This blog post is part of the Changing Nature of Work project. See here for report, accompanying framework, and an appendix.

In the face of COVID-19, understanding the future of work through a worker-centered lens has taken on a new urgency. 

Before the pandemic, the future of work was already top of mind in California. In the “gig” economy, companies such as Uber, Lyft, Doordash and others sought to redefine employment relationships to exempt their workers from minimum labor laws. In advanced manufacturing and logistics, robotics and workplace surveillance technologies sped up job processes, but often made work more precarious or dangerous as workers were forced to work faster while their every movement is monitored. Responding to these emerging issues, in 2019 Governor Newsom convened the California Future of Work Commission, appointing leaders from education, labor, business, and other sectors to develop recommendations on how to proactively move the state’s workforce into the future, envisioning a new social compact that better met the needs of workers. 

That same year, ReWork the Bay, together with Jobs with Justice – San Francisco and Working Partnerships USA, launched our Changing Nature of Work (CNoW) project. As organizations that represent and amplify the voices of working people, we offer a different framework for understanding how work is changing — and it’s not just about technology.  The shifting dynamics we see today are the culmination of decades’ worth of more fundamental changes to our economy and our democracy: the growing power disparity between workers and firms; institutionalized racism and gender oppression; climate change, and demographic shifts. Technology is not a driver of change, but a tool that facilitates it.

By assessing the ways work is changing in the Bay Area and scanning the landscape of local and regional responses to those changes, the CNoW project sought to build a framework to help stakeholders make sense of the barrage of information and speculation about the “future of work” and to assess potential on-the-ground responses. This is important in a moment where new technology permits long-standing inequities to show themselves in stark, new ways.

Take the example of home grocery delivery, an industry that has exploded during the pandemic. While providing the same service, Safeway and Instacart have each taken very different approaches to their rapidly growing workforce. In early April, Instacart reported that customer demand had surged by 300%. Throughout this boom, the corporation has failed to provide the shoppers in its contingent workforce with personal protective equipment, hazard pay, or paid sick time. Workers had to go on strike – twice — before Instacart would agree even to provide workers with hand sanitizer and gloves. Instacart refuses to pay a living wage (let alone hazard pay) to its workers, who make less than $10 a delivery. This is far from adequate compensation for individuals assuming extraordinary risk while providing an essential service. 

But explosive growth need not come at the expense of working people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Safeway and its store and delivery workers, represented in Northern California by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, agreed to enhanced health and safety protections, flexible scheduling for parents, and additional paid sick leave. Nor do high-road practices impede a company’s growth: in late March, Safeway announced 2,000 immediate openings for in-store and delivery workers in Northern California alone. 

Having a long-standing institutional channel in place for advocacy, protection, and self-representation, which their employer is contractually bound to bargain with, has made an immediate difference for Safeway workers. As the coronavirus has shown us in particularly stark terms, the more workers have channels to voice concerns and advocate for improvement, the better off we all are. 

The Greek root for the word crisis means decision. This pandemic is a time for decisions around how work will be different after the crisis. Times of disruption offer us an opportunity to remake structures that have failed us. Strong worker voice means shared prosperity. If we are to move forward to a better society, rather than replicating past mistakes, workers need to be front and center in shaping the future. 

Read the full report here.

Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA) is a community organization bringing together the power of grassroots organizing and public policy innovation to drive the movement for a just economy.

Jobs with Justice San Francisco is a long-term, strategic alliance of labor, community, faith-based, and student organizations working together to build a strong, progressive movement for economic and social justice locally and nationally.

App-based work is a visible, yet not transparent, sector of our economy. More and more Bay Area residents work as ride-hailing and delivery workers at companies like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Instacart to make ends meet, but because these workers have historically been classified as independent contractors, little is known about their take home pay and working conditions.

On May 20, 2020, a team of researchers and advocates from UC Santa Cruz, Jobs with Justice San Francisco and the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission shared key insights from a large scale survey of these workers in San Francisco conducted before, and during, the COVID-19 crisis.

To learn more, you can take a deeper dive into the study findings, or review the policy recommendations that were presented to San Francisco’s Local Agency Formation Commissioners in May 2020.

The research and advocacy team also connected this work to broader trends in the tech sector in an op-ed that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle last week: “Elon Musk Reflects Silicon Valley’s ‘Move Fast and Break Things’ Culture.”

