Thomas Rankin was first appointed to the State Fund Board of Directors as a representative of organized labor in 2009 by Assembly speaker Karen Bass. He was reappointed to this position by Speakers John Perez in 2012 and Anthony Rendon in 2017 and 2022.
Rankin is the president emeritus of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, a former Executive Director of Worksafe, and currently serves as Vice President of the California Alliance for Retired Americans. Rankin also serves on the advisory boards for the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education and the UC Berkeley Occupational Health Program. On the national level, he serves on the steering committee of Strengthen Social Security and is an active member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
In 1983, after working for several years as an organizer, representative, and attorney for a variety of unions in both the private and public sectors, Rankin joined the Labor Federation as its Research Director and Legislative Representative. In 1996, he was elected President of the Federation.
After his retirement from the Federation in 2004, Rankin was named Labor Leader in Residence at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, where he taught a course on the “Politics of Labor Standards” at Boalt Hall School of Law.
Rankin, a key participant in all of the many legislative efforts to change California’s workers’ compensation laws from 1983 through 2012, attended Carleton College. After graduation, he studied and taught in Germany before coming to Berkeley to pursue a Master’s degree in history.
His experience in the American Federation of Teachers as a teaching assistant at UC Berkeley and later in the Service Employees Union as a social worker for Contra Costa county instilled in him an interest in labor law and in 1973, he received a Juris Doctor from Berkeley Law.
