The past 18 months have called for people, organizations and systems to focus onresponding….to changing health guidance, urgent community needs, rapid unemployment, re-employment, wildfires, toxic air, rolling blackouts, water shortages, the list goes on.

Now, as the state and federal government are poised to invest generational sums of money to kickstart the economy, modernize education and infrastructure, many of us in philanthropy, public systems and community organizations are turning our attention to responding to these funding opportunities, desperate to not miss out on leveraging public dollars to benefit our communities.

At ReWork the Bay we are grappling with a fundamental question:

As organizations begin inviting office workers back to their desks, and we look to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror, many people and corporations will also seek to put the racial “reckoning” that coincided with the pandemic behind them–perhaps punctuated with a celebration of Juneteenth being recognized as a Federal holiday. But now is not the time to move on.

No, now is the time to practice resolve in holding on to the lessons learned as a nation in 2020, and to ensure that commitments made are not broken. As it relates to work, this includes not taking corporate commitments to racial justice at face value–we need to pay attention to whether those huge financial commitments to racial equity grants are happening (spoiler alert: early signs are that they are not).

We also need to press industry leaders to go beyond grantmaking. Business practice change is where the real impact is when it comes to racial justice. For example, in the Tech sector, are companies actually hiring black people, or just talking about it? And are venture capitalists actually funding black entrepreneurs? Again, the data isn’t promising.

Relatedly, are employers considering the benefits of remote work through a racial justice lens, and using the return to work to make changes toward a more inclusive office culture that facilitates greater participation and advancement of women and people of color?

And finally, can those of us for whom returning to an office is now a primary topic of conversation, not forget that so many workers-predominately people of color and women- won’t be returning to an office? For them, there is no “return to work” because they never stopped going to their job sites to do “essential” work that has kept our communities running.

Please join us in committing to not lose sight of the many important lessons we’ve learned during the past 16 months. Instead, let’s keep them front and center, and use them as fuel to advance toward real racial justice. Here are some resources to get started:

• A People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy by United Frontline Table
• Don’t be fooled by corporate commitments to racial equity by Caitlin Morelli
• Return to Office? Some Women of Color Aren’t Ready by Ruchika Tulshyan [NYT Paywall]
• In a year of tragedy, injustice, and upheaval, have we seen progress in the quest for racial justice in technology? by Kapor Center
• ‘The spirit of our ancestry’: how California’s Black Wall Streets are changing their cities by Abené Clayton

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“If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

In May, we were proud to release the culmination of extensive research collected over the last two years aimed at understanding how to create a more worker-centered future. This report, a collective product of ReWork the Bay, Jobs With Justice SFand Working Partnerships USA synthesizes insights and perspectives from worker organizations, workforce development and philanthropy leaders, and offers action-oriented recommendations. We invite you to explorePower is at the Root: How Funders and Workforce Leaders Can Center Workers in the “Future of Work”.

Last week we brought together leaders and workers to discuss the report and reflect on how it ties to their efforts. During the program, Tim Rainey, Executive Director of the California Workforce Development Board, reminded us of a saying he heard from his grandfather: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

Now is the time to invite workers to the table to have a greater say in the decisions that impact them and their families.

• Center workers as decision-makers
• Forge a racially just future as essential to building worker power
• Build collective power
• Focus on the changes most affecting people’s lives (Hint: it’s not automation)
• Shape technology to serve people

“The future of work is not a question of technology,” said Kung Feng, Executive Director of Jobs with Justice San Francisco. “It needs to be a visionary question, a question of what we think is a good future: a future where work meets our societal needs for public health, caring for children or climate resilience, where all people can achieve their full potential and agency at work and where the value of work is shared by all.”

I encourage you to check out the report and thePower is at the Root webinar, and let us know what you think. Below, you’ll find links to articles that offer additional examples of the challenges we face and the innovative solutions workers are leading. I’d love to hear from you as we continue to reshape the Bay Area workforce to benefit us all.

