Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher

Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher is executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO— the first woman and first person of color to serve as chief officer of the AFL-CIO. She was sworn in on July 27, 2022. Having started her work life with the San Diego Labor Council’s Labor Participation nonprofit, in 2008 she became the political director and secretary-treasurer and chief officer of the San Diego–Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO. In 2013, she was elected to the California State Assembly, promising to fight for California’s working and middle classes. In 2014, she passed historic legislation to allow all Californians the ability to earn paid sick leave, creating a model for the nation to follow. In 2016, she authored a law-making California the first state in the nation to require farmworkers to be paid overtime after eight hours of work in a day. In 2019, she passed Assembly Bill 5, the strongest law in the country protecting workers against misclassification and wage theft. In 2021, she passed legislation to ensure California employers can be criminally prosecuted and imprisoned for engaging in intentional wage theft, and she authored the nation’s first law establishing worker protections against dangerous warehouse production quotas. She also served as chairwoman of the California Latino Legislative Caucus from 2019 to 2020. She currently serves on the Public Policy Institute of California’s Statewide Leadership Council. A graduate of Stanford University, she also holds a master’s degree from Georgetown University and a law degree from University of California, Los Angeles.