Category: Labor

by Todd Walters / Times of San Diego / Feb. 24, 2026

Public office demands more than ambition. It demands principles. It demands courage. And above all, it demands accountability.

That is why I cannot stay silent about San Diego Unified Board President Richard Barrera and his bid for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Leadership is not defined by titles held or campaigns launched. It is defined in moments of crisis, when speaking up carries risk, when loyalty to power conflicts with loyalty to people, and when silence becomes a choice.

During one of the most painful chapters in our union’s history, Barrera made that choice.

For years, former United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 135 President Mickey Kasparian faced multiple public allegations and lawsuits involving sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation. These were not whispers. They were reported, litigated, protested and deeply felt by labor and the broader community.

At that time, Barrera served as secretary-treasurer of the union. He was widely regarded as Kasparian’s right-hand man, a senior officer with influence, access and authority. If there was ever a moment that called for moral clarity, this was it.

And yet, he remained silent.

by Calista Stocker and Myckenzie Smith / Daily Aztec / February 17, 2026

On the first day of CSU Unit 6’s Unfair Labor Practice strike, members were met with support, administrative attention and some police pushback.

From 5 a.m. to 12 p.m., more than 50 skilled trades workers — including facilities services, electricians and technicians — showed up at SDSU to fight for unpaid contractual raises and step increases that were promised to them in July 2025.

As a facet of the Local Teamsters 2010, CSU Unit 6 represents more than 1,100 skilled trades workers systemwide. From now until Friday, union members are withholding their labor across CSU’s 22 campuses.

For the striking members, the campus disruption is a necessary evil and a last resort to obtain their overdue raises.

31,000 Kaiser nurses and other professionals vow to strike until fair contract agreement is reached.

By City News Service / NBC7  / February 16, 2026

Kaiser Permanente nurses and health care workers in the San Diego area will remain on picket lines Monday as their open-ended strike alleging unfair labor practices amid prolonged contract talks enters it’s fourth week.

The roughly 31,000 members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals vowed to stay on strike until a fair contract agreement is reached. UNAC/UHCP members include registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists, dietitians and other specialty health care professionals.

Picketing resumes at 9 a.m. Monday at San Diego Medical Center, 9455 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.

In a potentially explosive development, the largest private section union in San Diego has called upon the state-wide teachers’ union to withdraw their recommendation of Richard Barrera for California State Superintendent. Barrera is a trustee with San Diego Unified School District.

On February 9, the head of Local 135 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Todd Walters, sent a letter via email to David Goldberg, president of the influential state-wide California Teachers Association (CTA) requesting that they withdraw their recommendation of Barrera because of his role and lack of leadership during a scandal involving his former union, UFCW Local 135. It revolves around a former UFCW Local 135 president, Mickey Kasparian, who eventually resigned in disgrace.

In a statement from the Local, the main claim is explained:

“At the center of UFCW Local 135’s concerns are Barrera’s record of leadership, specifically his refusal to speak out or take meaningful action during” the scandal.

“Barrera served as Secretary-Treasurer of UFCW Local 135 and was widely regarded as Kasparian’s right-hand man. During a period marked by public allegations and lawsuits involving sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and retaliation, Barrera remained silent. He did not publicly challenge Kasparian, nor did he stand with the women who came forward.”

By  Kate Callen / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / Jan. 30 – Feb. 1, 2026

Any government facing a financial implosion has three options: increase revenue with new or expanded taxes or fees, cut spending by reducing services and cut spending by shrinking the workforce.

The city of San Diego is aggressively pursuing Option 1 (trash fees, Balboa Park parking) and gingerly exploring Option 2 (eliminating services to neighborhoods). But Option 3 seems to be off the table. Why? Are elected officials too squeamish to take a painful but essential step? Too attached to faithful staff?

I know more than most San Diegans do about government reductions-in-force (RIFs). I lived through one in the 1980s while working as a science writer in the U.S. Public Health Service.

The experience was hellish. But because the agency handled it professionally, the payroll shrank appreciably, and few of us landed on the street. There is no reason, besides intransigence, that City Hall can’t do the same.

The humane way to reduce staff, to borrow a favorite expression of my Navy veteran husband, is to plan your work and work your plan. My agency’s RIF proceeded gradually and methodically, and employees were kept informed at every step.

by David Smollar / Times of San Diego / Jan. 26, 2026

The wielding of excessive force bringing chaos, injury and death across American cities by officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes for painful viewing when captured by social media.

American history is checkered with federal, state and local police actions carried out against advocates of labor unions, marchers for civil rights, and anti-war protesters, among many others — and it can’t be sanitized or erased by those who prefer their history viewed through rose-colored lenses.

San Diego’s past also includes major government-sanctioned violence.

In the heart of downtown, at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and E Street, the city’s worst street violence — the Free Speech Riots — emanated in 1912 from February through May when police and vigilantes violently assaulted members of the militant/anarchist labor union International Workers of the World, known as the IWW or “Wobblies.”

In January, the City Council had acted to curb public assemblies in the city of 45,000 residents at the behest of business and real estate owners. They feared an increase in the number of union members coming to San Diego to organize streetcar and construction workers — many of whom were  immigrants — and to back radical factions in the ongoing Mexican Revolution. An armed group of Wobblies supporting a radical Mexican faction had assisted in a brief capture of Tijuana, then a border town with less than 1,000 people, in spring 1911 during an initial phase of the revolution.

by Michael Zucchet / Voice of San Diego / January 21, 2026

In his Jan. 13 op-ed published in Voice of San Diego, former Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey argues that increased spending and poor management are the real culprits of the city of San Diego’s budget woes.

