are
disturbingly commonplace.
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The public workforce development system, which traditionally seeks to
“prepare people for employment, help workers advance in their careers, and ensure a skilled workforce,”
is key to providing communities with opportunities for socioeconomic mobility.
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However, the public workforce development system has failed to make good on its promise. Workforce
development programs have struggled to reach and meaningfully serve our state’s most marginalized job
seekers and workers. In fact, through its exclusionary policies and p
ractices, this system has played a
direct role in creating inequity and systemically limiting economic opportunities for all. Consider the
federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the largest federal workforce development
legislation responsible for funding state and local workforce programs. While WIOA provides critical
employment support for BIPOC communities, its reach is limited: in 2019, there were approximately
296,000 unemployed working-age Californians with no education beyond high school; for the 2018-19
program year, WIOA Title I programs (which directly provide job training services and connect job seekers
with employers) only reached approximately 74,400 adults and dislocated workers.
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For Black
participants, WIOA’s failures have particularly devastating implications for their earnings: for the same
program year, the median earnings of Black participants were $5,911, which lagged far behind their white
counterparts ($6,998).
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To add, WIOA’s onerous metrics requirements reward providers for favoring
clients who are more likely to be placed in jobs over those who face additional barriers to employment, a
New Directions in Racial and Economic Justice:
How California’s Worker Centers Are Bringing
Worker Power into Workforce Development
February 2022
Kevin L. Lee, Magaly Lopez, and Ana Luz Gonzalez-Vasquez
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practice known as creaming. For example, a provider may be incentivized to reject immigrant job seekers
whose first language is not English because the provider lacks the necessary resources to accommodate
their language needs.
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Because of selection biases created by creaming, racialized disparities are likely
larger than currently observed in WIOA participant data. Absent explicit efforts to uncover and redress
these persistent inequities in the system, BIPOC communities will continue to be excluded from vital
workforce development services.
The security of California’s economic future depends on a stable, empowered, and economically resilient
workforce. If workforce development is to be part of this vision, the status quo must change. Worker
centers––community-based organizations created by and for BIPOC and immigrant job seekers and
workers in low-wage industries––provide a powerful, comprehensive alternative to the status quo of
workforce development: an approach aligned with the key goals of leadership development, movement
building, and systemic change.
Drawing on preliminary data from a study of worker centers in California, we present a case for
considering these organizations as invaluable actors in the state’s public workforce development system.
While they share much in common with other traditional actors such as community colleges, American
Job Centers, labor unions, and adult learning centers, worker centers are unique in that their approach to
workforce development is (1) community and worker centered, (2) industry responsive, and (3) systems
oriented.
At their core, the structural roots of worker centers lie in socioeconomic inequality. From there, they
combine the strategies of workforce development, community organizing, strategic labor law
enforcement, and policy advocacy to harness worker power—the collective power of low-wage workers
and BIPOC communities—in an attempt to break down the systemic barriers to economic prosperity. Our
preliminary evidence suggests that the public workforce development system can benefit from this
approach to meaningfully serve the most disadvantaged communities, to improve industries with the
most degraded labor conditions, and to work across systems (e.g., the criminal justice system, the
immigration system) to transform in ways that promote the economic well-being of all Californians.
What is a worker center?
Although they have been in existence since the 1920s, worker centers exploded in growth nationwide in
the early 2000s to support and address the needs of low-wage workers and immigrants by changing
industry practices. In its early stages, worker centers provided a space where primarily undocumented
day laborers, domestic workers, and other workers in low-wage, non-union industries (such as the
restaurant and garment industries) could formally connect with employers and establish clear terms of
employment, helping to prevent workplace exploitation. Over the past two decades, these organizations
have become more professional, developing advanced systems of organization and organizing and quickly
proving to be an influential force in advancing racial equity and economic justice by raising labor standards
in low-wage industries.
Throughout their history, worker centers have maintained at least two distinctive features. First, they are
established and driven by the initiative of low-wage workers. Second, members create spaces in which
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they advocate on their own behalf. They address the systemic injustices that disproportionately affect
low-wage BIPOC workers, their families, and the broader community.
