Caitlin Vega is hopeful for the future of labor despite disappointing vetoes from Gov. Gavin Newsom

Caitlin Vega, the general counsel of the California Federation of Labor, has a lot to be happy about. And she is, sort of. Union membership in the United States ticked up a bit last year for the first time in decades. President Joe Biden joined a United Auto Workers' picket line last month in the latest demonstration of his strong support for labor, and workers are flexing their muscles in ways that the nation hasn't seen in at least 20 years.

But Vega, who grew up going to union meetings with her construction worker father and dreamed of being a labor organizer, is a longtime political operator in Sacramento and knows how to survey the landscape.

"I always planned that I would work for the labor movement. I did organizing while I was in college. Then I decided I would be more effective if I became a lawyer and learned the laws that impact workers so that I could know what I was getting people into." she said.

What she sees now leaves her optimistic but cautious. Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed several bills in recent days that were high on labor's wish list. And employers are promising to bring more court challenges to pro-worker laws and rules.

"I do feel like we're in a new era," Vega concluded. "As someone who's been in labor for a long time, I do think this is probably the most hopeful people have felt about our ability to change this economy and bring more workers into the labor movement."

But there is a lot on her mind. In an interview Thursday, Vega discussed automation, universal basic income and why she thinks Americans weren't turned off by multimillionaire actors on the picket line. This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity:

Daily Journal: Which law that Newsom signed this year do you think will have the biggest impact on workers?

Vega: Wow! That's an interesting question. I would say I think that the laws that we were hopeful would have had the most dramatic impact were not signed. They were vetoed.

DJ: You anticipated my next question: Which of the vetoes are you most disappointed about?

Vega: One was the bill that would have allowed workers on strike to access unemployment benefits. California has not been able to solve the problem of income inequality. Even with a Democratic trifecta in power, and lots of good laws that have been passed, we have incredible levels of income inequality.

Another was the bill on driverless trucks. Across the board in every industry, workers' lives are being changed through automation and technology. We've been grappling with that over the past few years, but all of a sudden it's accelerated to the point where they're saying, "We don't even need the worker anymore. We can just have a big rig drive itself." I think that's going to be an increasingly important front for the labor movement to fight on in the next few years.

DJ: Aren't there some jobs that should be automated? For instance, are we going to look back at some point in time and say, "Why did we ever want to have people in fields picking food? That was a horrible existence for a lot of people." Why wouldn't we want those jobs automated?

Vega: That's an interesting question. I will just say from personal experience, my mother-in-law was a farmworker for 36 years, and when she talks about her time working, it is with such -- work is tremendously meaningful in people's lives. Her friendships with the women, especially in her crew, were so deep and meaningful. I'm glad she had that opportunity, and I would like to make those jobs as highly paid and as safe as we possibly can. I think that's the best use of technology and automation.

DJ: What's your position or labor's position on guaranteed basic income?

Vega: Our priority is creating good jobs. We don't want to see some sort of a plan for tech companies to pay into a fund that then goes out to workers to not work. That doesn't seem like a society that we want to live in.

DJ: How do you think the Hollywood strikes have impacted labor's image? Do you think Joe Public is turned off by seeing actors who are paid millions of dollars on the picket line, even though they're not who the strike is for?

Vega: When it started we might have expected that. It's a unique industry in many ways, and it's one that many people wish they could work in, and feel like it's very glamorous. I think that the writers and the actors have done a pretty incredible job of communicating that the issues they face are so interconnected with what other workers are dealing with, particularly around the ideas about displacement and the use of technology. I actually saw a poll that showed 70% of the public support them over the studios. There was another poll that said 68% supported the autoworkers. I thought, "How interesting that people even more identify with them."

DJ: President Biden is certainly supportive of the autoworkers. Do you agree with Biden that he is the most pro-union president we've ever had?

Vega: Without a doubt. Yes.

DJ: What do you make of him going on the picket line the other day?

