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Tag: worker

  • Families reeling, businesses suffering six months after ICE raided Ventura cannabis farms

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    OXNARD — A father who has become the sole caretaker for his two young children after his wife was deported. A school district seeing absenteeism similar to what it experienced during the pandemic. Businesses struggling because customers are scared to go outside.

    These are just a sampling of how this part of Ventura County is reckoning with the aftermath of federal immigration raids on Glass House cannabis farms six months ago, when hundreds of workers were detained and families split apart. In some instances, there is still uncertainty about what happened to minors left behind after one or both parents were deported. Now, while Latino households gather for the holidays, businesses and restaurants are largely quiet as anxiety about more Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids lingers.

    “There’s a lot of fear that the community is living,” said Alicia Flores, executive director of La Hermandad Hank Lacayo Youth and Family Center. This time of year, clients usually ask her about her holiday plans, but now no one asks. Families are divided by the U.S. border or have loved ones in immigration detainment. “They were ready for Christmas, to make tamales, to make pozole, to make something and celebrate with the family. And now, nothing.”

    At the time, the immigration raids on Glass House Farms in Camarillo and Carpinteria were some of the largest of their kind nationwide, resulting in chaotic scenes, confusion and violence. At least 361 undocumented immigrants were detained, many of them third-party contractors for Glass House. One of those contractors, Jaime Alanis Garcia, died after he fell from a greenhouse rooftop in the July 10 raid.

    Jacqueline Rodriguez, in mirror, works on a customer’s hair as Silvia Lopez, left, owner of Divine Hair Design, waits for customers in downtown Oxnard on Dec. 19, 2025.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    The raids catalyzed mass protests along the Central Coast and sent a chill through Oxnard, a tight-knit community where many families work in the surrounding fields and live in multigenerational homes far more modest than many on the Ventura coast. It also reignited fears about how farmworker communities — often among the most low-paid and vulnerable parts of the labor pool — would be targeted during the Trump administration’s intense deportation campaign.

    In California, undocumented workers represent nearly 60% of the agricultural workforce, and many of them live in mixed-immigration-status households or households where none are citizens, said Ana Padilla, executive director of the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. After the Glass House raid, Padilla and UC Merced associate professor Edward Flores identified economic trends similar to the Great Recession, when private-sector jobs fell. Although undocumented workers contribute to state and federal taxes, they don’t qualify for unemployment benefits that could lessen the blow of job loss after a family member gets detained.

    “These are households that have been more affected by the economic consequences than any other group,” Padilla said. She added that California should consider distributing “replacement funds” for workers and families that have lost income because of immigration enforcement activity.

    A woman stands in a front of a window near quinceanera dresses

    An Oxnard store owner who sells quinceañera and baptism dresses — and who asked that her name not be used — says she has lost 60% of her business since the immigrant raids this year at Glass House farms.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    Local businesses are feeling the effects as well. Silvia Lopez, who has run Divine Hair Design in downtown Oxnard for 16 years, said she’s lost as much as 75% of business after the July raid. The salon usually saw 40 clients a day, she said, but on the day after the raid, it had only two clients — and four stylists who were stunned. Already, she said, other salon owners have had to close, and she cut back her own hours to help her remaining stylists make enough each month.

    “Everything changed for everyone,” she said.

    In another part of town, a store owner who sells quinceañera and baptism dresses said her sales have dropped by 60% every month since August, and clients have postponed shopping. A car shop owner, who declined to be identified because he fears government retribution, said he supported President Trump because of his campaign pledge to help small-business owners like himself. But federal loans have been difficult to access, he said, and he feels betrayed by the president’s deportation campaign that has targeted communities such as Oxnard.

    A woman poses for a portrait.

    “There’s a lot of fear that the community is living,” said Alicia Flores, executive director of La Hermandad Hank Lacayo Youth and Family Center in downtown Oxnard, on Dec. 19, 2025.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    “Glass House had a big impact,” he said. “It made people realize, ‘Oh s—, they’re hitting us hard.’ ”

    The raid’s domino effect has raised concerns about the welfare of children in affected households. Immigration enforcement actions can have detrimental effects on young children, according to the American Immigration Council, and they can be at risk of experiencing severe psychological distress.

    Olivia Lopez, a community organizer at Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, highlighted the predicament of one father. He became the sole caretaker of his infant and 4-year-old son after his wife was deported, and can’t afford child care. He is considering sending the children across the border to his wife in Mexico, who misses her kids.