• The Gig Economy’s Business Model Is a Racial Justice Issue by Edward Ongweso, Jr
• The future of elder care is here – and it’s artificial intelligence by Zoe Corbyn
• Special Delivery: Our New Report Shows How Local Delivery Services are Superior to the Big Apps by Susan Holmberg and Kennedy Smith

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By now, many of you have seen the stories claiming people aren’t working because they’re making more on unemployment. We’ve seen signs on stores that have said things like, “We can’t open because no one wants to work.”

However, that’s the wrong angle and not the whole story. I wanted to share a story about employees at Dollar General in Maine. Berndt Erikson has worked at Dollar General since last June, making $13.25 an hour. According to the Living Wage Calculatorcreated by MIT, Erikson, who is supporting her brother who has been out of work due to a health condition since before the pandemic, needs to make $23.88/hour to support her family – more than double what she was getting paid. Dollar General made $8B in revenue in 2021 and the CEO made $12M in salary and incentives in 2019. Think about that.

And it’s not just about pay. Other workers speaking out through storefront signs cite safety concerns related to COVID, fatigue over being yelled at by belligerent customers, overly burdensome hiring processes and lack of benefits.

We’ve said that we can’t return to ‘normal’, because the old ‘normal’ didn’t work for everyone. We’ve called frontline workers “heroes” and “essential”. Now that the recovery is beginning, it’s time to walk our talk.

That means no longer accepting the argument that businesses large and small will always have to rely on workers enduring unsustainable, unsafe, and unhealthy jobs. Whether they be in rideshare, fast food, child care or retail, business models that depend on exploiting people are broken, and will always be an obstacle to thriving communities.

People want to work, they want to feel good about the work that they do, and they deserve to be treated respectfully and fairly compensated for their work.

Read on for examples of businesses doing the right thing, and resources for business, philanthropy and workforce development to help shape a people-centered future.

I would love to hear what you think! Please hit reply to send me a message. I’d also appreciate if you would forward this newsletter on to your network and encourage them to sign up to receive the next one.

In Solidarity,
Rob Hope

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The Fight for $44?

On the national stage, many advocates are calling for an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25/hour to $15/hour. Yet we know, in the Bay Area, even $15/hour is far from a living wage. In fact, according to the Family Needs Calculator, the living wage in the Bay Area for a single adult with a pre-school age child ranges from $24/hour in Solano County to $51/hour in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties.

Rarely do we hear calls for a local minimum wage that comes close to what it costs to live in the Bay Area, perhaps because it seems unrealistic, or out of reach. Yet if as a society we had chosen to tie the federal minimum wage to the growth of Wall Street bonuses since 1985, the current minimum wage would be $44/hour!That of course has not been the case. As compensation for the highest paid has skyrocketed in the last 40 years, it has stagnated for the vast majority of workers. Those in our society with economic and political power have opted to enact policies that widen, rather than close, economic disparities.

Tax policy is a prime example of policy choices that privilege the wealthy few over the increasingly struggling many, and corporate profits over popular prosperity. Corporate tax cuts resulted in55 large companies paying no federal corporate taxes last yeardespite earning substantial profits. This adds up to $12 billion of lost revenue that could have paid for public services and infrastructure that is not only critical to communities, but enables these same companies to earn their profits. We are told that corporate tax breaks trickle down and result in more jobs and higher incomes, but we’ve seen the opposite. The only incomes that continue to grow rapidly are those of the wealthy.

Yet, as some businesses seek to maximize profits at every turn, other businesses see how their workers and the communities they operate in are struggling to survive, and are taking bold steps to be a part of the solution. For example, during the pandemic Graton Resort and Casino voluntarily increased their workers hourly pay by a minimum of between $2.50 and $3.25. And restauranteurs like Reem Assil and the Oakland Bloom Collective are experimenting with worker-owned models as a more equitable alternativeto the traditional restaurant business model.

While reforming corporate tax policy is an important step, we also need to lift up and celebrate those entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations who are going above and beyond to reimagine the role of business in an equitable and inclusive society.

Those who are as concerned with shared prosperity as they are with maximizing profits and building personal wealth; those who are willing to do more than issue public statements and commitments with no accountability for follow through; and those who go beyond giving away grant dollars to community organizations fighting the symptoms of an inequitable society, to address the ways their business may be contributing to the root causes of those problems in the first place.

