Juan and Manuel Salvador Orozco Cadena, a pair of fishermen from Baja California, Mexico, pushed off from Punta Lobos on the morning of November 4, 2015. Earlier, the Orozcos had repaired the transmission of their outboard motor, but then it broke down again. As night closed in, the brothers floated helplessly in their open panga 30 miles off the Pacific Coast, making intermittent contact by cellphone, before being rescued by the Mexican coast guard.
At the same moment the Orozcos had first pushed off into the sea, Airbnb executives 1,200 miles away were celebrating the defeat of a San Francisco ballot initiative aimed at regulating the short-stay rental titan. What could possibly be the connection between two Mexican fishermen adrift in the ocean and a company valued by Wall Street estimates at $25.5 billion?
The answer is Chip Conley, a good-looking, 55 year-old fit guy with a shaved head and a charismatic smile whose official full-time job is Head of Global Hospitality for Airbnb.
» Read more about: Ambassador Recalled: Airbnb’s Chip Conley’s Mexican Misadventure »
On Monday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a lawsuit that targets Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a nearly 40-year cornerstone of labor-management relations. At stake is the principle that, although public employees who don’t join a union cannot be required to pay for the union’s political activities, they can be charged an “agency” or “fair share” fee to pay for the services that the union is required by law to provide all members.
Capital & Main asked labor attorney and Century Foundation fellow Moshe Marvit, who studied Monday’s transcripts, for his assessment of the case, whose ruling is expected by June.
Capital & Main: Were there any surprises in Monday’s arguments?
Moshe Marvit: There had been some hope that [Justice Antonin] Scalia might be a little bit more open to California’s and the union’s arguments,
» Read more about: Moshe Marvit’s Six “Friedrichs” Takeaways »
Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the latest struggle over workers’ rights, a case whose oral arguments were heard Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court, clearly means different things to different groups. The passionate rhetoric around Friedrichs, and most of its proponents’ legal arguments, have focused on individual liberties and freedom of speech. “Paying fees to a union should not be a prerequisite for teaching in a public school,” Harlan Elrich, one of the plaintiffs, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. “No one in the U.S. should be forced to give money to a private organization he or she disagrees with fundamentally.”
But the main goal of those funding the case is, likely, to reshape the political landscape by neutralizing the power of organized labor. The broad impact of a successful suit will be to drain the union of dues,
Read transcript of today’s Supreme Court oral arguments in Friedrichs v. CTA
Last July, 2,000 conservatives and Tea Party activists gathered in Las Vegas for the annual FreedomFest, which featured GOP presidential frontrunners Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. But it was a fourth grade public school teacher from Orange County named Rebecca Friedrichs who promised the far right a prize that neither Trump nor Rubio could offer. Friedrichs and nine other California school teachers are part of a lawsuit now before the U.S. Supreme Court that could deliver a severe blow to the nation’s public-sector unions. It would radically upend the political power of labor — and also, conservatives hope, of the Democratic Party — across the United States.
Friedrichs’ message last summer was the same as she has told audiences elsewhere: “Supposed [union] benefits are not worth the moral costs.”
The “moral dilemma,” she claims,
» Read more about: Could Friedrichs v. CTA Be Labor’s ‘Citizens United’? »
“It’s raining! It’s pouring! Evictions are soaring!” chanted the small but defiant crowd on the corner of Vermont and Franklin avenues in Los Angeles’ gentrifying Los Feliz neighborhood. Holding signs reading, “Honk if your rent is too high” and “Where will you go when you can’t afford your neighborhood?” the demonstrators had come to protest the Ellis Act eviction of the residents of 1655-65 Rodney Drive from their 12 rent-stabilized apartments.
Evictees brought piñatas emblazoned with the names of their landlords.
Enacted in 1985, the Ellis Act provides a way for landlords to get out of the rental business other than selling their properties. Under this law, a landlord can evict an entire property’s residents with 120 days’ notice for most tenants, or a full year’s notice for senior citizens and disabled tenants. If the landlord tries to re-rent the apartment within five years,
In the Public Interest is happy to be kicking off 2016 with good news. Pushed by students and workers, the University of California has announced it will divest from private prison companies such as Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group.
This is yet another win for criminal justice reform—Columbia University divested from CCA last summer. The private corrections industry, which makes more profit when more people are in the system, is an obstacle to the changes many of us want to see.
The industry doesn’t want change. An executive with GEO Group, the second largest private prison operator in the U.S., recently boasted that the country would continue to “attract” crime. He shared the “good news” to investors: “The reality is, we are a very affluent country, we have loose borders and we have a bad education system.”
Private prison companies claim to do a better job more cheaply,
» Read more about: University of California Divests from Private Prison Industry »
On December 21, 2015, Organize Sacramento and Raise the Wage Sacramento filed documents with the city clerk to gather 21,503 valid voter signatures necessary to place a minimum-wage measure on this year’s November ballot. The measure would boost the city’s minimum wage to $15 by 2020, peg it to the Consumer Price Index and let workers earn paid sick leave.
Activists: City-approved wage hike is too low and too slow.
