Posts tagged California
Op-ed: Is anyone in charge of Los Angeles?
August 12, 2025 // LWithin days, the LA Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress — whose $3 million budget comes primarily from Delta Airlines, United Airlines and the American Hotel & Lodging Association — filed paperwork to put a citizen’s-veto referendum before voters in 2026. (Plummer is among the small businesspeople listed as the measure’s official proponents.) It would take 92,000 signatures to reach the ballot, but just filing the referendum had an immediate impact: delaying implementation of the law’s first planned pay increase on July 1, to $22.50 per hour. Frustrated by the possibility that years of lobbying could be wiped away with a corporate-backed campaign, organized labor launched a counteroffensive. In June, Unite Here Local 11 — which represents 32,000 workers across Southern California hotels, airports and sports arenas — filed a package of four ballot initiatives.
Novato city workers plan to strike for 2nd day Wednesday over sales tax funds
August 7, 2025 // According to the city's website, the measure's rise in sales tax from 8.5% to 9.25% should generate $10 million annually and help the city mend its $4 million budget deficit through the 2025/2026 fiscal year. Novato has cut city staffing by over 30 positions to manage a growing budget deficit, the city's site said, and one-time COVID-19 federal recovery funding that helped protect essential services has been depleted.
Proposed NJ regulations would impact up to 1.7 million self-employed workers
August 5, 2025 // Director of Independent Women’s Center for Economic Opportunity Patrice Onwuka told The Center Square that “New Jersey is proposing to alter its employment test that determines whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor.” Onwuka said that “instead of greater clarity, simplicity, and certainty, the NJ Department of Labor is introducing new uncertainty, confusion, and complexity” with this ABC test. The ABC test would go from three one-sentence factors that must be met to prove independent contractor status to three factors each burdened by numerous sub-factors or, as shown in an Independent Women news release.
California Tries Another Tack to Crush Ridesharing
August 4, 2025 // The latest legislative effort is Assembly Bill 1340, which passed the full Assembly in June and was approved by the Senate Transportation Committee in early July. It would allow drivers to unionize and “promote collective bargaining rights for transportation network drivers and state intent that the state action antitrust exemption apply to … drivers and their representatives.” Democrats couldn’t kill the industry quickly, so they’ll try to destroy it slowly via collective bargaining.
We’re Suing to Stop Unions from Stealing from Home Caregivers
August 4, 2025 // This isn’t the first time that Michigan caregivers have been targeted by unions seeking to skim dues off their stipends. Democrats put in place the same unjust policy in 2005, and the Service Employees International Union went on to take an estimated $34 million from home caregivers in just six years, before Republicans repealed it. But this time, caregivers like Tammy hopefully won’t have to wait for a change in power. The courts can protect them.
Lower courts ignore Supreme Court precedent to force union payments
August 2, 2025 // The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to answer that question. In an amicus brief filed July 24, the two organizations ask the Court to reaffirm and enforce the constitutional standard it set in the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision: that no money may be taken from a public employee’s paycheck for a union without the employee’s clear and affirmative consent. The brief supports two public workers who are respectively suing the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees as well as the International Union of Operating Engineers. Marcus Todd and Terry Klee
Safeway agrees to tentative agreement to prevent worker strike
July 27, 2025 //
Strategic sick days and coordinated slowdowns: the case for sabotage in Silicon Valley
July 27, 2025 // Picture a calendar, not a picket line. A product launch, a quarterly-earnings call, a major app update—those are the heartbeats. Miss one and the body panics. The new method maps three layers of the organism: The skeleton: the technical systems that really can't be turned off. The muscles: the org chart that decides who answers to whom. The nerves: the Slack channels, lunch tables, and after-work gaming groups where work actually gets done.
Dems have been bleeding working-class support. Now possible 2028 contenders are fighting with unions.
July 24, 2025 // High-profile Democratic governors fighting the Trump administration are also mired in bruising conflicts at home — with allies they’ll likely need to advance their presidential ambitions.
Unveiling Financial Transparency Failures in Labor Organizations
July 24, 2025 // In 2024 alone, the DOL recorded 177 union enforcement actions involving fraud, embezzlement, wire fraud, and falsified records. These are only the crimes that rise to the level of federal prosecution. Far more ethical violations, financial misuses, and questionable behaviors fall below the radar leaving union members in the dark and are quietly buried through internal repayments, hush resignations, or legal threats — all without any formal DOL investigation or public accountability. Despite 16 years as a union official, I did not become aware of the existence of LM-2 financial disclosure filings until our local filed a lawsuit against our state affiliate. Imagine that: even as a union president and past treasurer, I was unaware that both our state and national unions were required to submit LM-2 forms to the Department of Labor. If someone like me — deeply engaged in union governance — was kept in the dark, how can we expect average members to know their rights, much less exercise them?