Labor

Jerry Brown vetoes domestic workers bill of rights

The California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Sunday. The bill, designed for workers who act as babysitters and homecare providers, would have mandated rest and meal breaks and overtime pay to domestic workers in California, making it the second state in the country after New York to do so. “It was a big betrayal,” an angry-sounding Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, one of the bill’s co-authors, said in a phone interview Monday. “Maybe…

Proposed Domestic Workers Bill of Rights elicits varied opinions

As Gov. Jerry Brown decides whether he will sign the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights (AB 889), reactions to the bill and the prospect of monitoring and enforcing its stipulations —which include overtime pay, mandatory rest and meal breaks, and fair sleeping conditions for workers—remain mixed.

Breaking down the CA Domestic Workers Bill of Rights

Should California end up following the guidelines used for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in New York, the only other state in the country to adopt such a law, then private employers of full-time babysitters and caretakers will need to follow some new rules.

Planning Commission votes down BevMo! permit requests

At the Oakland City Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday at City Hall, the commission voted against conditional use permits requested by Beverages and More (BevMo!) which has leased space on Piedmont Avenue at Montell Street to open a specialty liquor store. Approximately 60 residents and merchants from Piedmont Avenue attended the meeting, urging the commission to decline BevMo’s permit applications, which were submitted in June. A smaller group of BevMo! employees and neighbors urged them to approve the permits. In…

Total Estate Liquidation: Selling the goods with soul

From the time she was a sociology graduate student at University of California, Berkeley in 1990s, Kathy Pimpan has been fascinated by the relationship between people and things. Now her Oakland-based business, Total Estate Liquidation, helps clients dispose of things they’ve collected over a lifetime and find hard to part with, or assists families when they are overwhelmed by dealing with their late grandmother’s cluttered residence.

Labor council decides not to sanction picket line at Lakeview Elementary

During a closed meeting on Wednesday, the Alameda Central Labor Council—an organization that represents over 100 workers’ unions and helps employers bargain to improve their workplaces—decided against a motion to sanction a workers’ picket line in front of Lakeview Elementary School which would have prevented unionized workers employed by the district from helping to develop the site into administrative offices.