Vega: I think that President Biden is tapping into the American mood that the most basic idea of an American worker who builds things, who is skilled, who creates valuable products that people want to use, and then gets to enjoy the kind of life that we think working class people doing good skilled jobs should get to have. They should be able to buy a house and send kids to college and live a dignified life. We've seen such backsliding over the past few decades, where there's been such a race to the bottom through deindustrialization, and free trade agreements, and attacks on unions. President Biden has seen that that's where the American people are, and where he should be.

DJ: And what do you make of former President Trump also going to Michigan to support the autoworkers?

Vega: Trump tapped in early to this mood, before a lot of people had fully recognized it. He, as a person, has never been on the side of the worker, or the powerless, or the people who are in need, in this society or in this economy. But he likes that imagery, and he always has. What I'm hopeful for is that we don't have fake populism where we have Republicans who want to cut taxes for the rich and bust unions go run out to a UAW picket line because it's tough guys with pickup trucks.

DJ: Jennifer Abruzzo, a former lawyer at the Communications Workers of America, is now making a lot of changes at the National Labor Relations Board. What's the one thing that she's done, or is trying to do, that will have the biggest impact on workers?

Vega: The Cemex case was incredibly important for the labor movement. Many people in the labor movement had given up on the NLRB, and even on the process, and felt like it is a process so stacked against workers that we almost have to come up with new things and let it die, because it's so toothless in holding companies accountable when they fire workers for organizing, when they call immigration on workers for organizing, when they shut down in response to organizing. I feel like Jennifer Abruzzo and this NLRB have breathed new life into that law, and really said there could be a world where there are penalties when employers do this.

DJ: The Cemex case, which the board handed down in August, changed the burden of proof when employers are required to bargain with unions without a representation election. [Cemex Construction Materials Pacific LLC, NLRB Case No. 28-CA-230115.] Robert Millman, a management-side lawyer at Littler Mendelson, predicted in an interview last month with the Daily Journal that this case and several others at the NLRB will face many legal challenges. How do you think the courts will come down on these questions?

Vega: Former President Trump was incredibly successful in getting federal judges appointed. I think that that is part of why the employer side, the corporate side, has a lot more faith in the courts than they probably did in previous years. Management's strategy has often been to delay, to litigate, anything that gets you around actually having to deal with the union. I don't see that as something that new. They may just be more optimistic about the kinds of rulings they will get. We'll have to see where we go in terms of this judiciary and how much of all this gets upheld.

DJ: Last week the U.S. Labor Department accused a poultry plant in L.A. of using child labor. There have also been several meat plants in the Midwest accused of using child labor. Has there been a resurgence of child labor, or was it there all along and we didn't know about it?

Vega: I'm so glad you raised that because it is so shocking to see a move back to these conditions that are so barbaric, that we think of as things we got rid of 120 years ago. It's absolutely shocking to see. I think, sadly, in most of these cases, you're seeing migrant kids being exploited, which goes to all of the unfairness of our current immigration system, where we have young people who have nobody to protect them and no path to legalization. They're being used as a disposable labor force in work sites.

I will just mention, we did a bill this year, AB 800, which focused on educating high school students about their rights at work and how to get help when their rights are violated. Part of that is, we know many kids have to work to help support their families. Also, many kids are the translators for their parents. The parent comes home with a pay stub and says, "This doesn't seem right." We want kids to know how to read that, and how to calculate, and how to look out for their families as well as themselves.

DJ: Last question. We've talked about all of these things that seem to be going in labor's favor, but last year, the union roles only went up about half a percent. It isn't a lot. Are you optimistic that this is the start of a trend? Will we see union participation continue to rise in the coming years?

Vega: Unions are more popular than they've probably ever been in polls. Especially among young people, you're up to almost 90% support for labor unions. Starbucks is organizing; workers who people never thought would actually be in unions. Look at Teamsters at UPS, UAW workers in the auto plants, rising up and fighting back against all the things that weakened unions. The two-tier contracts, where you have people being hired in at lower wages, that then makes it harder to organize the nonunion, like at Amazon or Tesla. We see this surge in worker militancy, in union democracy, in workers ready to fight for what they believe in, and what they think they deserve. So how could we not be hopeful?