After seven years of organizing and two vetoes, California domestic workers finally got some good news today as Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights into law. 

Negotiating a fair contract is a complex process that involves hard work and commitment from both labor and management. When both sides bargain in good faith and share a goal of securing a deal, a deal eventually gets done. I’ve personally been involved in many tough negotiations that ended with a fair deal both parties could live with. It takes patience and willingness from both sides to compromise.

California made history last night. With the support of California’s unions, the legislature voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10, the highest minimum wage in the country. The wage will be implemented in two steps: an increase to $9 per hour in July of next year, followed by another $1 increase to $10 in January of 2016. Gov. Jerry Brown has agreed to sign the bill, A.B. 10, authored by Assembly member Luis Alejo.

While many of the country's most active working family advocates were in Los Angeles for the AFL-CIO national convention, the rest of the country continued to operate, with legislation, elections and judicial decisions of significant importance continuing to move forward. Here are eight stories you might have missed while the media's attention was focused on the convention.

In 2004, after a long string of Republican governors and the shockingly narrow defeat of Prop. 72—which would have ushered in the most progressive health care reform ever implemented in the United States—California labor leaders got mad. And then they got organized. 

Delegates at the AFL-CIO’s quadrennial convention elected Tefere Gebre as the AFL-CIO’s new executive vice president this afternoon. Gebre was nominated  to succeed Arlene Holt Baker after she announced her retirement in July.

This Friday, the Los Angeles Black Worker Center (BWC) is holding its first-ever Black Workers Congress to bring workers and the Los Angeles community together to build support and share knowledge to transform the jobs crisis in communities of color. 

Two guest workers from Mexico filed a lawsuit in a California federal district court last week alleging systematic exploitation. The workers claim that during the seven years they worked for Butler Amusements, the largest carnival company in the western United States, they were “consistently underpaid” for their work “setting up, breaking down, transporting and maintaining machinery and equipment” at numerous fair sites in California, Arizona, Nevada and Idaho, as In These Times labor reporter Michelle Chen writes.

Union leaders and activists from around the country in Los Angeles on Sept. 8 for the AFL-CIO Convention will get a close look at a regional labor movement with membership numbers holding steady or even slightly increasing.

Compare this with much of the United States where the percentage of workers represented by unions is dropping rapidly and persistently.

In Bakersfield, Calif., on Wednesday, thousands rallied outside the office of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R) in support of a comprehensive immigration policy that includes a road map to citizenship. Republican leaders say they will not bring up the bill that was passed by the Senate, but instead will focus on several smaller immigration bills. María Elena Durazo, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said there will be consequences if House Republicans block the Senate bill.