He is the author of a series of articles and books drawing on these projects and centered on achieving fuller employment and expanding the middle class.

In a series of articles and books written during the 1980s and 1990s, based on experiences at the San Francisco Renaissance Center and other community-based organizations, he argues against the then-expanding social welfare system.

Since the early 2000s, his projects, first at the EDD and then through the CWA, continue to address workers who have greatest difficulty finding steady work.

He spent his final year of law school in Washington DC researching and writing a monograph on judge J. Skelly Wright.

[2] After graduating from law school in 1979, Bernick spent much of the next seven years in community job training, first with Arriba Juntos and then as the founding executive director of the San Francisco Renaissance Center.

The Renaissance Center developed literacy and vocational training classes, an early welfare to work program, and business ventures in cable assembly, carpet cleaning bike messenger services and a convenience store.

In his writings, Bernick was an early proponent of what became welfare reform under President Bill Clinton,[3] and of market-based approaches to vocational and literacy training.

At CWA, Bernick helped develop and oversee projects testing a range of employment strategies: re-employment for the long-term unemployed, apprenticeships in non-traditional fields, internet job search and placement tools, and public service employment for adults with developmental disabilities.He joined with La Cooperativa, Growth Sector, Transmosis, and other workforce intermediaries in worker retraining for growth occupations in engineering,[12] health care, trucking, and information technology.

In essays for Zocalo Public Square and other journals, he examined the breakdown in full-time employment and rise of alternative forms of employment,[15] the projected growth of the "non-knowledge economy,"[16] the evolving forms of job placement,[17] policies that restrict job creation,[18] crowdfunding and anti-poverty impacts,[19] and why most approaches today to wage inequality are ineffective.

Underlying the projects and writings are themes of expanding the middle class and achieving this expansion through a jobs strategy.

He argues against movements on the left toward guaranteed income and benefits expansions, and proposes approaches that emphasize the structure and confidence that only a job brings.

Moreover, "excerpts of a federal wire tap [released in connection with indictments] showed that Bernick regularly talked to contractors about extending a deal for them at the same time they were helping to raise campaign contributions for his re-election.

Bernick and a number of other parents immediately formed a pro-JROTC committee to reverse the decision and keep the JROTC program.