Worker centers represent a diverse set of community-based organizations seeking to advance racial and
economic justice through a range of activities. They are not homogeneous, monolithic entities. Each
worker center may look different from the next, as each serves different populations, operates in
different industries, engages in different activities, and even adopts different approaches to the same
activities. Some of these activities are outlined below.
Table 1. Examples of Worker Center Activities
Activity
Description
Worker voice and
leadership development
Transform members into leaders who recognize themselves as industry
experts and changemakers through formal governance structures, popular
education methods, and innovative programs, such as workplace
organizing training, Know Your Rights training, train-the-trainer program
models, community navigator roles, and formal worker committees to
drive organizational decision-making, direct the advocacy agenda, lead
community organizing efforts, design programs, etc.
Labor market
intermediation
Create job allocation systems (e.g., software, apps, data management
systems) to match quality workers with employers meeting minimum
workplace standards, such as minimum wage rates and occupational
safety requirements.
Supportive services
Develop partnerships with other human service providers (e.g., healthcare
clinics, housing, immigration attorneys) to secure additional supportive
services necessary to remove barriers to employment.
Skills development and
recognition
Develop collaborations and partnerships with other education and training
providers (e.g., universities, community colleges, nonprofit training
providers, public school districts) to provide members with job training
opportunities; develop mechanisms (e.g., certificates) through which low-
wage worker skills are recognized.
Civic engagement
Promote worker engagement in volunteerism, community service, voter
education programming, canvassing, voter registration drives, etc.
Collaborate with other worker centers to anchor citywide and regional
civic engagement initiatives to share information, network, and promote
political mobilization.
Community organizing
and advocacy
Transform communities by launching campaigns and building coalitions
that address a range of systemic injustices impacting low-income BIPOC
communities (e.g., housing, immigration, employment), thereby creating
more pathways to fuller social, economic, and political participation.
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Labor standards
enforcement
Create mechanisms of accountability for low-road employers by gathering
information on workplace conditions and leveraging long-standing
relationships with BIPOC communities to identify and address incidences
of workplace abuses, including wage theft, scheduling instability,
harassment, retaliation, and hazardous and unsafe workplace conditions.
Raising labor standards
Engage in worker organizing, policy advocacy, workforce development,
worker cooperative entrepreneurship, occupational safety and health
training, and other strategies to contest substandard working conditions
and expand economic opportunity.
Worker centers in California
In California, worker centers have a storied past. Some are among the most established, highly networked,
well funded, and professional in the nation. By building working-class coalitions across race/ethnicity and
immigration status, they have been credited with strengthening the immigrant labor effort and helping to
revitalize the broader labor movement.
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Currently, California’s worker center ecosystem is thriving, with
35 such organizations operating in low-wage industries statewide.
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Low-wage workers in California are disproportionately foreign born (40 percent), women (53 percent),
and overwhelmingly BIPOC (74 percent).
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This means that in California, workers with specific
demographic characteristics (namely, along the axes of race, gender, and immigration status) are directed
toward jobs with low wages, high incidences of wage theft, heightened scheduling instability, high
exposure to workplace safety hazards, limited worker voice, and countless other poor working
conditions.
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Particularly affected are low-wage workers with multiple and/or intersecting identities (e.g.,
woman, immigrant, undocumented, Latinx, Pilipinx, Black, queer, transgender), which poses additional
disadvantages by creating further obstacles to long-term success in the labor market. Worker centers
operate across industries and boundaries in order to reach our state’s most marginalized workers.
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What makes a worker center’s approach to workforce
development unique?
Community and Worker Centered
Started by workers, for workers, worker centers have built deep, long-standing relationships of trust with
low-income communities of color and immigrant communities because they center worker expertise and
leadership development from the ground up. This enables them to connect with BIPOC and
undocumented workers and communities hardest hit by economic exclusion who may not otherwise be
reached by unions, labor standards enforcement agencies, and workforce development providers.
With their roots in community organizing, worker centers see both employment and supportive services
as integral to community building. Central to this approach is the continuous investment in strong
relationships with members. Anyone who walks through the door of one of these organizations is received
by a member of their own community who will focus on learning more about them and their most urgent
needs. Often this starts by addressing the basic needs of housing, physical and mental health, language,
immigration, and transportation, prior to providing employment support or addressing issues at the
workplace (e.g., wage theft, safety issues, discrimination).
