Mary Newman

Some Bay Area workers commute for hours for the sake of affordable rent

Cindy Wood spends her weeknights in a vacant apartment at the Pacifica Senior Living facility in Oakland Heights, a long commute away from her husband and children in Santa Rosa. She works as the executive director of the gated senior living community, and recently had to move into an apartment on the property after being hospitalized for diverticulosis, a condition that develops when small pouches form within the wall of the colon. Before the move, she was commuting more than…

Cannabis industry in limbo as California ends pot prohibition

With the passage of Proposition 64 on the November 8 ballot, and new statewide medical cannabis regulations about to be implemented, California state regulators get to spend the next 13 months establishing all the rules needed for a state-regulated system. And it won’t be an easy task.

Construction boom brings industry jobs back to the Bay Area

Eight years after the financial meltdown on Wall Street, the Bay Area construction industry has finally managed to recover all the jobs it lost in the Great Recession. “From what I’ve seen and heard, we are doing better now than we were before the recession,” said Andreas Cluver, secretary-treasurer of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County, an umbrella organization of building trade unions. “We now have people coming off one job and quickly being called back out…

Labor Day picnic celebrates working person, attendees talk politics

Union members from Oakland and surrounding cities came to Alameda Point Park on Monday to enjoy some free hot dogs and to celebrate their solidarity at the annual East Bay Labor Day picnic. Political activity was not on the official program, but talk of the election could be heard coming from nearly every tent.