The webinar’s presentation decks for the findings and recommendations are available.

For further information about this research, you may contact:

• Bryan Goebel: bryan.goebel@sfgov.org
• Chris Benner: cbenner@ucsc.edu

The presenters:

• Bryan Goebel is the executive officer of San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission and previously spent eight months as a full-time on-demand bicycle courier. He is a former award-winning journalist who most recently served as a transportation reporter for KQED Public Radio and the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco.
• Chris Benner is the Dorothy E. Everett Chair in Global Information and Social Entrepreneurship, Director of the Everett Program for Technology and Social Change, and a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Rooted in an urban political ecology approach, his research examines the relationships between technological change, urban and regional development, and structures of economic opportunity.
• Kung Feng is the Executive Director at Jobs with Justice San Francisco, a labor and community coalition that fights for working class power broadly through campaigns for workers’ rights, racial justice, public education and affordable housing. He co-founded Bay Resistance, a project that has mobilized thousands in resistance to attacks from Trump and the Right. He started as a rank-and-file union activist organizing workplaces from the bottom up and organized immigrant workers while at UNITE HERE, the union of hotel and restaurant workers. An activist with Asians4BlackLives, he’s always ready to take action for our communities.

Small Businesses are Key to an Inclusive Recovery

California small businesses, half of which are owned by people of color, are often more open to hiring people with barriers to employment. Most also support investing in their workers, including expanding job protections.

A thriving small business ecosystem is critical to an inclusive recovery. This week we feature a piece from our Equity at Work Council member Mark Herbert of Small Business Majority about the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses and policy ideas to meet their needs.

Job creators need help to survive and thrive after COVID-19

By Mark Herbert, Small Business Majority

While parts of our region slowly start to reopen, the impacts on our small business community and the workforce continue to be bleak. But we have an opportunity right now to recognize the important role small businesses play in providing critical jobs and enact changes that will bolster them, and our workforce as a whole.

The time to act is now.

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May is typically a time set aside to recognize the contributions of entrepreneurs and small business employers around the country as we celebrate National Small Business Week and Small Business Month. This year stands in stark contrast as we do all we can to support small businesses that have shuttered and have been forced to layoff employees due to the spread of COVID-19. This is why it’s important now more than ever to understand the importance of small businesses to a thriving, job-creating economy and ensure they don’t just survive this crisis—but that we promote a robust small business ecosystem that addresses inequities and promotes quality jobs in the Bay Area and nationwide.

Here in California, four million small businesses, nearly half of which are owned by people of color, employ more than seven million people—nearly half of the entire private sector workforce. And importantly, most new jobs are created by businesses with fewer than 20 employees.

Many of these small business owners come to think of their hard-working employees like family, which makes the current crisis all the more devastating for the small business community. Small Business Majority polled small businesses in California last month to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 on small businesses and their workforce, and the results are dire.

An astounding 92% said the coronavirus has impacted their business, with nearly half reporting it has had a severe negative impact. And 44% of small businesses in California have already closed or are planning to do so in the next two months.

Unfortunately, small businesses reported widespread layoffs and furloughs. Thirty-one percent have permanently laid off their employees, roughly half (49%) have furloughed employees and most (71%) have reduced hours, salary or both for their employees as a result of the crisis. More than 4 in 10 (41%) have permanently laid off, furloughed or reduced the hours/salary of their entire workforce.

These devastating numbers underscore why we must take action to ensure small businesses can recover, rehire and sustain good jobs in California. We asked small businesses what they need right now to help them survive this crisis, and most small businesses (93%) reported they need direct grant assistance.

This is why at Small Business Majority we have worked since the beginning of the crisis to educate stakeholders, policymakers and the media about the importance of small businesses to our economic recovery and why we need a robust, direct grant program to reopen Main Street and get people back to work. To date, thousands of small businesses and advocates for the business community have signed our letter calling for a direct grants program for small businesses.

What’s more, last week we released our new Roadmap to Recovery that outlines immediate and long-term actions in key areas that can ensure small businesses’ survival and help businesses and their employees thrive after this crisis. We’re particularly concerned with promoting a more level playing field for entrepreneurs of color, women, immigrants and other underserved businesses that create jobs in their local communities. This is especially important to the Bay Area as we work to address inequalities in our local economy and ensure we can overcome the pandemic.