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Worker centers often incorporate principles from “popular education,” a community-oriented and
community-guided approach to education that is grounded in everyday people’s own experiences to raise
consciousness about racial and economic injustice, and provides useful tools and support as they become
an integral part of broader social and political transformations. Local residents become members of a
broader community who exercise a degree of ownership over the worker center, support one another in
learning, and collectively access resources and engage in organizing. Above all, they have the desire to
engage in changing the system. Some members are job seekers who want to connect with employers
while setting their terms of employment. Others are workers who wish to build workplace solidarity and
community power to transform low-wage industries. Still others are community residents––often spouses
and children of job seekers and workers––who wish to participate in community-centered organizing and
movement-building practices to advance immigrant rights, labor rights, and racial and economic justice.
These organizations recognize that low-wage workers have skills and expertise, and that their knowledge
is often devalued at their workplaces and by society at large. The strong, supportive relationships with
and between members help foster dignity and confidence among all. Members are encouraged to make
decisions on behalf of the worker center, including those that impact organizational structure, strategic
direction, and policy and systemic change. Participants in committees that develop and implement
programs such as train-the-trainer models often gain enough industry expertise to become program
instructors. Building confidence is critical in encouraging members to engage in organizing activities and
to self-advocate in the workplace as well as within their own communities, at city hall, in state houses,
and beyond.
As worker center staff and members learn to navigate the system and local bureaucracies (e.g., wage theft
documentation, citizenship applications, immigration law), they become de facto community anchors,
able to broker connections and locate resources that may be beneficial to them. Further, they can
organize to make changes to the system that advance racial and economic justice. In doing so, members
provide increasingly valuable assistance to their peers while growing as leaders in the workplace and the
community.
Highlights of the worker center approach to workforce development
Worker centers take a community- and worker-centered approach that combines workforce
development with popular education, leadership development, community organizing, and advocacy
to provide support for the most under-resourced populations, and to pursue long-term improvements
in low-wage industry labor standards and the community overall.
This involves the following:
● Moving beyond skills “deficits” of individual job seekers and instead focusing on community
knowledge and linguistic and cultural expertise, cultivating leadership, confidence, social
relationships, and worker solidarity as part of broader organizing strategies to raise labor and
workplace standards
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● Removing barriers to long-term employment retention by connecting members with relevant
services, checking in with them regularly, and sometimes personally accompanying them to
provide emotional and practical support
● Customizing workforce development programs (i.e., job training, career services) to address
issues and needs raised by members at the workplace and beyond (housing, healthcare,
immigration, transportation, etc.) by providing language assistance and translation services,
scheduling programs around members’ work schedules, determining which skills and industries
to focus on, and using organizational partnerships to tap into a range of supportive services,
among other adjustments
● Adopting train-the-trainer program models to give members ample opportunities to hone their
leadership capabilities and improve their industry expertise, allowing participants to become
instructors
The LABWC: Fostering a Black Community of Industry Leaders and Experts
The Los Angeles Black Worker Center (LABWC) advances racial justice through creating high-quality
employment pathways for Black workers using policy tools such as Project Labor Agreements (PLA),
which establish clear conditions for high-quality employment practices. In 2012, the LABWC––as part
of a community-based coalition––successfully advocated for provisions in a five-year PLA with Los
Angeles County’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The PLA required that 30 percent of jobs must
be located in high-unemployment zip codes, that 10 percent of jobs must be provided to disadvantaged
workers, and that an apprenticeship program must be developed targeting select local residents for
high-wage construction jobs.
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The LABWC’s flagship workforce development program, Ready 2 Work, exclusively serves Black job
seekers and workers and sets new standards for the use of racial justice in workforce development
programs. It has been historically focused on unionized jobs in commercial construction but is
expanding to include a broader range of jobs such as those in the public sector.
