Fair Work

Working Californians play a critical role in the state’s economy, the world’s fourth largest, but often lack an equity stake in the economic decisions that affect their lives, workplaces, and communities.

One in three workers in California is considered low wage, and 75% of workers paid low wages are people of color. Across critical industries, workers lack basic benefits; suffer violations of their labor rights, including wage theft; and resist speaking up on the job for fear of employer retaliation.

The Fair Work initiative centers on the belief that workers can strengthen their economic futures by gaining a greater voice in decisions about their jobs, lives, and communities. Since Fair Work was launched in 2018, worker rights groups and partners in California have made significant gains: substantially increasing their engagement and support of workers, leveraging worker voices to advance policy reforms that strengthen worker protections, and helping return millions in unpaid wage back to workers.

The Fair Work initiative seeks to ensure greater fairness and opportunity for workers in California by:

• Expanding worker organizing – helping partners better support and organize more working Californians to engage them on their rights and inform needed policy change
• Strengthening enforcement – advancing a set of integrated approaches that seek to strengthen California’s enforcement system and ensure workers receive their full wages due
• Improving job quality – supporting promising innovations, policy solutions, and public-private partnerships that improve job conditions in low-wage industries or increase access to secure employment

Impact Goals

Fair Work grantmaking is informed by the following impact goals:

• Low-wage workers are informed and civically engaged, and benefit from workplace improvements within industries.
• Strong and sustainable nonprofits improve conditions for low-wage workers.
• Organizations make progress in shifting the underlying conditions that adversely affect low-wage workers.

Click the document below for more information about Fair Work: where we began, what we’ve learned, and where we’re going in the years ahead.

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