Do you know of businesses in your community who fit this profile? We’d love to hear about them and share their stories. Email me by clicking below.

EMAIL ROB

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As 2021 comes in to play, we need to be honest with ourselves. 2020 was a year that challenged, traumatized, and took loved ones. For those left behind, 2020 provided  resilience and scars. It was also the culmination of approximately 40 years of a neo-liberal economic model that has dominated our socio-economic development strategies.

Today, COVID-19 has shined a light on a myriad of unintended consequences of these policies: inequality, social division, low trust in authority, a focus on identity, and much more.

In my work with colleagues, we’ve pursued a strategy we describe as “Mixed Teams and Mixed Leadership.” What this means is valuing the insight and expertise of life experiences and different stories that drive our society, equally with learned, academic and professional expertise. 

Today, we are primarily led and dominated by an educated, professionalized elite made up of mainly technocrats. While this drove value for 40 years, it is now starting to show diminishing returns. I am not arguing against the fact that following a higher degree, professional career, and signing up to be a knowledge worker is a bad thing. Rather I just think we get even more value from knowledge workers when they are lined up with non-knowledge workers. 

Whether it’s the failure to tackle growing inequality, the free-market approach to technology companies that has allowed them to flourish without proper oversight, or the dogmatic drive to push people into higher education rather than recognize their diverse preferences and aptitudes, this technocratic system of development has clearly failed too many.

Mixed teams and mixed leadership means recognizing and valuing people’s lived experience. Studies have shown that those with lived experience act as a necessary conduit between services and communities, allowing them to influence culture and provide a heightened utility. We can harness people’s experience of crime, homelessness, low wage work or poor education to share knowledge, develop research, and produce policies and programs to tackle these issues. This requires people with both lived experience and a strategic orientation, acting systematically, and confidence that allows them to engage with anyone.      

I have tried to deliver mixed teams and mixed leadership in my work . Below are some key parts of the approach coupled with real-life examples.

• Deep thinking, research and planning is key:  Community Researchers at The Social Innovation Partnership (Supported by Impact on Urban Health and Wellcome Trust – the second largest Foundation in the World) used a model that allowed us to tap into the cultural nuances of the local community, providing us with an insider approach to data gathering around COVID-19  experiences. The outcome of this work is richer research delivered by local people, and giving those very people a stake in the production of knowledge in their communities. 
• Building advisory teams and space to engage strategically :  Project Signal uses a data collaborative method that allows stakeholders to address the challenges and needs of the unemployed. This model gives opportunity and space to other organizations like employers and government workforce development boards to contribute data in real-time. The outcome of this work is worker voice and perspective is injected into the work and informs what data Community Development Organisations collect – when you ask workers what they want to see in training programs the answers are powerful, examples include a demand for mentoring / coaching into work and even looking towards the next role, or a request for help to navigate the ‘games’ that some HR functions can play / use to filter out ‘trainees’.

This creates effective tools and services to help individuals acquire new credentials, skills and a higher standard of living. The work is ongoing and the insights from workers are remarkable. Their views will lay the foundation for a “Data Trust” that will be soaked in the insight of workers and hopefully inform what professionals will do.

• Driving Mixed Teams/Mixed Leadership to influence the flow of capital:  JFF Fund is a community-led investment fund that will work with companies to solve business problems in a way that benefits workers and communities equally. JFF partnered with our team at Turning Basin Labs to conduct field research by asking workers themselves to play key roles in a participatory, community-driven research process to develop an investment fund that can support the growth of worker-centric employment models.

This work is ongoing in California. Contact us at @TBasinLabs on Twitter if you would like to partner with us.

• Thinking about sustainability and COOP ownership: Turning Basin Labs itself is a cooperative business that provides ownership to our most prolific workers, including profit share and access to essential benefits. Thanks to startup support from The Irvine Foundation (and further support from Kendeda and Philanthropic Ventures Foundation and others) TBL is focused on shared ownership, inclusion and growth, which we believe is the future of work. A clear example of us offering ownership is our partnership with JVS  where through completing an Earn and Learn Bookkeeping training and 8 weeks placement, workers end up with skills, a pathway to work, and ownership in our agency. 

