SACRAMENTO, CA – On Tuesday, Assemblymember Liz Ortega (D-San Leandro) chaired a public hearing to explore the reasons for California’s stubbornly low employment rates for people with disabilities and how the state can better support them in obtaining meaningful employment.
SACRAMENTO ― Speaker Robert Rivas announced the appointment of Assemblymember Liz Ortega as the new Chair of the California Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. As a labor leader of over 20 years, Asm. Ortega’s appointment brings hard-earned expertise to the committee’s work.
So it’s natural that her top priorities in the state Assembly are also labor aligned, including legislation mandating that high school students learn about labor laws.
Ortega, 45, learned at a young age that her family had health insurance because her parents had union jobs, her mother doing laundry for hotels and her father as a dishwasher and then a second job, this one a union position as a janitor at the Oakland Coliseum.
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.