California puts $34.9 million into outreach by community groups that teach workers their rights, and adds 15 grantees
The Department of Industrial Relations gave the figure on Aug. 31, as Labor Rights Week began. More than 100 nonprofits, unions and university programs now carry state information to workers, under grants that run through mid-2027.
Sacramento. California's Department of Industrial Relations said on Aug. 31 that it is investing $34.9 million to continue the California Workplace Outreach Project, which pays community organizations to tell workers about their rights at work. The department gave the figure as Labor Rights Week began, a national observance held each year with Mexican consulates.
The release did not say how the $34.9 million is divided or over what period, and no application round is open. The project is in a two-year cycle from about July 2025 to June 2027, and the department awarded grants for both years in 2025, according to its grant notice. Its web page says 89 organizations received $28 million for the first year, and that 15 new grantees join for the second, chosen in a supplemental round with about $9.6 million available.
Trusted messengers
The department calls its grantees trusted messengers: organizations rooted in their communities that can reach workers kept from state help by fear or misinformation. They go door to door, run phone banks and hold trainings and resource fairs, and some help workers prepare wage, safety or workers' compensation claims. The project began during the pandemic with 61 organizations and now has more than 100 grantees. The department says it has reached more than 2 million workers and employers in 42 languages, 11 of them Indigenous.
Applicants had to be exempt under Section 501(c)(3), (4) or (5) of the tax code, or work through a fiscal sponsor that is. In the supplemental round, a group doing outreach alone could receive up to $200,000 for 12 months, one adding events, training or direct help with claims up to $350,000, and one offering legal services up to $500,000. The grants cannot pay for lobbying, political contributions, fundraisers or food.
The department's list gives the largest of the 15 new grants, $400,000 for legal services, to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. United Farm Workers of America, Valley Onward and the Maintenance Industry Labor-Management Cooperation Trust Fund are listed at $350,000 each. The list is being updated as amounts are amended.
What comes next
Senate Bill 578 by Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, a Democrat from Los Angeles, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Oct. 13, 2025, writes the program into the Labor Code until Jan. 1, 2031. The department must run it when the Legislature appropriates money for it, choose nonprofit organizations through competitive applications and meet with them at least twice a year.
The supplemental round was paid for with money appropriated in 2025, and its notice left any further funding to future appropriations. In March, staff of an Assembly budget subcommittee wrote that the current cohort is scheduled to end in June 2027.
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