By Hannah-Beth Jackson and Cristina Garcia
Special to the Bee
Over the past two years, the women’s caucus has helped restore more than $500 million into these programs, reinstating child care and preschool for more than 45,000 children.
By Dan Walters
The state Democratic Party’s weekend convention in Anaheim began just a day after Gov. Jerry Brown released his revised 2015-16 state budget.
One might expect a Democratic governor to use the occasion to trumpet an expanding economy, a multibillion-dollar cornucopia of new revenues and his plan to spend them. But Brown made only a token appearance, then vamoosed.
Brown’s reluctance to take the spotlight may have reflected what happened after he left.
To talk about income inequality in 2015 is largely to talk about women. In California – as in all but four other states – women account for the majority of workers making minimum wage.
By Dan Walters
Two efforts to expand paid and unpaid “family leave” for California workers – a major cause for the Legislature’s Women’s Caucus – generated sharp clashes Wednesday among powerful interest groups, but both survived committee votes.
One of the clashes was a surprise to members of the Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee – a late-blooming and rare division among labor unions.
By Patrick McGreevy
Democratic members of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus on Tuesday announced a package of legislation aimed at providing pay equity on the job, expanding access to child care, creating family-friendly workplaces and addressing poverty.
By Marisa Lagos
Are you a liberal Democrat who supports increased welfare payments or expanded access to subsidized child care or paid family leave?
Your best bet may just be to frame it as gender issue — not a way to fight poverty.
That’s the tactic many Democrats in the California Legislature are taking this year as they push bills that, in many cases, have failed in years past.
Ange-Marie Hancock, a professor of political science and gender studies at the University of Southern California, said it’s a pretty smart approach.
Politics Blog By Melody Gutierrez
The California Legislative Women’s Caucus announced a package of bills Tuesday aimed at improving the lives of working women by requiring employers to justify pay gaps among male and female employees and increase state-subsidized child care by $600 million.
The bills would also create more stability in work schedules and eliminate a rule that prohibits additional CalWORKS benefits for children born while a family is already receiving welfare assistance.
Gov. Jerry Brown will propose offering a $380 million tax credit for the working poor as part of his revised budget Thursday.
Information provided by the Brown administration says the tax credit would help as many as 2 million people who earn up to $13,870 a year for a family of four.
Brown has been under pressure from fellow Democrats and social welfare groups to spend some of the surplus revenue pouring into state coffers this year as California rebounds from the recession.