Keeping California’s workers safe

The challenge: Protecting America’s workers as workplace hazards evolve

In the mid-1900s, Americans who faced danger at work had to stay quiet if they wanted to keep their jobs. Workers who entered certain fields—construction, mining, textiles, or oil refinery work for example —were assumed to accept the risk. Injuries and deaths at work were barely counted. The less visible threats, such as exposure to toxic chemicals, ergonomic problems, or poor access to water, were often ignored.

But in 1970, things changed. The federal government adopted the Occupational Safety and Health Act and launched the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which set national safety standards for many fields and imposed penalties for violating them.

The law also permitted states to establish their own OSHA offices, as long as their standards met or exceeded federal rules. In 1974, California created Cal/OSHA, which oversaw state workplace health and safety conditions, and provided a means for employees to file complaints in confidence.

But the office did not have the resources to train California’s workforce—which at the time was between 8.5 to 9 million people—on how to use the new law to protect themselves. And Cal/OSHA needed outside help to get unions, non-union workers. and community groups to collaborate on workplace issues of mutual interest, such as toxic chemicals leaks and pandemic safety.

Finally, Cal/OSHA lacked a key political tool: An impartial third party to monitor health threats to workers, and make policy recommendations when new standards were needed.

The response: UC Berkeley’s Labor Occupational Health Program partners with government to protect Californians at work through coalition-building, training programs, impartial research, and skilled advocacy

In 1974, as Cal/OSHA was staffing up, UC Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education launched the Labor Occupational Health Program (LOHP) to help the Northern California labor movement understand their rights under the new state OSHA law—and to use them to the best advantage.

“LOHP had a very important role at that point, of trying to work with labor unions to help spread the word about people’s rights, and how to use OSHA effectively,” said Laura Stock, who retired as the organization’s director in 2025.

The center, now a part of the School of Public Health’s Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, seeks to reduce occupational injury, illness, and death by protecting the health and safety of workers locally, nationally and worldwide.

LOHP works to advance the principle that healthy jobs—those which pay a living wage, provide job security and benefits, protect against hazards and harassment, have reasonable workloads, and engage workers in the decisions that affect them—are a basic human right. Its mission bridges public health and worker’s rights.

They spread their message through public information campaigns, training, and partnerships with government agencies such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, and community groups, among them the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, California Rural Legal Assistance, Chinese Progressive Association, and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Organizations and individuals can call to request training or other help.

“People spend many of their waking hours at work,” said Suzanne Teran, MPH, who became LOHP director in January 2025. “We offer very practical resources, training, and research support aimed to improve working conditions for some of the most marginalized and vulnerable workers and communities.”

Since its founding more than 50 years ago, LOHP has taken on such diverse threats as ergonomic injuries, infectious disease, and violence—always with a special focus on the most vulnerable workers, among them teenagers and immigrants.

Among LOHP’s key victories was the strengthening of legal protections for domestic workers, hotel housekeepers, and janitors, an accomplishment they worked toward with the California Domestic Workers Coalition, SEIU-United Service Workers West, and other partners. The first set of protections, which took effect in 2023, were voluntary on the part of industry, and added guidelines for safer handling chemicals, ergonomics, and lifting. That law served as the template for the state law enacted in 2024, which covered domestic workers employed by a business or agency—about 175,000 workers.

Sulma Guzmán, deputy director of legislative affairs for the California Department of Industrial Relations, praised LOHP’s work establishing an advisory committee to help the state implement the new domestic worker protection law in time to meet the statutory deadline.

“I really appreciated how well they were able to work, not only within the demands of the government, but also ensuring that the workers had their voices heard,” Guzmán said.”We worked over a year to build this from scratch.”

New hazards mean new protections

Climate change has given LOHP a growing mandate to address both fire safety and heat-related workplace threats, such as extreme heat, fires, and floods.

In response to recent severe California fires, the group released a downloadable wildfire protection pocket guide, in Spanish and English. The guide analyzes the composition of wildfire smoke, and explains how to monitor the air quality index and when an employer must provide a respirator for protection. This and other workplace safety manuals are prepared for workers with low literacy. LOHP gives them out during training or community outreach sessions, and also distributes them to community partners to use during their own events.

“Sometimes, after a disaster, domestic workers have been asked to clean up homes that have ash and soot,” said Teran. “Day laborers are sent in to do cleaning or to use particular chemicals to do the cleaning without proper protection. It’s just not safe.”

Nestor André Castillo, an LOHP program coordinator, conducts “training of trainers” on fire safety, most recently in Sonoma. His students will then train second responders—not firefighters or emergency personnel, but those who handle the difficult work of cleaning up debris, or repairing homes and businesses, after the fires are out.

“Part of the job is just making the subject more accessible,” said Castillo. “Maybe the workers haven’t heard of what the Air Quality Index is, so we break it down; or they don’t have an understanding that smoke is really bad for you—we break it down a little bit so people aren’t intimidated.”

When California developed its new Indoor Heat Standard in 2024, which protects employees, LOHP won support from the California Department of Public Health to teach workers and union staff across warehouse, industrial laundry, food service, and transportation industries to understand and to adapt to their new protections, which kick in when the indoor temperature is reaches 82 degrees.

LOHP developed the first public information campaign—in partnership with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health—to protect non-English speakering workers from heat illness. These resources continue to be used to educate workers about the right to water, rest, and shade.

According to the Workers Compensation Research Institute, based in Massachusetts, California’s outdoor workplace heat regulations have had a dramatic effect on heat-related injuries and illnesses.

Workplace ergonomics are part of worker safety, too

And LOHP continues to address ergonomic hazards. The organization partnered with the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and other academic partners to investigate how increasing the speed of pork processing lines has impacted worker health and safety.

The resulting report, done in conjunction with UCSF and the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, found that four in five evaluated workers were found to be at high risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders, and that two in five evaluated workers reported moderate to severe work-related pain in the past year, but didn’t inform their supervisors due to fears of job loss.

“That was probably the largest independent study of cumulative injuries, repetitive injuries among poultry processing and pork processing workers,” said Dr. Robert J. Harrison, who directs the worker tracking investigations program for the California Department of Public Health.

“We did incredibly careful measurements of their repetition and the amount of effort that their arms were making, and we found that the vast majority of workers were working constantly in pain,” Dr. Harrison said. “About two-thirds of the jobs were dangerous—jobs that could cause injuries to nerves and muscles. There weren’t enough workers and the line speeds were going too fast.”

To Teran, LOHP’s mission to protect workers must include immigrants, who often have the most hazardous jobs, with the least protections. These days, she has added safety planning for workers, to prepare for immigration enforcement.

“Immigrant workers have been a very big focus of LOHP, as we recognize they work in some of the most dangerous industries,” Teran said. “We are seeing how immigration enforcement can not only silence workers, but create this atmosphere of fear, which impacts the community in a very real, cruel way. This is a workplace hazard that everybody has to respond to.”