Posts tagged San Francisco
Bill enabling unionization of ride-hail drivers takes big step
June 17, 2025 // Under the bill, the state would require Uber, Lyft and other such companies on a quarterly basis to give to the Public Employment Relations Board a list of all California ride-hail drivers who have provided at least 20 rides in the preceding six months. The board would use that data to determine the median number of rides given by that pool of drivers. Under AB 1340 as it’s currently written, any driver who gave at least the median number of rides would be considered an active driver. An organization seeking to form a drivers union could then start the process by getting at least 10% of active drivers to authorize it to act as their representative.
Protests Go Beyond Immigration to Include Array of Left-Wing Causes
June 15, 2025 // “In this moment we must all stand together,” said Becky Pringle, the head of the National Education Association, the largest individual union in the country and one of the groups that sprang into action as the protests emerged in Los Angeles. Local chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a Communist Party offshoot of the Workers World Party, have also played a leading role, working with local leftist groups to post information about new demonstrations from California to Maine.
Union employees to vote on new VTA contract proposal months after transit strike
June 6, 2025 // In March, a county judge had ended a historic, multi-week strike - demanding the employees back to work. Now almost three months of negotiations later, VTA spokesperson Stacey Hendler Ross says a new proposal is on the table. "VTA has made a significantly different proposal this time with a cumulative increase in wages of 14.5% over four years," Hendler Ross said. "So that's 4%, 3.5%, 3% and 4%."
Chapter leaders allegedly mishandled over $100,000 in major federal union’s funds
May 28, 2025 // When Bruce took two trips from San Diego to suburban Washington, D.C., with his labor union leaders, and submitted $3,500 in expense reports for a daily rate, hotel, taxis, and airfare. His union president, who traveled separately, got reimbursed for about $8,500. But after Bruce got elected to a leadership position within the union, he found irregularities in the chapter’s records. Two iPads and an iPad mini were purchased for the chapter president in a three-year period. A $12,000 storage unit was approved by the treasurer, who made checks out to someone with her own last name to clean it out. A man with no formal position in the union signed checks, including to himself. In total, Bruce alleges that more than $116,000 went missing from the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 212 in San Francisco, which represents about 900 workers within the Department of Health and Human Services. No one has been charged with a crime in relation to the missing funds. The Department of Labor indicated it in April it had pending "investigative proceedings" related to the chapter.
Dozens of UC Workers, Labor Leaders Arrested While Protesting Understaffing, Unfair Wages
May 20, 2025 // Lorena Gonzalez, the president of the California Labor Federation, and Teresa Romero, the national president of United Farm Workers, joined about 20 union-backed UC workers who were zip-tied and removed from the William J. Rutter Center at UC San Francisco’s Mission Bay campus just after 9:30 a.m.
National Right to Work Foundation Launches Campaign to Expose Unite Here’s Bullying of Workers
May 12, 2025 // The NRLB is supposed to enforce federal labor law, including adjudicating disputes between management, union officials, and individual employees. Similar cases of UNITE HERE's malfeasance are being litigated in Washington, D.C., Boston, Seattle, and Orlando. As RedState reported, UNITE HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles struck the death knell to the 100-year-old iconic restaurant The Original Pantry Cafe, which was owned by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan. After Riordan's passing, his trust attempted to sell the restaurant. UNITE HERE swooped in, supposedly on behalf of the workers, and instead of protecting the employees, managed to wreak havoc.
Unions, cities, nonprofits sue to block Trump workforce cuts
May 1, 2025 // Musk has tempered his original goal for DOGE to slash $1 trillion from government spending, saying this month it was on track to cut $150 billion this year. The Trump administration has faced more than 200 lawsuits challenging its policies, with a significant number calling the president's directives unconstitutional. The case is American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO et al v Trump et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 25-03698.
Amazon faces legal complaint for refusing to negotiate with unionized S.F. workers
April 24, 2025 // A hearing is scheduled for August before an administrative law judge. If the judge rules against Amazon, the company could be ordered to begin negotiations — a move that may influence similar union efforts at warehouses in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Southern California. The San Francisco workers were part of a national strike last December, calling for higher wages, improved safety and official union recognition.
What would a general strike in the US actually look like?
April 10, 2025 // But organized labor can plan for a general strike in the future that may not break the terms of their contracts. The UAW has called to align all union contract terminations for the same date in 2028 as a way to promote united action and perhaps even a general strike by circumventing the prohibition on striking during a union contract. That call has already promoted wider discussion of general strikes in labor and social movements. Of course, different unions striking at the same time does not guarantee a united front around issues of common concern: The first half of 1946 saw nearly 3 million workers simultaneously on strike, including auto, steel, coal, railroad and many other industries, but unions pursued separate demands, made little effort to pool their strength, and settled with little consideration of the impact on those remaining on strike.
Principal, administrator unions rising steadily since COVID
January 15, 2025 // AFSA is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Meanwhile, school systems in cities like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and New York City created supplemental COVID agreements during negotiations with principals and alongside their school leader unions, he said. “In those supplemental COVID agreements, the principals were able to work out a number of issues, very similar to what the teachers were able to work out,” Treibitz said. “So post-COVID, we started getting a lot more calls” from school administrators from a wide variety of districts inquiring how to unionize, he said.