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
Workers at a large construction site in San Jose. (Photo: pbk-pg, via Shutterstock)OPINION: It’s taken an army of firefighters to battle California’s historic infernos. It will take an even larger army to rebuild the Golden State from the devastation. Even with all of the current skilled construction workers, California will need to train more to achieve our goals of getting families back in their homes and communities.
Sutter Brown at the state Capitol. (Illustration: Judd Hertzler/Capitol Weekly. Photo: Scott Duncan/Capitol Weekly)“Lists like the one you are about to read are a lot like most hairpieces: They’re probably a bad idea, but they do get a lot of people talking,” we wrote in 2009. Eight lists later, we’re still having fun – okay, not as much as before – but we think this list has value and is becoming something of an institution. At least, that’s what people tell us.
A retiree checks out the newspaper in his back yard. (Photo: Budimir Jevtic, Shutterstock)Calpensions: A board working on a proposal to enroll most small business employees in a state-run retirement savings plan, unless they opt out, was told last week that small technology-focused financial firms could do the job. The founders of three firms that offer 401(k)s and other retirement plans to small businesses did not object to competition from the state.
Tour goers flank a mannequin of Dorothea Puente at the house on F Street. (Photo: Steve Martarano)Reporter’s Notebook: “If you’re interested in bodies,” the watch commander said cryptically, “go out to 14th and F streets.” I pulled up to the curb just a heartbeat ahead of a Channel 40 van. Unbeknownst to me, Sacramento’s most sensational serial murder case had started to unfold. I walked up to the excavated mound of dirt on the side of the yard and the homicide lieutenant there met me, and quickly said police had just found what they had been digging for all day: human remains. The officer pointed to a slab of concrete covering the side yard and said they would start digging it up the next day looking for more bodies.
The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)After a loss of $100 billion in the recent recession, the CalPERS funding level dropped from 100 percent in 2007 to 61 percent in 2009. It has not recovered, despite a major bull market in which the S&P 500 index of large stocks tripled. “Even with the dramatic returns we have seen over the past six years, because the demographics of plans in general have changed and plans are now by and large cash-flow negative, it’s been very challenging to dig out of that hole,” Andrew Junkin, a Wilshire consultant, told the CalPERS board last week.
Obit: In his three decades on the federal bench, Lawrence Karlton presided over many high-profile cases including several involving California’s troubled prison system. In 2009 he forced the overhaul of California’s prison health care system and ordered the state to reduce prison overcrowding.
Pharmaceuticals and money -- elements in the debate over a cost-disclosure bill. (Photo: O.S. Fisher, Shutterstock)An attempt to force drug makers to disclose their costs and profits for drugs that sell wholesale for more than $10,000 annually was derailed in the Legislature, facing strong opposition from an industry targeting similar measures in other states. The forces battling over the bill include some of the most powerful in California.
The leaders of two local pension reforms, former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and former San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio, are working with a coalition on a statewide initiative to help local governments make cost-cutting pension reforms. During a break at the Reason Foundation’s third annual Pension Summit in Sacramento last week, the two men said they are “on the same page” and working with a coalition on the details of a proposed initiative for the November 2016 state ballot.
Three seats on the powerful board that governs California’s multibillion-dollar health insurance exchange are up for grabs, giving the Brown administration – whose allies already comprise a majority on the five-member board — an opportunity to name two new directors. Two seats held by appointees of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger expired last week. A third became vacant following the resignation last month of Robert Ross, the president of the nonprofit California Endowment.