Image by SandraMaticOPINION – Nearly 40,000 frontline service and patient care workers at the University of California are ringing in the holiday season without a contract. For full-time workers who are struggling just to pay the rent and keep food on the table, it means uncertainty and tough choices.
Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. (Photo: Rendon's Twitter feed.)Timing is crucial in politics, and the battle over the Assembly speakership is no exception. The clock is ticking. If Rendon continues through the end of the current two-year session, then any change in the speakership will be decided in the next session, following the November elections, when all 80 Assembly seats are up for election.
A dialysis machine at work. (Photo:Aleksandr Ivasenko, via Shutterstock)Kidney dialysis may sound like an odd topic for a California ballot proposition, but voters will tangle with the issue on Nov. 3 — for the second time.The basic fight over Proposition 23 is between organized labor, which favors the initiative, and the dialysis clinic industry, which is opposed. Surrounding the debate are questions of medical care quality, clinic staffing, access, and costs.
San Francisco Marriott hotel employees picketing in October in support of better wages, benefits. (Photo: 1000Photography, via Shutterstock)California labor confronted major challenges last year but responded with frenetic organizing and a newfound aggressiveness—momentum unions hope to maintain in 2019. As 2018 opened, California had 2.49 million union members, roughly 15.5 percent of the state’s official working population
The silhouette of a sad man. (Photo: Freedom Studio, via Shutterstock)This is Suicide Prevention Week – a reminder that by learning the warning signs of suicide and how to intervene, every Californian has the opportunity to be a lifesaver.
A patient gets help walking at a nursing home. (Photo: Photographee.eu, via Shutterstock) OPINION: If there were Olympic medals for the delivery of quality care in the state’s nursing homes, California would have just scored gold, silver and bronze in seven separate categories. That’s how the federal government ranks the care that is currently delivered – 24 hours a day – to 350,000 residents in skilled nursing facilities in California.
Officials at the Orange County Central Men's Jail investigate the area where three inmates escaped.(Photo: Associated Press/ Nick Ut.)Federal officials warned for years of “poor supervision” at a Southern California jail where three inmates — all charged with violent felonies — recently escaped, documents obtained by The Marshall Project show. The men’s elaborate route to freedom seemed made for the movies: They cut through layers of metal and navigated plumbing tunnels to reach the roof. They then rappelled down four stories with makeshift ropes, perhaps strung together from bedsheets or jail clothing.