While parts of our region slowly start to reopen, the impacts on our small business community and the workforce continue to be bleak. But we have an opportunity right now to recognize the important role small businesses play in providing critical jobs and enact changes that will bolster them, and our workforce as a whole.

The time to act is now.

Mark Herbert serves as Vice President, California for Small Business Majority, overseeing the organization’s policy, outreach and development efforts across the state. Mark is also a member of ReWork the Bay’s Equity at Work Council where he represents small businesses in the conversation about making our regional economy more equitable.

This blog post highlights a published report from the Insight Center.

With nearly half of all Californians at high risk of unemployment and the Bay Area anticipating more than 800,000 job losses by May, it is time to unpack the root causes of racial and gender inequities endangering those whose labor is valued in our society, but not their full selves.

In the Bay Area, more than 1 out of every 2 retail and grocery workers cannot take paid sick leave, and women are less likely to get authorized leave than men. Black, Asian, and Latinx households hit especially hard by the virus still log long hours in low-wage positions like personal care, agriculture, and food prep.

“Re-imagining a Bay Area Workforce System Grounded in Racial and Gender Equity,” a new report from the Insight Center, examines how women and people of color have made untold contributions across industries, despite being denied basic rights and fair wages due to racism, sexism and xenophobia baked into our workforce policies and practices. These injustices are amplified by the current crisis, and we will need a workforce system designed specifically to meet the needs of marginalized groups in order to have a just and inclusive recovery.

Supported by ReWork the Bay, a collaborative of funders, advocates, workers, and employers housed at The San Francisco Foundation, the report highlights the challenges the Bay Area Workforce system has in meeting the needs of women, people of color, and immigrants. As a result of discriminatory policies reinforced by harmful narratives, many of these workers are forced to live on the edge because of the systems and laws that have continued to devalue them.

Despite reforms like the 8-hour work day, labor victories of the past two centuries heavily benefited white men and deliberately excluded others because of their race and gender. Nineteenth century unions, for example, achieved landmark benefits that left out women and people of color — often crowded, both then and now, into low-wage professions in service, domestic, and agricultural work — from basic rights such as overtime pay and minimum wage.

As the coronavirus pandemic unfolds, it reveals the deep scars of these economic inequities by race and gender. For far too long, the very jobs powering the Bay Area have barely provided enough to keep the lights on and put food on the table, much less weather a health emergency, lay off, or recession. As shown in the report, the region’s most common profession, personal care or caregiving, is 80 percent female, largely done by women of color, and pays a median hourly rate of $11.68 that is well below San Francisco’s minimum wage. The five most common jobs, including retail and food prep, are heavily filled by women and people of color and pay a median annual wage about $90,000 less than other common occupations more frequently taken by white men.

During the Great Recession, the Bay Area launched unprecedented cross-county partnerships that will prove crucial to sharing the data, ideas, and resources needed to with stand and overcome this pandemic. True to the region’s progressive spirit, local stakeholders can take the lead in pushing for systemic change, especially when federal actors may stall or even impede reform. For one, ensuring that undocumented workers — the cornerstone of nearly all essential industries and services — can quickly access all available relief funds should be a top priority in every county. In addition, workforce boards can take a stand, together, in ensuring that the nearly 70,000 personal care aides across the region gain added protection through statewide employment law reform, the creation of a comprehensive long-term care system, and access to basic savings accounts.

As we brace for uncertainty and loss, applying a racial and gender equity frame to the Bay Area workforce development system can challenge us to learn from a shared past, liberating us to envision a workforce where all are seen and valued for their full, and truly essential, worth.

Aisa Villarosa is the Associate Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Insight Center for Community and Economic Development. An artist and attorney, Aisa blends creativity, analysis, and advocacy to drive change toward racial and gender equity.

This informational session held on April 22, 2020, provided funders a broad overview of the state’s emerging responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

The presentation deck is available as well as information on unemployment insurance provided to webinar attendees.

Guest Presenter :

Abby Snay is deputy secretary for Future of Work at the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. Snay was previously Chief Executive officer of Jewish Vocational Services since 1984, where she served in multiple positions from 1975 to 1984, including assistant director, supervisor and counselor. She is a member of the California Workforce Development Board, the California State Rehabilitation Council and a board member of the National Skills Coalition.