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Freshman files: Assemblymember Liz Ortega
Labor unions have been at the center of Assemblymember Liz Ortega’s life since early childhood and the centerpiece of her career.
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.
California Public School Students Will Learn About Labor Rights Under First-of-Its-Kind Law
A.B. 800 empowers young people with the information and tools they need to understand their rights as workers.
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.
Q&A: Should California health insurance cover opioid overdose antidote Narcan?
To reduce the death toll of the opioid epidemic, California Assemblymember Liz Ortega wants health insurers to cover the costs of Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an overdose.
The ubiquity of the synthetic painkiller fentanyl has supercharged the opioid crisis to the point that California schools are now making overdose treatments