While Republican-controlled state legislatures have rolled back child labor protections this year, Democratic lawmakers and rights advocates in California on Monday celebrated Gov. Gavin Newsom's signing of a first-of-its-kind law that they say will make young people less vulnerable to workplace abuses by teaching them about labor protections.

SACRAMENTO ― California high school students will learn about their rights at work and how to defend themselves against workplace abuses under a first-of-its-kind law just signed by Governor Gavin Newsom over the weekend.

AB 800, authored by Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro), creates a Workplace Readiness Week at all public high schools to teach students about their workplace rights, protections for minors on the job, and how to join or start a union. 

The ubiquity of the synthetic painkiller fentanyl has supercharged the opioid crisis to the point that California schools are now making overdose treatments read