Two months earlier the city council, on a 6-3 vote, had approved a minimum-wage ordinance bump to $12.50 by 2020. For Organize Sacramento and Raise the Wage Sacramento, though, that was too low and slow, spurring the current ballot drive for a $15 minimum wage. The Democratic Party of Sacramento County, Restaurant Opportunities Center United , Capital Region Organizing Project and Center for Workers’ Rights also back the measure.
» Read more about: Sacramento’s Minimum-Wage Rumble Begins »
Historians may remember 2015 as the year of the minimum wage — and for good reason. Twenty-one states and multiple cities raised the minimum wage in the past 12 months, scarcely two years after the “Fight for $15” was dismissed as a pipe dream by some observers. The past year also saw other major advances for working Americans. Here are ten of the most important:
1) Bottoms Up: L.A. Minimum Wage Increase Caps Historic Year for Low-Wage Workers
This summer the City of Los Angeles enacted the most far-reaching minimum wage increase of any municipality in America. L.A. County did the same soon after, which means that over the next five years nearly one million people will see their pay rise to $15.37 an hour. They will also be covered by some of the strongest wage theft protections in the nation, ensuring they actually get the increases mandated by law.
Sebastian Alonzo graduated into “journeyman” status a couple of Fridays ago at the Iron Workers union hall in Norwalk. The 26-year old, who struggled to make it out of high school, completed the five-year training program and now will make top wage – about $33 an hour – in his trade.
“It’s the best achievement I’ve accomplished in my life,” he said, pointing out that his family came there that night to cheer him on.
As part of the graduation ritual, Alonzo and 35 other new journeymen stood in front of a packed audience whose members had traveled from across Los Angeles and Orange Counties to watch the proceedings. The graduates this night included men and women, whites, Latinos, African Americans and Asians. The group – as the cliché goes – looked like America.
To embrace someone as a brother or a sister is to incur obligations that are not easily discarded. » Read more about: Finding Grace at Local 416 »
Get this. In some states, charter school operators can purchase school buildings from public school districts — using taxpayer money. That’s right. The public pays twice for a building it no longer owns.
This scheme and many others are detailed in the National Education Policy Center’s new research brief on charter school policies. Through a study of policies from across the country, Bruce Baker and Gary Miron reveal how many charter operators use existing laws to profit from the privatization of public assets.
Their conclusion: Many current policies allow new actors into public education who skim profits from the system, pocketing money that might otherwise be spent on direct services for children.
These policies have serious costs. In Florida for example, a recent analysis by the Associated Press found that now-closed charter schools in 30 school districts had received more than $70 million in taxpayer money for capital needs.
» Read more about: How Charter Schools Skim and Scam Public Money »
See Dan Braun and Bill Raden’s report on the Capital & Main poll.
Read other Capital & Main stories on pension-cutting ballot proposals in California.
» Read more about: Infographic: Public Pension Ballot Proposals' Tepid Support »
Chuck Reed today declined to address the findings of a Capital & Main poll that showed weak support for two Reed-created ballot initiatives aimed at reducing pension benefits for California’s public employees. If either measure receives the necessary number of petition signatures to be placed on the 2016 ballot, it will face fierce opposition from organized labor.
The poll, conducted by David Binder Research, was released yesterday and showed that if an election were held today, the two measures would win between 40 and 42 percent of the vote. The survey sampled 500 likely voters and has an error margin of plus or minus 4.4 percent.
“I never make statements based on other people’s polling,” Reed told Capital & Main. “Especially in a political environment. We’ll make our decisions based on our own polling.”
Drafted by Reed, a former Democratic San Jose Mayor, and former Republican San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio,
» Read more about: Chuck Reed: No Comment on Weak Ballot Polling Numbers »
Ron Miller, the head of the Los Angeles Building Trades Council, says that it is a “ritual” for trades workers to drive around Los Angeles surveying the jobs they have worked on.
Virtually every person I’ve talked to who is currently building the Wilshire Grand Center tower in downtown Los Angeles plans to bring their friends and family members to the building once it is finished. Electrician Anthony Sotelo wants to book his mother into the Wilshire Grand’s hotel for at least one night so he can switch on the lights that he wired to make sure they turn on.
“You take pride in your work by showing your family what you have built,” he says.
One of the delights of completion is the possibility of taking material and psychological pleasure in what you have created, the ability to tell a full story that reveals the daily successes as well as the discords of a difficult project.
» Read more about: L.A. Construction Site: The Satisfactions of Completion »
A pair of potential ballot initiatives written to overhaul California’s public pensions could face a rough road, according to a new poll.
The results from a Capital & Main-David Binder Research poll of 500 likely voters shows that if the election were held today, the numbers of those voting for the measures and those against them appear to be dead even. Those numbers are not what pension-reduction advocates had hoped for going into the 2016 election cycle.
