Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon reappointed Tom Rankin to State Fund’s Board of Directors as a representative of organized labor. His term runs from January 1, 2017 through January 1, 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 for the California Alliance for Retired Americans. Rankin also serves on the advisory boards for the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, and the UC Berkeley Labor Occupation Health Program 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 and served as its President in 1996.
Upon his retirement from the Labor 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.