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Participants in this
program first attend sessions on structural inequality, racial capitalism, and worker empowerment. At
this stage, both participants and instructors begin to build relationships and community with each
other––a foundational condition that makes the LABWC’s workforce development programs possible.
As part of these apprenticeships, staff accompany members to worksites and provide ongoing
navigational support. These apprenticeship opportunities are coupled with industry certifications,
trauma-informed conflict resolution, and wellness training, as well as financial literacy workshops for
workers who are new to stable incomes and regular paychecks. During employment placement, the
LABWC also works with unions to promote Black cohort hires. This ensures that members are not the
only Black persons at their workplaces, and the mutual peer support helps to increase members’
employment retention over time.
In this manner, the LABWC goes beyond the standard workforce development metrics of job placement
and short-term retention. It strives to build a community of Black workplace leaders and industry
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experts who actively support one another and who collectively have a voice in communicating and
negotiating with unions and employers to improve workplace conditions.
Industry-responsive
Worker centers respond to the ever-shifting dynamics of the demand side (employers) and the supply
side (workers) of low-wage labor markets. Employers that take the low road—as opposed to the high
road—exploit cracks in the labor standards enforcement apparatus, exercising unfair competition by
pursuing profit-maximizing strategies at workers’ expense. They do so by adopting flexible scheduling
arrangements, decreasing wages, and failing to meet workplace safety standards, among other practices.
In response, worker centers institute, enforce, and raise industry standards that aim to create
environments where workers are appropriately valued and recognized for their skill and labor, and where
employers benefit from a skilled workforce equipped and empowered to increase overall performance.
Being industry responsive means navigating the unique dynamics of various industries in what are called
the formal and informal economy. For instance, in the informal economy, worker centers may engage
with a different set of employers every day, such as a homeowner seeking day laborers or domestic
workers. These employers pay in cash “under the table” and hire a limited number of workers for any one
job. This practice sees particularly high incidences of wage theft. In response to these unique challenges,
worker centers like Pilipino Workers Center (PWC) and Institute of Popular Education of Southern
California (IDEPSCA) organize legal clinics, file wage theft claims, and document wage theft incidents to
address workplace abuses and raise industry labor standards.
Worker centers’ engagement with employers can vary from contentious to collaborative, depending on
workplace conditions and employer compliance with existing labor laws. The terms of engagement
include the following:
● Creating job allocation systems to help match employers with quality workers who hold
appropriate skill sets
● Educating employers on minimum occupational safety and health standards and on compliance
with minimum wage and other labor laws
● Supporting high-road employers in low-wage industries to demonstrate the viability of high-road
practices
The terms of engagement with workers involve identifying and eliminating barriers to long-term
employment retention and labor market success as follows:
● Providing skill recognition opportunities (e.g., certificates) for workers to explicitly identify the
skill sets that they have
● Creating linguistically and culturally competent professional development opportunities for
workers in low-wage industries where such opportunities either do not exist or are not provided,
are cost prohibitive, or are legally inaccessible
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● Providing, on an ad hoc basis, a range of workplace equipment through lending circles and small-
scale equipment procurement
Worker centers also respond by establishing a range of partnerships. For instance, worker centers often
leverage resources from proximate colleges and universities, human service organizations, community-
based organizations, public school districts, and other groups. At colleges and universities, most common
are collaborations with college students, which have in the past created English as a Second Language
(ESL) classes, vocational training programs, and know-your-rights workshops. Worker centers also
collaborate with faculty and staff researchers, who have worked to document workplace conditions and
abuses and lift up practices and policies to advance racial and economic justice. Worker centers also
partner with college-affiliated labor education and research programs (e.g., UCLA Labor Occupational
Safety and Health Program (LOSH) and UC Berkeley Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) to provide
a range of services such as occupational safety and health training and certification, and know-your-rights
workshops.
Highlights of the worker center approach to workforce development
Worker centers respond to exploitative and abusive low-wage industry conditions by combining labor
standards enforcement and workforce development to ensure dignity and respect at the workplace.
This approach puts mechanisms in place to improve workplace environments and employer
compensation of worker skills, issues that must be addressed in order for workforce development to
create genuine career pathways and socioeconomic mobility for low-wage workers.