TBL’s offer to employers is to use a service that hosts workers as W2 employees of TBL while they move from contract to contract. We believe that harnessing the shared ownership model for our workers is the path to re-wiring a fairer economy. Our work is finding that workers can add value to the sustainability and strategy of businesses, as our friends at JFF have written about, and as we explored at this event with former California Labor Secretary Julie Su.

Using models such as the above, it is clear that the idea of diversity in lived experience truly has a plethora of benefits. By recognizing the varying challenges each of us face, we are able to harness an approach that helps people secure a better quality of life through building inclusive frameworks.

Stephen Bediako OBE is the Executive Chair of The Social Innovation Partnership in London, England. He is also the Managing Director and co-founder of Turning Basin Labs and co-founder of the Bay Area based Path Group. Stephen recently received an Order of the British Empire honor in the 2021 Queens New Honours List for services in innovation in charity and social enterprise.

LinkedIn      |     Turning Basins Labs     |     Path Group

Photo courtesy of Oakland Rising, a foundation grantee.

Mixed teams and mixed leadership

This month ReWork the Bay’s partner Stephen Bediako OBE of Turning Basin Labsand the Path Groupshares learnings on how inclusive teams develop inclusive solutions.

As 2021 comes in to play, we need to be honest with ourselves. 2020 was a year that challenged, traumatized, and took loved ones. For those left behind, 2020 provided resilience and scars. It was also the culmination of approximately 40 years of a neo-liberal economic model that has dominated our socio-economic development strategies.

Today, COVID-19 has shined a light on a myriad of unintended consequences of these policies: inequality, social division, low trust in authority, a focus on identity, and much more.

In my work with colleagues, we’ve pursued a strategy we describe as “Mixed Teams and Mixed Leadership.” What this means is valuing the insight and expertise of life experiences and different stories that drive our society, equally with learned, academic and professional expertise…

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Big tech’s impact on politics, philanthropy and the economy

The booming success of many tech companies has been one of few bright spots for the Bay Area economy in the 2020 economic recession, amidst a crisis of small businesses closures and unemployed workers desperately waiting for another round of Federal relief

This month we explore perspectives on the impact of thriving big tech corporations and leaders on politics, philanthropy and workers.

First, workers:

• Automation isn’t inherently bad for workers, it depends how you use it. A broad coalition led by Athena calls on Amazon to stop using technology for worker surveillance and start using it to support worker well-being.
• COVID has accelerated remote work adoption in the tech sector, with workers leaving the Bay Area in search of more affordable places to live. Is this an opportunity for greater diversity in tech hiring? Or a chance to wean the Bay Area economy off of its reliance on tech, and strive for a more balanced economy that includes equitable opportunities for all workers?

Second, politics:

• In American democracy, wealth means power. Silicon Valley leaders are exerted growing influence over state and Federal policy, including bankrolling successful passage of the most expensive ballot initiative in US history. That initiative, Prop 22, is illustrative of the ability of corporations to use their wealth to influence policy to benefit their bottom line, at the expense of individuals and families. An upcoming Tech Equity Collaborative panel asks the question: “Should Tech Companies Be Political?”

Third, philanthropy:

• Tech companies and their leaders are sharing some of their rapidly growing wealth, by increasing their philanthropic giving.
• While these additional grant dollars provide important support to hard hit Bay Area communities, the growing role of tech in philanthropy can also come with pitfalls. For example, the Knight Foundation points to the propagation of a techno-solutionist mindset to social problems; rather than funding the long term, complex work necessary to realize an equitable economic future.

Read on for more insights and solutions from the field, and funding and job opportunities.

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We Choose People.

ReWork the Bay seeks a Bay Area where everyone can live full lives with security, dignity, and agency.

And for that to happen, we believe our society needs to center people.

Not profits, not economic growth, not innovation for innovation’s sake.

We Choose People.

What does it mean to Choose People?

