Lorena Gonzalez on California Labor, Women in Trades and Worker Power

California Federation of Labor President Lorena Gonzalez discusses her father’s journey from Mexico to San Diego County’s strawberry fields, her mother’s 40-year nursing career and the retaliation she witnessed trying to organize, the landmark California legislation Gonzalez authored including the nation’s first statewide paid sick leave, farmworker overtime protections and criminal penalties for wage theft rooted in a misclassification battle stretching back to Ives v. South Buffalo Railway Co. in 1911 and New York Central R.R. Co. v. White in 1917, and why sustaining the current surge in public support for unions requires the movement to stay front-facing and fight the big fights rather than cutting back-room deals.