721 members who’ve participated in Sacramento lobby days know that it’s hot, stressful and often tedious work. But it’s all worth it if, after all the running between offices in the sweltering Sacramento sun, the marathon committee hearings, the rushed meetings with harried legislators and the line-by-line review of bills, you score victories like 721 members just achieved for county eligibility workers and children’s social workers.

SB 1341 is a Huge Win for Elegibility Workers

SEIU 721 pulled out all the stops to advocate for two bills this session. The first: SB 1341, co-sponsored by SEIU and the California Welfare Directors Association and authored by Senator Holly Mitchell, codifies in state law the use of the State Automated Welfare System for informing beneficiaries and applicants about their eligibility, enrollment or disenrollment in health coverage. In practical terms, it protects consumers and county workers from additional state attempts to privatize eligibility work, cut safety net services for the poor, and reduce county work forces.

AB 1978 Protects County Social Workers

Authored by Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, a member of SEIU 721, AB 1978 gives children’s social workers a venue to report and expose problems and abuses in the child welfare system without risking retaliation. It establishes a hotline and a process for involving frontline social workers in reforming a slow-moving bureaucracy that has buried children’s social workers under huge caseloads and mountains of paperwork at the expense of protecting vulnerable children.

Bob Schoonover, President