    In a separate situation, Lopez said, an 18-year-old has been suddenly thrust into caring for two siblings after her mother, a single parent, was deported.

    Additionally, she said she has heard stories of children left behind, including a 16-year-old who does not want to leave the U.S. and reunite with her mother who was deported after the Glass House raid. She said she suspects that at least 50 families — and as many as 100 children — lost both or their only parent in the raid.

    “I have questions after hearing all the stories: Where are the children, in cases where two parents, those responsible for the children, were deported? Where are those children?” she said. “How did we get to this point?”

    Robin Godfrey, public information officer for the Ventura County Human Services Agency, which is responsible for overseeing child welfare in the county, said she could not answer specific questions about whether the agency has become aware of minors left behind after parents were detained.

    “Federal and state laws prevent us from confirming or denying if children from Glass House Farms families came into the child welfare system,” she said in a statement.

    The raid has been jarring in the Oxnard School District, which was closed for summer vacation but reopened on July 10 to contact families and ensure their well-being, Supt. Ana DeGenna said. Her staff called all 13,000 families in the district to ask whether they needed resources and whether they wanted access to virtual classes for the upcoming school year.

    Even before the July 10 raid, DeGenna and her staff were preparing. In January, after Trump was inaugurated, the district sped up installing doorbells at every school site in case immigration agents attempted to enter. They referred families to organizations that would help them draft affidavits so their U.S.-born children could have legal guardians, in case the parents were deported. They asked parents to submit not just one or two, but as many as 10 emergency contacts in case they don’t show up to pick up their children.

    A man with a guitar.

    Rodrigo is considering moving back to Mexico after living in the U.S. for 42 years.

    (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

    With a district that is 92% Latino, she said, nearly everyone is fearful, whether they are directly or indirectly affected, regardless if they have citizenship. Some families have self-deported, leaving the country, while children have changed households to continue their schooling. Nearly every morning, as raids continue in the region, she fields calls about sightings of ICE vehicles near schools. When that happens, she said, she knows attendance will be depressed to near COVID-19 levels for those surrounding schools, with parents afraid to send their children back to the classroom.

    But unlike the pandemic, there is no relief in knowing they’ve experienced the worst, such as the Glass House raid, which saw hundreds of families affected in just a day, she said. The need for mental health counselors and support has only grown.

    “We have to be there to protect them and take care of them, but we have to acknowledge it’s a reality they’re living through,” she said. “We can’t stop the learning, we can’t stop the education, because we also know that is the most important thing that’s going to help them in the future to potentially avoid being victimized in any way.”

    Jasmine Cruz, 21, launched a GoFundMe page after her father was taken during the Glass House raid. He remains in detention in Arizona, and the family hired an immigration attorney in hopes of getting him released.

    Each month, she said, it gets harder to pay off their rent and utility bills. She managed to raise about $2,700 through GoFundMe, which didn’t fully cover a month of rent. Her mother is considering moving the family back to Mexico if her father is deported, Cruz said.

    “I tried telling my mom we should stay here,” she said. “But she said it’s too much for us without our dad.”

    Many of the families torn apart by the Glass House raid did not have plans in place, said Lopez, the community organizer, and some families were resistant because they believed they wouldn’t be affected. But after the raid, she received calls from several families who wanted to know whether they could get family affidavit forms notarized. One notary, she said, spent 10 hours working with families for free, including some former Glass House workers who evaded the raid.

    “The way I always explain it is, look, everything that is being done by this government agency, you can’t control,” she said. “But what you can control is having peace of mind knowing you did something to protect your children and you didn’t leave them unprotected.”

    For many undocumented immigrants, the choices are few.

    Rodrigo, who is undocumented and worries about ICE reprisals, has made his living with his guitar, which he has been playing since he was 17.

    While taking a break outside a downtown Oxnard restaurant, he looked tired, wiping his forehead after serenading a pair, a couple and a group at a Mexican restaurant. He has been in the U.S. for 42 years, but since the summer raid, business has been slow. Now, people no longer want to hire for house parties.

    The 77-year-old said he wants to retire but has to continue working. But he fears getting picked up at random, based on how abusive agents have been. He’s thinking about the new year, and returning to Mexico on his own accord.

    “Before they take away my guitar,” he said, “I better go.”