In addition, worker centers seek to improve low-wage industries through unique and meaningful
engagement with employers, workers, and higher education institutions. This involves the following:
● Extending skills training opportunities to low-wage industries in the informal economy––
industries that have been particularly overlooked by traditional workforce development actors
and stakeholders
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● Incorporating worker rights and community organizing training into skills training programs to
position workers as industry experts and affirm their value as workers with dignity
● Making training opportunities accessible by taking advantage of the availability in workers’ often
irregular and unstable work schedules
● Providing ongoing support to participants well beyond program completion and successful job
placement in order to reduce employee turnover, improve communication between workers and
employers, and support worker and employer mobilizations to create policy environments in
which employees can thrive
CLEAN Carwash Worker Center: Training Industry Experts
The car wash industry operates in the informal economy. Workers earn below minimum wage, put in
60-hour workweeks without overtime pay, are denied adequate time for rest and meal breaks, and have
little to no health and safety protections despite constant exposure to toxic chemicals.
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These workers,
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who are predominantly undocumented, are often intimidated into silence, allowing companies to
continue to violate numerous labor laws with minimal penalties.
The Community Labor Environmental Action Network (CLEAN) is trying to change that. For its in-house,
eight-week training program in car detailing, CLEAN schedules training times around members’
schedules. Trainings do not take place during the summer, when car wash demand is high, or during
the Christmas holiday season, when members need valuable time off with their families. Instead,
trainings are scheduled during the rainy season, when workers typically have less work.
In these hands-on workshops, members learn car detailing and then hone their detailing skills. Spouses
are invited to participate and gain skills so that they may fill in for a member in the future when
necessary, say, in the event of illness. Children are also welcome, eliminating the need for child care
and creating a sense of community among members and their families.
The program adopts a train-the-trainer format. Five members who are graduates of the program or
who are already established as experts in car detailing are brought in as instructors. Each class consists
of ten members. When these members complete the program, the instructors also depart to make way
for the next set of students and teachers. This allows members to continue cycling through and become
validated as industry experts, mentors, and leaders. Members are given a graduation certificate in
recognition of their skills and achievements. Although the program is not accredited, this certificate has
the potential to change industry norms. At present, it has been recognized and adopted by some car
wash companies as a credential of car detailing skills for their workforce.
Systems-oriented
Worker centers build power and social movements to achieve systemic change that improves social and
economic outcomes for some of the most marginalized communities. Many of these individuals face
intersectional disadvantages; for example, a Pilipina immigrant who identifies as transgender may have
increased difficulty finding a job, compared to their white, male, native-born and/or cisgender
counterparts. The worker center approach includes not only improving low-wage industry standards but
also addressing other systems, such as immigration and criminal justice, that perpetuate inequality.
Efforts involve helping members cultivate both hard and soft skills through workforce development
programs, learn about workplace rights, and gain social consciousness about the complex processes that
create inequality. Empowered with this expertise, members become agents who can contest these
inequalities and navigate the complicated, mazelike bureaucracies of the system. Indeed, outside of
worker centers, members share their experiences as low-wage workers to lend legitimacy and credibility
to advocacy efforts at city halls and state houses. In turn, this helps advance progressive policies for
working-class BIPOC communities. For example, members actively educate policymakers about the
importance of minimum wage legislation and immigrant integration policies, providing testimonials of
their own workplace abuses and community struggles.
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Worker centers engage their membership bases in coalition building to expand the power and impact of
their efforts to bring about systemic change. In these efforts, worker centers and their partners are
brought together by shared goals of racial and economic justice. They learn about different policy
structures and identify policy and advocacy priorities, then proceed to mobilize their members. Together,
the coalitions work across scales—meaning local, state, and federal levels—to create a range of policy,
research, advocacy, and public education mechanisms that address sources of inequality for their
members.
The coalitions leverage the key strengths of the participating organizations to achieve win-win results for
everyone. Take, for example, the partnership between worker centers and unions. Comparatively, worker
centers are relatively small, with fewer resources, but they have powerful connections with BIPOC job
seekers and workers within many low-wage industries. Unions are typically larger, with more resources,
but they often have limited reach within these same industries. By partnering together, they increase their
sphere of influence by garnering more media attention and mounting state-level advocacy campaigns to
advance the Fight for 15 minimum wage campaigns nationwide, among other successes.
