SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers confronting the changing definition of work have approved sweeping legislation designed to give many contract workers new pay and benefit protections, but tech giants Uber and Lyft vowed to keep fighting the changes, possibly by bankrolling an expensive fight on the 2020 ballot. The measure passed...
Gov. Newsom Gets Bill Capping Rent Increases
SACRAMENTO — Lawmakers sent Gov. Gavin Newsom legislation Wednesday capping rent increases as the state struggles with an affordable housing and a homelessness crisis. The cap expires in 2030 and would not apply to housing built within the last 15 years and single-family homes not owned by corporations or trusts....
Sorry Charlie: StarKist Ordered to Pay $100M Fine in Tuna Price-Fixing Case
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco on Wednesday ordered StarKist Co. to pay a $100 million fine in a canned tuna price-fixing conspiracy involving the industry's top three companies. The Pittsburgh-based company was also sentenced to 13 months of probation. The tuna giant had asked U.S. District...
Bill Giving Protections to 'Gig Workers' Sent to Governor
SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a bill Wednesday that would give new wage and benefit protections to workers at so-called gig economy companies such as Uber and Lyft where people pick up jobs on their own schedule. The 56-15 Assembly vote marked a victory for labor unions...
San Francisco's Iconic Cable Cars to Shut Down for Repairs
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco's iconic cable cars will stop running for 10 days starting Friday while they undergo the final repairs in a three-year restoration project of the gearboxes that propel the world-famous system up the city's notoriously steep hills. Shuttle buses will run along the three cable car...
Lawyer: John Hinckley Interested in Music Industry Job
WASHINGTON — The man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan is interested in getting a job in the music industry, possibly in California, his lawyer said at a court hearing in Washington on Tuesday. John Hinckley Jr., 64, lives in Virginia and was not present at the hearing. A...
Leaders of California Ministry Charged With Forced Labor
EL CENTRO — A dozen leaders of a California-based ministry were arrested Tuesday on charges that they used homeless people as forced labor, holding them in locked group homes and forcing them to panhandle up to nine hours a day, six days a week, U.S. prosecutors said. The former pastor...
California Senate Approves Bill Regulating Gig Economy
SACRAMENTO — The California Senate has passed a bill that would give new wage and benefit protections to workers at so-called gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft. The 29-11 vote late Tuesday sends the bill back to the state Assembly for final approval over strident Republican opposition. Democratic Gov....
Walters: Hot Politics in the Cul-De-Sac of California
Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo claimed California 477 years ago this month when his three-ship armada sailed into a bay he named “San Miguel,” which we know today as San Diego. Nearly a half-millennium later, San Diego is California’s second-largest city, but in a sense remains an isolated, almost self-contained, outpost....
What to Watch as CA Lawmakers Wrap up, From Gators to the Gig Economy
Endangered species, gig workers, children, universities, privacy, parolees who want to vote, people who want straighter teeth, and alligators. As California lawmakers wrap up the final week of the 2019 legislative year, the issues they are taking up are sweeping and eclectic, as end-of-session to-do lists usually are. More than...