California

Amid Discouraging New Inequality Stats, Some Rays Of Hope

October 24, 2023 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! California, Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

Back in the early 20th century, earnest middle-class reformers out to overturn America’s plutocratic order gravitated to the pages of The Public, a weekly magazine whose editor, Louis Post, would become the U.S. assistant secretary of labor in 1913. One year later, the associate editor of The Public would offer a cutting critique of the legal system that so protected our nation’s plutocratic powers-that-be. That system, Stoughton Cooley of The Public avowed, rendered judgments “so far from justice and common sense” that average citizens believe “absolutely that the poor have no redress against the rich.”

How A California Child Care Workers’ Union Fought For Living Wages

October 18, 2023 Daisy Nguyen, KQED. Resist! California, Child Care, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Organizing isn’t easy for home-based workers because they work independently, but Harvey said she felt a duty to speak up for her industry because many providers were in the same situation she was in, but were too busy to effect change. It took two decades of organizing — a lot of it done during nap time — before Child Care Providers United won the right in 2019 to collectively bargain. The union represents 40,000 home-based child care providers. It is a partnership between two chapters of the Service Employees International Union locals and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Kaiser’s Massive Mental Health Care Settlement Sends Strong Message

October 15, 2023 Mark Kreidler, Scheer Post. Resist! California, Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, mental health, Worker Rights and Jobs

Kaiser Permanente’s $200 million settlement with the State of California for its repeated failures to provide patients with adequate and timely mental health care was a long while coming. The deficiencies themselves? Kaiser’s own employees say they’ve been hiding in plain sight. “Years and years of banging our heads against the wall have finally paid off,” said Ilana Marcucci-Morris, a therapist at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center. “This has the potential to make Kaiser a leader in mental health care, rather than a serial violator of mental health care laws.” The settlement, announced late Thursday by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care, includes a $50 million fine.

California Pension Funds Have Billions Invested In Fossil Fuel Companies Named In State’s Lawsuit

October 15, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. Educate! California, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Pension Funds

Over the past month and a half month, California lawmakers have enacted a pair of climate disclosure bills and endorsed a global call to end the fossil fuel era. In September, the state sued five oil majors and the chief industry lobby group to hold them accountable for climate change. Meanwhile, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) and California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) — the nation’s two largest state public pension funds — are resisting calls to divest from fossil fuels, and legislation that would have directed the funds to divest has once again stalled. CalSTRS and CalPERS collectively have over $4.3 billion invested in Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Shell, a new analysis from Stand.earth and Climate Safe Pensions Network has found.

How San Diego Built A Surveillance Apparatus

October 11, 2023 Jesse Marx, In These Times. Resist! California, Mass Surveillance, Police, San Diego, Surveillance, Sustainability

San Diego. California - It sounded smart on paper. In 2016, the San Diego City Council created a new infrastructure project related to its environmental initiatives: Thousands of streetlights would be retrofitted with energy-efficient LEDs. Plus, remote-controlled sensors would produce publicly accessible data on weather, traffic and parking. Considering the energy savings, the $30 million partnership with General Electric would pay for itself. Win-win. But today, the project is an example of how not to create “smart” city utilities. Those sensors included integrated cameras, and no councilmember formally opposed the potential surveillance issues. Most San Diego residents only learned they were filmed indiscriminately thanks to media reports — in 2019.

Biggest Health Worker Strike In United States History Begins

October 4, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! California, Colorado, Healthcare workers, Kaiser Permanente, Oregon, Staffing, Strikes, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., Worker Rights and Jobs

On October 4, 75,000 healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente facilities in several US states are set to go on strike for three days following the breakdown of contract negotiations last week. A coalition of several unions representing health workers in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia, and Washington, DC is battling the nonprofit health giant for safe staffing levels, cost of living pay increases, and against a two-tier pay system that Kaiser is trying to introduce. The largest union in the coalition is Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) with 57,443 members, but the coalition also includes Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 30, SEIU Local 49, OPEIU Local 2 and others.

Two Large Medical Groups Shun Medicare Advantage Plans

September 26, 2023 Cheryl Clark, MedPage Today. Resist! California, Health Care, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Physicians, Private health insurance

Signaling what may be an emerging national trend, two influential medical groups with San Diego-based Scripps Health are cancelling their Medicare Advantage contracts for 2024 because of low reimbursement and prior authorization hassles, leaving 30,000 enrolled seniors to look for new doctors, or different coverage. "Negotiations with the payers for MA with our medical foundation groups and Scripps Health were unsuccessful and we have been forced to withdraw from those plans due to annual losses that exceeded $75 million," Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today in an early morning email.

Half A Million California Workers Get A Raise And A Seat At The Table

September 21, 2023 Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect. Resist! California, McDonald's, Starbucks, Victory, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

In the realm of burgers and fries, California’s hot labor summer is sizzling. In a remarkable reversal of fortune, the state’s fast-food worker movement, created and steered by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), has compelled the giants of the fast-food industry (both national stalwarts like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, and Starbucks and local legends like In-N-Out) to withdraw their opposition to raising their workers’ wages and establishing a statewide labor-business board to deal with industry issues. Last year, after the legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that established such a council to raise those wages, the industry announced it would put $200 million behind a ballot measure it had devised to overturn that law.