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Table 2. Examples of Worker Centers Advancing Systemic Change through Coalitions
Coalition
Scale
Mechanism
Outcome
Black Worker Center,
unions and community
allies
Project
Project Labor
Agreement
Increased the number of Black construction
workers from 0% to 20% on the Crenshaw Line
project in 2015
LA Coalition Against
Wage Theft
Local
City of Los Angeles
Ordinance No. 184,319
Established the Los Angeles Office of Wage
Standards in 2016 to enforce wage and hour
violations
California Coalition for
Worker Power
Local
Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors
initiative
Launched worker-led Public Health Councils that
promote workplace safety through education on
infection control measures in 2021
California Domestic
Workers Coalition
State
Domestic Worker Bill of
Rights (AB 241)
Extended overtime pay rights to domestic
workers, disproportionately benefiting Pilipina
and Latina women workers
ICE Out of California
Coalition
State
California Values Act
(SB 54)
Placed additional restrictions on collaborations
between local law enforcement and federal
immigration enforcement
National Day Laborer
Organizing Network
Federal
Research, organizing,
advocacy, public
education campaign
Changed the public discourse on day laborers by
dispelling negative perceptions of them
Highlights of worker center approach to workforce development
Worker centers respond to systemic barriers to achieving racial and economic justice by building
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coalitions that center and leverage the collective power of low-wage workers and underserved
communities. The result is to transform low-wage industry labor standards and increase worker access
to socioeconomic opportunity.
This involves the following:
● Building resources and opportunities to learn about and engage the public workforce
development system
● Cultivating relationships with state and local workforce development agencies in order to refine
and institutionalize their role in the public workforce development system
● Identifying and advocating for the establishment of specific policies and programs to incorporate
worker power into workforce development programs and improve meaningful access to these
programs for low-wage BIPOC workers
● Forging strong relationships with other key organizational partners in the workforce development
system and the broader labor ecosystem (e.g., community colleges, public school districts,
American Job Centers, unions, community-based organizations) in order to build coalitions that
can transform workforce development policies and programs
Transforming California’s Labor Standards Enforcement System
In late 2016, California Labor Commissioner Julie Su established the California Strategic Enforcement
Partnership to increase anti-wage theft enforcement efforts and foster a labor law compliance culture.
Multiple worker centers––including the Chinese Progressive Association, CLEAN Carwash Worker
Center, Garment Worker Center, Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, Pilipino Workers
Center, and Koreatown Immigrant Worker Alliance––worked alongside other nonprofits and legal
advocates to reduce wage theft and ensure minimum wages for workers in six industries: construction,
agriculture, car wash, janitorial, residential home care, and restaurant. The commission set five key
goals:
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• Collect unpaid wages and improve the use of agency and legal tools to collect wages
• Develop industry-specific enforcement strategies
• Identify high-impact cases that influence industry practices and support law-abiding
employers through effective enforcement
• Build a sustainable strategic enforcement system in California
• Increase worker engagement in advocating for better working conditions
By establishing stronger relationships and formal linkages between labor standards enforcement
agencies and worker organizations on the ground, this partnership led to the following improvements
in the wage recovery system:
• Substantial wages were recovered on behalf of workers. For instance, in 2017, the Labor
Commissioner's office secured six car wash workers $363,625 in back wages owed by two car
wash operators in the Los Angeles area. The workers were shorted on minimum wages and
overtime and were denied rest and meal breaks as required by law
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• Accessibility of underserved workers to make workplace claims was increased, and
improvements were made in governmental ability to reach workers experiencing wage theft,
with worker centers as a trusted intermediary
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• Improvements were made in the capacity of the commission to identify noncompliant
employers and to process wage theft claims by integrating worker centers into the initial
stages of the process, expediting the workplace claims process, and leveraging worker center
knowledge of industry dynamics
• Worker centers were further empowered to engage in labor standards enforcement by
creating formal linkages to the state labor standards enforcement agency to provide worker
centers with renewed credibility and regulatory power
• Collaborations between the state labor standards enforcement agency and the district