Drafted by former Democratic San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former Republican San Diego City Councilman Carl DeMaio, the so-called Voter Empowerment Initiative, and its sibling, the Government Pension Cap Act, received their official summary language (though not their official titles) from the state attorney general last week. Low numbers and lack of support among DeMaio’s fellow Republicans had already forced the pair to abandon a previous effort,
» Read more about: Breaking News: Poll Shows Pension Ballot Measures Already in Trouble »
Seven years ago local officials in Marin County, California organized to form a nonprofit electricity company with the noblest intentions. Buying and selling electricity allowed the group, Marin Clean Energy (MCE), to route around the local utility giant, Pacific Gas & Electric, which for years had resisted its customers’ pleas for cleaner, more reliable power, all the while “greenwashing” its image with marketing campaigns. “People wanted more of a sense of how their dollars were being invested,” Alex DiGiorgio, MCE’s community development manager, tells Capital & Main. “They wanted more access to competitively priced renewable energy.”
They also wanted to “catalyze local project development,” DiGiorgio says, to see their electricity bills go toward something more beneficial for the local community than large hydroelectric dams, polluting gas-fired power plants and a nuclear facility built over an earthquake fault.
But critics of the local-power movement say agencies like MCE — whose very reason for being was to stimulate renewable energy development — mostly support already extant renewable facilities.
» Read more about: Power Struggle: Will Local-Energy Groups Come Clean? »
There’s a chance that lawmakers in your city or state have recently floated something called “Pay for Success” as an innovative way to fund public services. Also known as Social Impact Bonds, Pay for Success programs bring the high-risk attitude of venture capital to critical, yet underfunded public services.
This week we, along with our allies, released A Guide for Evaluating Pay for Success Programs and Social Impact Bonds to help advocates better understand these new alternatives to public financing. Now communities can ask tough questions about a Pay for Success programs’ impact on vulnerable individuals and the public.
Though Wall Street investors like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America consider Pay for Success a “win-win,” some of these new programs look better on paper than they do in reality. The first program tried in the U.S. failed to reduce the rate by which adolescents housed on Rikers Island returned to jail.
You have to hand it to libertarian writer John Tierney. He doesn’t give up easily. His long-winded 1996 article, “Recycling Is Garbage,” allegedly smashed the New York Times Magazine‘s hate-mail record. It covered the same ground as his recent New York Times op-ed, “The Reign of Recycling,” stating: “Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America: a waste of time and money, a waste of human and natural resources.”
Is recycling really “the most wasteful activity in modern America?” That’s quite a charge. (What about all that Kardashian coverage?) But it may be true that it would be cheaper to put all our waste in a hole someplace and forget about it. Assuming, as Tierney does, that there are enough conveniently located holes. It would be even cheaper to use the medieval method of tossing it in the street.
» Read more about: NY Times Writer Recycles Old Ideas About Waste and Landfills »
The debate may be over in the scientific community about the threat of man-made climate change. But as world leaders continue negotiating in Paris this week at an international climate conference, many questions remain about what it will take to come up with a workable plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid catastrophic warming.
University of Massachusetts at Amherst economist Robert Pollin injects a note of optimism into the discussion with his recently published book, Greening the Global Economy (MIT Press). Pollin estimates that we need to invest about 1.5 percent of global GDP annually in clean energy and energy efficiency in order to slow warming enough to maintain a livable planet. The good news, he argues, is that we can decarbonize our economy without sacrificing economic growth and prosperity. Capital & Main interviewed Pollin while he was in New York on a book tour.
» Read more about: Robert Pollin Sees a Bit of Rainbow During Paris Climate Talks »
It’s unusual for a private contractor to terminate its own contract, especially a contract for $1.2 billion. But that just happened in Florida.
After two years of controversy, Corizon, America’s largest for-profit prison health care provider, just decided to end its care of 74,000 prisoners in the state. The company—which is owned by a private equity firm—says it is leaving because the contract terms aren’t flexible enough. But Corizon’s time in Florida has a familiar ring to it: understaffing, poor service and hundreds of lawsuits by prisoners.
Last year, 346 prisoners died in Florida prisons—the highest number in the state on record, even though the total number of prisoners has declined. Of those prisoners, 176 were listed with no immediate cause of death.
A recent state audit found nursing and staffing shortages, “notable disorganization” among medical records, and “life threatening” conditions.
» Read more about: Private Prison's Health Care: A Clear and Present Danger to Inmates »
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo has confirmed to Capital & Main that his city is nearing a settlement with its nine non-safety unions over a contentious pension-cutting law that resulted in an exodus of public employees, followed by costly legal actions. Measure B, passed in 2012, sought to reduce pensions for new hires, eliminate extra “bonus” checks to retirees and make it harder to qualify for disability retirement. It also called for veteran workers to either pay much more for their pensions or switch to a pension with reduced benefits.
The two sides appear to be moving closer to a settlement similar to one reached four months ago with police and fire unions.
How close? “Soon,” Liccardo said by telephone. “We don’t [quite] have all the signatures yet.”
Measure B is blamed for a brain drain of San Jose’s top city engineers and technical talent.
The story of Measure B and the damage it left in its wake is of more than academic interest,
» Read more about: Can San Jose Move Past Pension Measure's Toxic Fallout? »