But in many of the issue areas that Bailey cites (personnel and pension costs, lack of public safety spending and trash collection fees) San Diego is in line with or even outperforming other cities – including the city of Coronado under Bailey’s leadership as councilmember and mayor for 12 years:

• According to the Census Bureau, the city of San Diego’s population steadily grew more than 7 percent between 2010 and 2024 to 1,404,000. During the same period, the population of Coronado decreased 5 percent to 18,000. Despite this decline in residents, Coronado’s general fund personnel budget rose 89 percent from FY 2014 (Mr. Bailey’s first full fiscal year in office) to FY 2026.  During the same period – with a rising population – San Diego’s general fund personnel expenditures rose 76 percent. Coronado has one city employee for every 70 residents; San Diego has one employee for every 107 residents.

By Brad Reed / Common Dreams / Jan. 14, 2026

A broad coalition of Minneapolis labor unions and community organizations is calling for a general strike to take place next week with the goal of forcing federal immigration agents to leave their city.

According to a report by Workday Magazine, the groups announced their plans on Tuesday to create a day of “no work, no school, no shopping” on Friday, January 23.

JaNaé Bates Imari, representative of the church Camphor Memorial UMC, said that next Friday would be “a day when every single Minnesotan who loves this state—who loves the idea of truth and freedom—will refuse to work, shop, and go to school.”

“We are asking every single person, every family member, every teacher, every bus driver, every childcare worker, to come together, to be in community, to stand with one another,” Bates Imari added.

From Associated Press , San Diego UT

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday, hours before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited striking baristas on a picket line.

The development came amid a continuing strike by Starbucks’ union that began last month at dozens of locations around the country [including San Diego].

The workers want better hours and increased staffing, and they are angry that Starbucks hasn’t agreed on a contract nearly four years after workers voted to unionize at a Buffalo store. Union votes at other locations followed, and about 550 of Starbucks’ 10,000 company-owned stores are now unionized. The coffee giant also has around 7,000 licensed locations at airports, grocery stores and other locales.

Workers and the company dispute the extent and impact of the strike, but Mamdani, Sanders and some state and city officials sought to amplify the baristas’ message by mingling with scores of strikers and supporters outside a Starbucks shop in Brooklyn.

“These are not demands of greed — these are demands of decency,” Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on pledges to aid working-class people, told the crowd. Some workers carried giant mock-ups of Starbucks takeout cups, bearing the union’s logo instead of the coffee chain’s insignia.

by Associated Press – Times of San Diego /  Nov. 13, 2025

More than 1,000 unionized Starbucks workers went on strike at 65 U.S. stores Thursday to protest a lack of progress in labor negotiations with the company.

Starbucks Workers United said stores in 45 cities would be affected, including San Diego, New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Dallas, Columbus, Ohio, and Starbucks’ home city of Seattle. There is no date set for the strike to end, and more stores are prepared to join if Starbucks doesn’t reach a contract agreement with the union, organizers said.

The strike was intended to disrupt Starbucks’ Red Cup Day, which is typically one of the company’s busiest days of the year. Since 2018, Starbucks has given out free, reusable cups on that day to customers who buy a holiday drink. Starbucks Workers United, the union organizing baristas, said Thursday morning that the strike had already closed some stores and was expected to force more to close later in the day.

by Cayla Mihalovich / Cal-Matters / October 13, 2025

Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 13 signed a set of bills meant to recognize incarcerated firefighters, including a historic measure to raise their pay to meet the federal minimum wage during active fires.

The wage increase, funded through the state budget, follows years of advocacy to improve pay and working conditions for incarcerated labor. That effort took on a new urgency after hundreds of incarcerated firefighters were deployed to battle deadly wildfires that hit Los Angeles in January.

State lawmakers this year introduced a seven-bill “Firefighting to Freedom” package to protect incarcerated firefighters and support job opportunities upon their reentry. Five of those bills were signed into law today, marking the most comprehensive changes to incarcerated firefighting in the state’s history.

Incarcerated firefighters previously earned between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. During active emergencies, Cal Fire pays them an additional $1 per hour. Now, they will earn $7.25 per hour when they’re on a fire.

In the midst of a 5-day strike against Kaiser Permanente that began Tuesday, Oct. 14, by thousands of nurses, pharmacists and other frontline staff who are demanding safe staffing, fair pay, and improved benefits, pharmacy workers just overwhelmingly voted to authorize their union to enact an Unfair Labor Practice strike.

Currently there’s an estimated 2,000 Kaiser workers on strike in San Diego County, part of a larger, 31,000-member walkout across California, Hawaii and Oregon. And the strike is scheduled to run through Sunday during which the unions and Kaiser are holding ongoing negotiations. UFCW members have joined them in solidarity on the picket lines.

But now the pharmacy workers are threatening to strike as well. Kaiser pharmacy members’ contracts expire on November 1, 2025, and while this vote does not mean a strike is immediately underway, it allows their union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), to call a strike if deemed necessary by the bargaining committee. A ten-day notice must be provided before any strike begins.

Meanwhile, the thousands of health care workers on strike are represented by the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals who walked off the job Tuesday morning at Kaiser Permanente facilities across San Diego County. Union leaders said the strike isn’t just about pay or staffing, but also about better retirement security and benefits. They said Kaiser’s perks do not fully make up for years of stagnant wages.