attorney’s office were strengthened to increase governmental ability to address larger-scale
cases of wage theft among particularly unscrupulous employers
Key takeaways
As we recover from the high unemployment rates wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, workforce
development is a key strategy through which job seekers are matched with employers and equipped with
the necessary skills. However, the pandemic has also exacerbated preexisting social and economic
inequalities, particularly for our nation’s most underserved communities. This means the status quo must
change, and a more holistic and comprehensive approach to workforce development is needed. To
address these long-standing problems, worker centers offer three takeaways for the public workforce
development system:
1. Worker centers show that it is possible to reach low-wage workers and industries that have been
traditionally beyond the grasp of workforce development providers
2. Worker centers demonstrate that working at the intersection of workforce development and
labor standards enforcement can create new opportunities to transform low-wage work
3. Worker centers model how community organizing and policy advocacy are important tools
needed to change the very fabric of the workforce development system, as well as other, adjacent
systems that contribute to inequality
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Methodology
In Janice Fine’s landmark 2006 study of worker centers, she defined worker centers as “community-based
and community-led organizations that engage in a combination of service, advocacy, and organizing to
provide support to low-wage workers.”
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Recognizing that this definition is broad and that there are a
range of worker rights organizations that fit this definition but do not identify as worker centers, we focus
on organizations in California that actively identify as worker centers, and that participate in local,
regional, state and national networks designed by and for worker centers (e.g. Los Angeles Worker Center
Network).
We adopted a multi-step methodology to create an updated database of California worker centers. First,
we identified the whole universe of California worker centers between January 2020, by consolidating and
cross-referencing multiple sources: (1) the UCLA Labor Center’s list of worker centers that was created
based on the 2006 National Day Labor Survey; (2) an updated 2018 list of California worker centers, jointly
maintained by Janice Fine and Jacob Barnes (Rutgers) and Victor Narro (UCLA); and (3) informal
conversations with key informants who have long-standing involvement and expertise in California’s
immigrant rights and labor movement. Second, to compile information on all our worker centers, we
reviewed all worker centers’ websites where available, other secondary literature (e.g. policy briefs,
archival documents) and contacted (via phone and email) each worker center on our consolidated list via
phone and email.
The information provided in this brief is derived mainly from individual interviews with staff members
from 12 California worker centers––including executive directors, frontline organizers, workforce
development coordinators (where applicable). These interviews took place between January and April
2020 as part of a longer-term project on the underexplored pathways through which worker centers are
transforming low-wage work (e.g., workforce development, worker cooperative development). In our
interviews, we asked descriptive questions about the kinds of services offered by worker centers and their
relationship to other workforce development actors (e.g., community colleges, computer literacy
programs, ESL instructors, employers, WIOA-funded WorkSource Centers, local and state workforce
development agencies). We also posed perceptive questions on what executive and managerial staff
viewed as successful in their relationships with employers (where applicable) and in their workforce
development and worker training programs. Interviews on average lasted 60 to 90 minutes. Using the
mixed-methods software application Dedoose, these interviews were coded by team members,
collectively reviewed to arrive at consensus, and analyzed by individual team members. Interviewees
received a $100 gift card for participating in the study.
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Notes
1
Annette D. Bernhardt, Heather Boushey, Laura Dresser, and Chris Tilly, eds., The Gloves-off Economy: Workplace
Standards at the Bottom of America's Labor Market (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).
2
David Weil, The Fissured Workplace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).
3
Dan Clawson and Mary Ann Clawson, "What Has Happened to the US Labor Movement? Union Decline and Renewal,"
Annual Review of Sociology 25, no. 1 (1999): 95–119.
4
Annette Bernhardt et al., Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities
(Chicago: Center for Urban Economic Development; New York: National Employment Law Project; Los Angeles: UCLA
Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, 2009).
5
“Workforce Development Systems.” Building America’s Workforce, Urban Institute, accessed December 22, 2021.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/building-americas-workforce/about/workforce-
development-systems.
