In a scene right out of Orange Is the New Black, 1,000 inmates at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio dumped their food in protest last week after maggots were found in the kitchen and dining areas. The prison’s food service program had been outsourced to the massive Aramark corporation.
Maggots have also been discovered in seven other prisons around the state – and Aramark runs the food service programs in all of them. Last month, maggots were discovered in two Michigan prisons where Aramark also runs the food service programs. The Philadelphia, PA-based corporation hasn’t taken responsibility, and officials in both states are sticking by the vendor, responding with small fines instead of canceling the contracts. Ohio fined Aramark $270,000 and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder fined the company a mere $200,000.
» Read more about: Outsourcing: Maggots on Aramark’s Prison Menu »
On Wednesday grocery shoppers at Food 4 Less stores throughout the Southland were met with smiles, picket signs and a message from the supermarket chain’s employees and supporters: Please don’t shop at Food 4 Less until its parent company, Kroger Company, signs a new union contract.
The most recent collective bargaining agreement between Food 4 Less and its workers expired June 8 and employees are concerned about work-standards reductions and a potential undercutting of medical benefits for 6,500 workers at 90 Southern California stores.
Kroger’s proposals include axing hours across the board and reducing company payments into employee health and welfare funds. The Cincinnati-based company recorded a half-billion-dollar profit for the first quarter of 2014.
At the Highland Park store on Figueroa near Avenue 52, Maribel Garcia, a United Food and Commercial Workers organizer, was unfazed by the August heat. She was still energetic after eight hours in the parking lot asking shoppers to support the boycott by seeking their groceries elsewhere.
» Read more about: Food 4 Less Workers Hang Tough With Boycott »
Thank god for wise, visionary billionaires! Until Tim Draper came along, Californians had no idea they were living in a failed state. Here we were, enjoying the illusory benefits of a budget surplus, a booming technology sector and robust political commitments to public education and public health.
But it took a Silicon Valley venture capitalist to remove our rose-tinted glasses. California is so big a hellhole, in fact, that Draper spent nearly $5 million to buy 1.3 million petition signatures – more than enough to place on the 2016 ballot a measure to break up our giant state into six teeny weeny ones. You see, California is such a dysfunctional mess that only dividing it in two will not fix it.
Cynics, of course, may see in this wealthy provocateur’s proposal to Balkanize California an ulterior political motive: to carve out of the new configuration four sparsely populated Republican-leaning states,
As Sacramento shifts into its August overdrive this week, three key health care reforms have been attracting fierce lobbying attacks by business interests and the hospital and health insurance industries, to keep them from advancing out of the Senate Appropriations Committee for floor votes. August 31 is the deadline for the full Assembly and state Senate to pass any bills destined for the governor’s desk.
AB 1522, known unofficially as the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, was introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) with the support of the California Labor Federation. It would make California, after Connecticut, the second state to require employers to provide paid sick leave for all of its workers. (The California Labor Federation is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
AB 503, the proposed hospital charity care law, introduced by Assemblymen Bob Wieckowski (D-Fremont) and Rob Bonta (D-Oakland),
» Read more about: Three Bills Aim to Strengthen California’s Health Care System »
Union grocery workers at Food 4 Less don’t want to Work 4 Less. That’s the message they’ll be delivering today (August 13) at 14 Southern California stores as they press the chain for a new contract. Their most recent collective bargaining agreement expired June 8 and Food 4 Less, which is owned by Ralph’s parent company, Kroger, wants to cut health and welfare contributions, along with work hours — while dumping more work on lower-paid employees.
For that reason the 90 stores’ 6,500 workers, who belong to Local 770 of the United Food & Commercial Workers union, have called on shoppers to boycott the chain. They also invite the public to “adopt” a Food 4 Less store and join them on picket lines Wednesday from 8 a.m. to noon.
Locations:
» Read more about: Food 4 Less Workers Ramp Up Boycott Today »
On Monday, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a request to the U.S. Supreme Court for judicial review of Blum v. Holder, a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The request, and the history that led up to it, provides a glimpse into the ways in which the free speech rights of political activists continue to be eroded as a result of the defining legal and constitutional framework of our era, the “War on Terror.”
The brainchild of the American Legislative Exchange Council, the AETA was crafted as a direct response to the extraordinary success of an animal rights campaign called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). SHAC had effectively employed what its members believed to be legal, constitutionally protected activity to disrupt the business practices of a notorious animal testing corporation accused of engaging routinely in horrific abuses of animals,
» Read more about: Fear for the First: Is Activist Speech Terrorism? »
One night last year, as the public debate about economic inequality began to sharpen, California State Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) was walking to the Berkeley premiere of a documentary film focused on that very subject. Inequality for All, narrated by former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich, had been executive-produced by the man DeSaulnier was walking with that evening, Stephen M. Silberstein. At the time, DeSaulnier was casting about for ways to attack economic inequality and during their walk Silberstein, a software entrepreneur and philanthropist, mentioned an idea he’d been working on to help tackle the problem.
Until the 1980s, corporate CEOs were paid 30 times the amount the average worker received, but today, according to some conservative estimates, they make about 330 times that. What if, Silberstein proposed, state corporate taxes were tied to a company’s annual CEO compensation relative to its employees’ wages? DeSaulnier liked what he heard and so,
» Read more about: Overcompensation: Tying Corporate Taxes to CEO Pay »
It might surprise many to learn that business people all over America have joined the fight against economic inequality. Here are 10 notable, wealthy individuals who have advocated for ending tax cuts on the rich and increasing programs for the poor:
Morris Pearl A managing director of the multibillion dollar, multinational investment management corporation BlackRock, Inc., Pearl is a member of Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength. The group petitioned President Obama to allow the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes greater than $1 million to expire “for the economic well-being of regular Americans.”
Stephen M. Silberstein This former U.C.» Read more about: 10 Business Leaders Who Just Say No to Economic Inequality »
A Ventura County judge Monday issued a setback to anti-pension zealots who have been working to roll back public employee benefits. The judge’s tentative ruling found fundamental flaws in a ballot measure to cut county employee pensions and concluded that putting it before voters would amount to nothing more than a waste of public tax dollars – a rebuke that must smart among groups who identify themselves as taxpayer advocates.
One of their central tactics has been to stir up resentment among the public, most of whom have seen their own benefits shrivel up over the years, then place measures on the ballot to slash public employee pensions. As Capital & Main’s Gary Cohn reported, anti-tax activists saw this particular Ventura measure as a template for what would be a wave of pension rollback measures.
“I guarantee you that when this passes, in 2016 every ’37 Act county will have this on their ballot,” Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy said at the time.
» Read more about: Illegal Ballot Measure a Setback for Anti-Pension Activists »
https://vimeo.com/101205760
Alone and Afraid from Capital & Main on Vimeo.
The clock is ticking for six refugee children from El Salvador and Guatemala who are plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit that seeks to compel the Obama administration to ensure access to legal representation for tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors facing deportation proceedings.
The plaintiffs are among the more than 50,000 Central American children who have illegally crossed the border into the Southwestern United States in recent months, fleeing threats of violence by transnational street gangs that arguably exert more effective control over the daily lives of residents in large swathes of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras than those countries’ national governments.
Over a period extending from this month to early next year, the six plaintiffs are scheduled to appear for their own deportation hearings.
» Read more about: Refugee Children Seek Representation in Courts »