It means seeing that the biggest threat posed by the future of work is not technological innovation, but the use of that technology to accelerate power imbalances between workers and companies. (seeColonizing the Futureby Kevin Donovan)

And that strategies exist within a capitalist economy that can counteract that trend. (see The Difference Between Shareholder and Stakeholder Capitalismby John Detrixhe and For Owners Seeking to Sell, an Option That Keeps Your Business Intact by Paul Sullivan)

It means interrogating assumptions about how our economy and labor market work. This includes questioning what (and whose) work we value enough to provide a living wage and safe work conditions; and whether we are actually a country of “self sufficient” individuals, or an interdependent network of people whose health and prosperity are inextricably linked.

Nowhere are these questions so stark as in our broken care economy. (See Building our Care Infrastructure For Equity, Economic Recovery and Beyond by Josephine Kalipeni and Julie Kashen)

It means believing the premise that “if we make the economy better for those who are suffering most, it stands to reason that those efforts would safeguard everyone else, too.” (Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman)

And recognizing that the future we seek will not be realized by clever new ideas from those with the most privilege and power in society. It will come only when the perspectives and ideas of those most marginalized take center stage. (see Black Women Best: The Framework We Need for an Equitable Economy by Kendra Bozarth, Grace Western and Janelle Jones)

And finally, it means doing the work to understand how each one of us has power and agency to be an active contributor toward a region where we all can thrive. This is not just an intellectual exercise; all of us, by virtue of our role at work, in family and community, have the opportunity to speak up, to learn, to grow, to decide, and to vote.

To Choose People.

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…but nothing can be changed until it is faced. – James Baldwin

Among other things, 2020 has been a year of facing hard truths. Intersecting health, economic and racial justice crises have made clear that:

• Structural racism and sexism are embedded in, and reinforced by, our political and economic systems.
• The American narrative of individualism, and a decades-long disinvestment in the public sector, has crippled our ability to care for each other and the planet when we need it most.
• When everything breaks down, the workers we rely on to meet our basic needs are often afforded the least pay, safety, benefits and agency.

And the list goes on…

But change doesn’t come from awareness alone. It must be followed by bold ideas, and brave action.

Like front-line workers in essential jobs standing up to corporate employers, demanding adequate health protections in spite of the risk of retaliation, and family providers of subsidized child care in California unionizing for the first time ever , increasing their power to advocate for better pay and more funding for subsidies and training;

Women of color leaders in Hawai’i developing a groundbreaking, intersectional feminist economic recovery plan, including advocating that stimulus spending not just focus on cisgender male-dominated infrastructure jobs;

And the Roosevelt Institute releasing its True New Deal policy proposal, rich with transformative policy recommendations for a more equitable future.

Facing hard truths, generating bold ideas and taking brave action are all critical to realizing a diverse and equitable Bay Area. Read on for more examples of local leaders taking action, and for ways you can get involved!

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Since the last recession, the popular narrative on job quality in the Bay Area has centered around creative perks offered by tech companies. But the reality for most people is that work in our region has gotten unsustainably insecure, poorly compensated, and unsafe.

Now in the COVID era, job quality inequities are exacerbated. Many office workers have been able to adjust to the pandemic in a remote work setting, while workers now recognized as “essential” are called on to shoulder even more risk in order to continue earning a living. These low-paid retail, domestic work, healthcare, and hospitality workers are predominately women of color and immigrants.

Public, philanthropic, community and business leaders are actively engaging in conversations about economic recovery. And there is common agreement that for our region to thrive, we need to improve job quality for Bay Area workers, especially workers of color.

But where intention is strong, the details of how that change will happen are not as clear. Will it come from voluntary employer pledges, new forms of worker organizing, policy change, shifts in how workforce development programs engage employers?

For guidance on this question, we look to partners grappling with this challenge from many different seats at the table. As is our way, we start with workers.

• In the feature story of this month’s edition of The Forge focused on the future of the labor movement, economic justice leader Andrea Dehlendorf of United for Respect casts a compelling vision for a forward-looking labor movement rooted in racial, gender, immigrant and climate justice;
• We also turn to public workforce leaders like the San Diego Workforce Partnership who offers concrete suggestions to build job quality efforts into workforce development programs; and
• Pacific Community Ventures’ Good Jobs, Good Business model used to support small businesses in improving job quality for their workers.

Read on for more thought-provoking content, funding opportunities, job opportunities and more…

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