6
2019 American Community Survey data; Results Achieved Under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA),
report by California Workforce Development Board, n.d., https://cwdb.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2019/12/PY-
2018-WIOA-Annual-Report.pdf.
7
Ibid.
8
Kevin Lee, “How California’s Workforce Development System Excludes Immigrants, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do
about It,” Scholars Strategy Network, September 2019, https://scholars.org/sites/scholars/files/2019-
08/SSN%20Memo%20Lee%20on%20Workforce%20Development%20and%20Immigration.pdf.
9
Ruth Milkman, L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 2006).
10
Nik Theodore, Beth Gutelius, and Ana Luz Gonzalez-Vasquez, The Worker Center Ecosystem in California (San Francisco:
Labor Innovations for the 21st Century, 2019).
11
These data points are taken from UC Berkeley Labor Center’s Analysis of 2017 Current Population Survey and American
Community Survey data. “Low-wage work” here is defined as wages that fall below $14.35 an hour, and is inflation adjusted
for data from previous years. “Low-Wage Work in California,” UC Berkeley Labor Center, 2017,
https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/low-wage-work-in-california/#worker-profile.
12
Importantly, BIPOC workers are not destined for bad jobs because of their demographic characteristics alone. Ultimately,
employer and occupational characteristics (e.g., company size, pay arrangements, benefit packages, health insurance) are
the strongest predictors for creating bad jobs in low-wage industries. For more on this, see Annette Bernhardt et al., Broken
Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities (Chicago: Center for Urban
Economic Development; New York: National Employment Law Project; Los Angeles: UCLA Institute for Research on Labor
and Employment, 2009).
13
Cynthia E. Griffin, “MTA OKs Project Labor Agreement,” Our Weekly LA, September 29, 2011,
http://ourweekly.com/news/2011/sep/28/mta-oks-project-labor-agreement/.
14
Deja Thomas, Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, and Saba Waheed, Reimagined Recovery: Black Workers, the Public Sector, and
Covid-19 (Los Angeles: Center for the Advancement of Racial Equity [CARE] at Work at UCLA Labor Center, 2020).
15
For example, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network collaborated with Pasadena City College and LA Trade-Tech
to provide ESL classes and vocational training classes in flooring, framing, and carpentry for the network’s day laborer
members.
16
Cleaning Up the Carwash Industry: Empowering Workers and Protecting Communities, report by Carwash Workers
Organizing Committee of the United Steelworkers, March 27, 2008,
http://assets.usw.org/Organizing/Documents/car_wash_paper.pdf.
16
17
However, community-labor partnerships––like all coalitions––must make trade-offs; these coalitions sometimes form
at the expense of neighborhood-level organizing and protest turnouts. For more on these trade-offs, see Marc Doussard
and Brad R. Fulton, “Organizing Together: Benefits and Drawbacks of Community-Labor Coalitions for Community
Organizations,” Social Service Review 94, no. 1 (2020): 36–74, https://doi.org/10.1086/707568.
18
California Strategic Enforcement Partnership. Report for the National Employment Law Project, 2018,
https://s27147.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/CA-Enforcement-Document-Letter-11-27-18-1.pdf.
19
“Labor Commissioner Returns $363,625 in Unpaid Wages to Six Car Wash Workers in Los Angeles,” news release, State of
California Department of Industrial Relations, March 1, 2017, https://www.dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2017/2017-18.pdf.
20
Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream, report by Janice Fine, 2005.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank our worker center respondents for their participation and wisdom,
Joaquin Escalante for research support, Veena Hampapur and Angela Hana for communications support,
Antonio Rodriguez for the brief design, Dianne Woo and Leticia Bustamante for editing support, and Luz
Hernandez for administrative support. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Labor Research
& Action Network (LRAN) New Scholars Research Grant, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
William Emerson Travel Grant, MIT Priscila King Gray Public Service Center IAP Fellowship, and the UCLA
Labor Center for their financial support.
Kevin L. Lee, Magaly Lopez, and Ana Luz Gonzalez-Vasquez, New Directions in Racial and Economic Justice:
How California’s Worker Centers Are Bringing Worker Power into Workforce Development, (Los Angeles:
UCLA Labor Center, February 2022).
