Posts tagged Gavin Newsom
Déjà Vu All Over Again
April 14, 2025 // Reclassification attempts began with a media narrative, then blue-state legislation. The same thing is happening now with sectoral organizing.
Employers shouldn’t pay workers not to work: Paying people to strike should be a union’s job
April 14, 2025 // The bill is even worse than a similar one last year that would have allowed people on strike to collect UI benefits for four weeks. This year’s bill would allow for 12 weeks. You can imagine how harmful it would have been to the UI fund if this law had been in place in 2024 when Boeing machinists went on strike for more than seven weeks. Actually, you don’t have to imagine. The Employment Security Department (ESD) crunched the numbers related to providing UI benefits to striking workers in a large Boeing-style work stoppage last year. Paying 30,000 workers the max benefit under this year's version of the bill — three months — would have cost the fund around $367 million dollars.
CA fails audit of federal programs, 66% of COVID unemployment benefits in question
April 5, 2025 // The audit found that even in 2023 — years after the state made $55 billion in fraudulent COVID lockdown-era benefits payments — the state likely made “potentially ineligible payments” of nearly $200 million. The audit also found that of 138 pandemic unemployment assistance claimants that were tested, 91, or 66%, had verification issues. “While Gavin Newsom chases the national spotlight, Californians are left with an administration that can’t accomplish the basic functions of government,” said California State Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher to The Center Square. “The federal government is right to take a look at this spending and decide if it’s appropriate to keep throwing resources at an administration that treats it like Monopoly money.”
VTA asks for Gov. Newsom’s intervention to force striking union employees back to work
March 17, 2025 // The VTA, whose buses and light rail trains have been idled since workers walked out Monday, also disclosed Saturday filed March 10 for a Superior Court injunction to "stop the irreparable harm to the community." The transit authority argues that Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, representing more than 1,500 VTA workers, violated a "no strike" clause in its contract, even though the agreement expired at 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
California’s $20 Fast-Food Minimum Wage: Job Losses, Higher Food Prices, Increased Automation
February 19, 2025 // The BRG study found, “California’s fast-food restaurants lost 10,700 jobs between June 2023 and June 2024, making it the worst performing year outside of a recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, food prices at local restaurants have increased by 14.5% since the legislation was signed, nearly double the national average. AB 1228 was signed into law in October 2023 by Governor Gavin Newsom, creating the new $20 minimum wage for fast food employees – a massive 25% increase from the $16 minimum wage.
Worker rights? Racial bias? A law change for manicurists prompts debate, confusion
February 17, 2025 // Since the beginning of the year, licensed manicurists and nail salon owners in Orange County and across the state have been confused about whether a change in state law allows the business practice of renting a booth to continue or not. After an exemption expired under state law, nail salon workers are now subject to a rigorous test to determine if they are independent contractors while licensed aestheticians, electrologists, barbers and cosmetologists remain exempted from it.
Connecticut’s Nonsensical Plan to Subsidize Strikes
January 17, 2025 // A proposed workers' rights bill will worsen Connecticut's affordability crisis and ignite labor unrest. Proposals to provide striking workers with unemployment benefits and set arbitrary regulations for warehouse workers threaten Connecticut’s economic future. On January 14, two bills advanced in the Labor Committee that might well be the spark that ignites widespread labor unrest, even as the push imposes heavier burdens on our state’s consumers and taxpayers.
Restaurant Minimum Wage Hurting Businesses and the Workers Proponents Seek to Help
January 10, 2025 // For fast food operators, it’s not just this latest minimum wage increase. Since 2013, their minimum wages have increased from $8 to $20, which is 2.5 times. It’s unsurprising that they’re slashing jobs, cutting hours and raising prices. This also coincides with a major turn towards automation. Of course, automation is driven by many factors, not just increased labor costs – but they certainly don’t help.
California fast food restaurant owners warn that hiking $20 minimum wage will ‘cripple’ them
January 8, 2025 // The council, which consists of 10 members appointed by the governor, is empowered to raise the minimum wage by up to 3.5% — or the annual rate of inflation each year — beginning Jan. 1 of this year. The union representing fast food workers has accused restaurant owners of cutting employee hours in response to the wage increase — all but offsetting the hike in wages.
CA requires public school unionization lessons, bans mandatory anti-union work meetings
January 2, 2025 // Two new laws — AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and now SB 399, signed into law by Newsom this year, are set to help maintain or even increase union membership in the state. AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, requires California high school juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor, and students’ right to join a union. Education site Chalkboard News used public records requests to discover what exactly this new law is having teachers cover.