Why Was Oakland Cut Out Of State Plan For High-Speed Internet?

September 1, 2023 Shomik Mukherjee, The Mercury News. Educate! California, Internet, Oakland, Red Lining

Oakland, California — The mission was supposed to be simple: At a moment when millions of students were being educated exclusively online, California’s leaders decided that high-speed internet should be available everywhere, even in places where residents struggle to afford it. So in 2021 the state directed millions in federal pandemic relief dollars and other funding– a total of $3.87 billion — to bridge the “digital divide” by installing fiber-optic cables that would bring high-speed internet to neighborhoods where it did not exist. Two years later, those ambitious plans appear to have been slashed disproportionately, threatening to leave some urban communities, including East Oakland and South Central Los Angeles, further behind.

Homelessness Crisis Exacerbates As Leaders Look The Other Way

August 31, 2023 Shabbir Rizvi, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! California, Chicago, Homelessness, Housing, Poverty

A quick trip through any major American city and you can see it for yourself – “tent cities” underneath highways or alongside parks, people sleeping on the sidewalk, overcrowded and resource-stripped shelters. It is estimated that there are nearly 600,000 homeless people across the US, marking the highest yearly surge since the government began tracking the data in 2007, according to the Wall Street Journal. Major cities like Los Angeles are seeing homeless populations spike almost 10 percent from last year. This problem has been deeply exacerbated in the post-pandemic era. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, rent was already skyrocketing due to inflation levels as well as “development projects”, forcing long-time residents, mainly minorities, out of their own neighborhoods.

I’m Proud To Stand Trial Defending The Right To Rescue Animals

August 31, 2023 Cassie King, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Animal Rights, Animals, California, FBI, Legal System

After over four years of our court case dragging on, my co-defendants and I are scheduled to go on trial Sept. 8 in Sonoma County, California. We are facing dozens of criminal charges, including eight felonies, for nonviolent animal rescues. Growing up, I prided myself on following the rules. I was a straight-A student and faithful Catholic. My teachers trusted me so much they let me teach the class. Today, I’ve been arrested multiple times as part of a group that’s being surveilled by the FBI. It might surprise you to know I still love following rules and doing what is right, but my understanding of what’s right has changed.

Policing The Police In The East Bay Area

August 25, 2023 Ann Garrison, Black Agenda Report. Resist! California, mental health, Police, Police accountability

If you think the San Francisco Bay Area is “woke,” you probably don’t know about East Contra Costa County, in the East Bay, where nearly half the City of Antioch’s police department are now on leave for police misconduct that includes exchanging racist, homophobic, and misogynist text messages, some of which include the n-word and references to Black people as gorillas and monkeys. In one instance it was revealed that one cop had sent another a text image depicting the Black police chief, who had been on the job for about a year, as a gorilla . The chief resigned shortly thereafter without saying why.

The Climate Culprits Hiding Their Role In California’s Extreme Weather

August 23, 2023 Rebecca Burns, The Lever. Educate! California, climate crisis, Corporatism, Extreme weather, State legislature

One of the nation’s most important climate fights is currently playing out under the radar in California, where state residents are weathering an unprecedented tropical storm. Oil and industry lobbying groups are spending millions in a last-ditch attempt to block first-of-its-kind legislation that would require thousands of large companies doing business in the state to fully disclose their carbon emissions, a move that would effectively set national policy. In the final weeks of California’s legislative session, which ends in mid-September, Assembly members are expected to vote on the climate transparency bill.

Thousands Of Los Angeles City Workers Stage 24-Hour Strike

August 9, 2023 Terry Collins, Portside. Resist! California, City Workers, Los Angeles, Strikes, Worker Rights and Jobs

Thousands of city workers in Los Angeles abandoned their jobs Tuesday in a one-day strike, calling attention to their claims of unfair labor practices and what they say is the city's unwillingness to bargain in good faith. The strike is the first work stoppage for employees in America's second-largest city in more than 40 years. About 11,000 city workers for SEIU Local 721, including sanitation workers, heavy-duty mechanics and engineers at the Los Angeles International Airport, custodians at public schools and lifeguards are staged the walkout and took to picket lines early Tuesday.

Healthcare Workers Picket At 50 Facilities In Fight For New Contracts

August 6, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! California, Colorado, Health Care, Kaiser Permanente, Oregon, Pickets, Unions, Washington, Worker Rights and Jobs

Unions representing more than 85,000 healthcare workers have held pickets at 50 facilities across California, Washington, Oregon and Colorado amid new contract negotiations as their current union contracts are set to expire on 30 September. The negotiations at Kaiser Permanente are the third largest set of contract negotiations in the US in 2023, behind the 340,000 workers at UPS who will be voting on a tentative agreement this month that was reached days before planned strike action, and 150,000 autoworkers at Ford, General Motors and Stellantis whose contracts are set to expire on 14 September.

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