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November Ballot Measures in Turmoil: Fifteen Bucks Per Hour and a Football Stadium

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An attempt by the City of Upland to delay a referendum overturning its ban on medical marijuana dispensaries has led to an appellate court decision challenging the presumption of a two-thirds majority being needed for tax increases in citizen-based ballot measures.

This is huge. And what seems like a good thing could end up being a nightmare, thanks to flaws in California’s initiative process. This ruling should mean a restoration of ‘majority rules’ when it comes to citizen-driven projects.

However, given the rash of special interest gaming of the electoral process, it could mean the public will be paying for projects benefiting private interests. In San Diego, that means the path to success could be a whole lot easier in the San Diego Chargers’ quest for a new stadium.   [Read more…]

Study Shows Why Women Janitors and Security Guards Are At Risk

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By Debra Varnado / Capital & Main

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education are shining a light on troubling conditions they uncovered in the state’s property services industry. Their new report, Race to the Bottom: How Low‐Road Subcontracting Affects Working Conditions in California’s Property Services Industry, was released last week.

Women janitors and security guards in the industry— a rapidly growing sector of the state’s economy– are at increased risk of violence and sexual harassment, due to a combination of factors that allow the problems, as the study claims, “to occur and to remain unchecked.”   [Read more…]

Scientists Urge Feds to Continue Fracking Moratorium off CA Coast

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By Dan Bacher / Indybay

The opposition to environmentally destructive fracking in California’s marine waters is building rapidly. On March 22, over 30 prominent scientists urged the federal government to continue the moratorium on fracking in federal waters off the California coast and to prepare a comprehensive environmental impact statement for the controversial oil-industry technique.

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America, Got Fascism?

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By Frank Gormlie / OB Rag

Okay, America – are we ready for fascism?

As the presidential campaign season degenerated into racist and xenophobic diatribes by the Republican front runner, with those images of Trump supporters pledging their loyalty to him in Hitleresque salutes, after that scene in Chicago when the Trump rally was cancelled, triggering skirmishes between Trump supporters and demonstrators, it seems everybody is forming an opinion of whether Donald Trump is a fascist, comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini, and other dictators.
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San Diego’s Multi-Headed Beast of a “Citizens’ Plan” Initiative

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A whopper of a ballot petition has been stalking the city these past few months. It’s a 77-page proposal with the unwieldy title “The Citizens’ Plan for the Responsible Management of Major Tourism and Entertainment Resources.”

Whatever good intentions it may once have had (and I don’t doubt they existed), the “Citizens’ Plan” detoured down a back alley and emerged out the other end as a grotesque, multi-headed hydra.

Now, I’ve read the “Citizens’ Plan.” Then I read it again… and again. But for the heck of me, I can’t figure it out. And I’m not the only one!   [Read more…]

Meet Sarah Saez: Candidate for San Diego City Council District 9 (Part Two)

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Sarah Saez is best known locally for her work on the heroic United Taxi Workers of San Diego (UTWSD) campaign.  As labor leader Richard Barrera noted after their big win in 2014:

The victory by UTWSD comes five years after drivers, improperly classified as independent contractors and without NLRB recognition, came together and organized a strike to protest their wages, benefits, and working conditions.  Despite constant harassment, retaliation, and intimidation by permit holders and dispatch companies over the last five years, and despite obstruction by public agencies, these workers stuck together, fought back against injustice, and prevailed.  It reminds and teaches all of us that a union is not formed by formal government recognition, it is formed by workers standing together to fight for justice and a brighter future for their families. 

And the Taxi Workers’ victory was about more than just their own struggle in that, as I observed at the time, it provided a good example of precisely how [a] new kind of workers’ movement can succeed.”      [Read more…]

Meet Sarah Saez: Candidate for San Diego City Council District 9 (Part One)

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I’m running for City Council after being asked to do so by my community. I’m committed to supporting workers – including the working poor – fixed-income seniors, people of color and others who are ignored by our current political system. As a nonprofit professional and organizer, I also want to be the best constituent services councilmember ever in order to advance the quality of life for residents in the district and throughout San Diego. I believe I have the personal, professional, and academic experience to ensure that everyone in our community has an equal opportunity to succeed by continuing to draw from the wisdom of residents and strongly promoting the political voice of disenfranchised community members.   [Read more…]

Gonzalez Bill Opens the Door for Gig Economy Workers Rights

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Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez has (re-)introduced legislation (AB 1727) ensuring that independent contractors working in the gig economy are allowed workplace rights currently enjoyed by conventional employees. Thus begins what will likely be a multi-year struggle to redefine the role of labor in the 21st century.

The rights under consideration include negotiating as a group, communicating with customers and the public, boycotting or critiquing a hosting platform’s business practices, and reporting publicly or to law enforcement any practices in violation of local, state, or federal laws.

The 1099 Self-Organizing Act, as it’s called, would apply to businesses and workers in the “gig economy,” where companies use online systems and mobile apps to match laborers with customers. State labor law would be amended, allowing 10 or more independent contractors, who work for “hosting platforms” such as Uber and Lyft, to join in union-like groups and negotiate workplace protections.   [Read more…]

Is Jerry Brown Involved in the San Onofre Nuclear Plant Shutdown Scandal?

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Nuclear Shutdown News for February 2016

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Last year Nuclear Shutdown News reported on a scandal involving the San Onofre nuclear plant shutdown, and a secret deal that left its ratepayers holding the bag for a multibillion dollar debt for which the public bears no responsibility. This onerous debt will take consumers and their descendants decades to pay off if the powers that be get their way. But the people are fighting back.   [Read more…]

Illegal Pot Shops Sell Black Market Products, Challenging Legal Dispensaries

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By Dr. David Blair / A Green Alternative

A Green Alternative, after its first year of operation serving the community, still faces unique challenges in the evolution of the consumer friendly medical marijuana marketplace. The biggest problem legal dispensaries face are the illegal pot shops and delivery services, which pop up like weeks after a rainstorm; each time a licensed dispensary opens, three to four illegal pot shops open up right next to them.   [Read more…]

Dolores Huerta Joins Educators to Appeal Meritless Vergara Ruling

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By Steve Smith / Labor’s Edge

This morning (Thursday, February 25th) in Los Angeles, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta joined teachers and parents to appeal the flawed ruling in the Vergara case that would undercut public education to the detriment of the state’s 6 million students.

Stating that Judge Treu’s decision striking down five California Education Code provisions “is without support in law or fact,” the speakers predicted that Treu’s numerous errors will be clearly visible to the appeals court, and the earlier Superior Court judgment will be overturned. Treu’s decision was stayed pending appeal. But if upheld it would cause great harm to public education.

Huerta, renowned civil rights leader, founder of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, talked about the importance of teachers’ having a strong voice for students and described how the backers of the Vergara case, a group deceptively named Students Matter, misrepresented details of the case in an attempt to get her support.   [Read more…]

Occupy Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Speeches

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By Marjorie Cohn / Common Dreams

Hillary Clinton refuses to make public the transcripts of her speeches to big banks, three of which were worth a total of $675,000 to Goldman Sachs. She says she would release the transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes Republicans.” After all, she complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”

As the New York Times editorial board , “The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries.”

Hillary is not running in the primaries against Republicans, who, the Times noted, “make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

She is running against Bernie Sanders, “a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket on the industry speaking circuit,” according to the Times.   [Read more…]

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