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    Melissa Gomez

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  • Americans like artificial Christmas trees even though few are made in US

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    On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that’s nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length.Latino is the CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, California-based company that his great-grandfather founded in 1902. Back then, it specialized in handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. Now, it’s one of the only companies in the United States that still makes artificial Christmas trees, producing around 10,000 each year.Video above: RETRO FIND: Would you swap your Christmas tree for a Christmas weed?Tariffs shone a twinkling light this year on fake Christmas trees — and the extent to which America depends on other countries for its plastic fir trees.Prices for fake trees rose 10% to 15% this year due to the new import taxes, according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group. Tree sellers cut their orders and paid higher tariffs for the stock they brought in. Despite those issues, tree companies say they aren’t likely to shift large-scale production back to the U.S. after decades in Asia. Fake trees are labor-intensive and require holiday lights and other components the U.S. doesn’t make, said Chris Butler, CEO of the National Tree Co., which sells more than 1 million artificial trees each year. Americans are also very price-sensitive when it comes to holiday décor, Butler said. “Putting a ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ sticker on the box won’t do any good if it’s twice as expensive,” Butler said. “If it’s 20% more expensive, it won’t sell.”About 80% of the U.S. residents who put up a Christmas tree this year planned to use a fake one, according to the American Christmas Tree Association. That percentage has been unchanged for at least 15 years.Mac Harman, the founder and CEO of Balsam Brands, which sells hundreds of thousands of Balsam Hill trees each year, said Americans like to set up their trees on Thanksgiving and leave them up for weeks, which dries out fresh-cut trees. Others prefer fake trees because they’re allergic to the mold spores on real trees, he said.Video below: ‘Seems like a real-life Grinch’: Police searching for Christmas tree thiefAmericans also like convenience; 80% of the fake trees sold each year have the lights already strung on them, Butler said.That preference is one reason artificial tree production shifted away from the U.S., first to Thailand in the early 1990s and to China about a decade later. Winding lights around the branches is time-consuming and tedious, Harman said.”Where are we going to get 15,000 people in America who want to string lights on Christmas trees?” Harman said.It takes an hour or two to make an artificial Christmas tree, from molding and cutting the needles to tying branches together and attaching the lights, Butler said. Workers in China, where 90% of fake trees are made, are paid $1.50 to $2 per hour, he said.Harman said the workers who wrap the lights on Balsam Hill’s trees are so efficient “it’s like watching an Olympian.”One of Balsam Brands’ Chinese partners employs 15,000 to 20,000 people; another in Indonesia has up to 10,000, he said. Many are seasonal workers, since orders for Christmas décor slow down between October and February.Balsam Brands, which is based in Redwood City, California, studied whether it could make faux trees in Ohio during the first Trump administration, when President Donald Trump threatened — but eventually delayed — tariffs on imported Christmas décor, Harman said.The company hired consultants and considered automating some work. But it concluded a tree that currently sells for $800 would cost $3,000 if it was made in the U.S. Harman said Balsam couldn’t even find a U.S. company to make the pair of gloves it includes in each box for fluffing out branches.Lee Display employs three or four people for most of the year, adding more during the holiday rush to help with installations and displays. About half its business is making custom displays for companies such as Macy’s, while the other half is selling directly to consumers. Video below: Christmas celebrations return to BethlehemLatino said he likes that he can produce an order quickly instead of waiting for it to ship from overseas.”You have more control over it. I like to think that everything here is either my fault or my mistake or my careful planning and skill,” he said.The tariffs still affected Lee Display. Latino’s son James, who leads business development and marketing, said the company didn’t import lights or decorations from China this year and relied on items it already had in stock. It’s getting low on lights, so next year it will have to pay more to import them, he said.Some artificial tree companies are branching out so they’re less reliant on China. National Tree Co., which is based in Cranford, New Jersey, moved some manufacturing to Cambodia in 2024, and could source all its trees from outside China by next year if it wanted to, Butler said.But diversifying their suppliers didn’t make those companies immune from the impact of tariffs either. In April, the Trump administration threatened a 49% tariff against products from Cambodia. That rate was eventually reduced to 19%. Tariffs on artificial trees from China also bounced around but now average 20%, according to the American Christmas Tree Association.Butler said his company imported fewer trees this year and also raised prices by 10%. He said he used a lot of the money to offer customer discounts since demand was weak because of consumer worries about the economy.”It’s a discretionary item. People say, ‘I can wait one more year,’” Butler said.Balsam Brands cut its workforce by 10%, canceled travel, froze raises and even stopped serving lunch in the office once a week to absorb the impact of tariffs, Harman said. It also raised tree prices by 10%.Harman said his sales are down 5% to 10% this year in the U.S. but up 10% or more in Germany, Australia, Canada and France. That tells him tariffs have decreased U.S. demand. “If a merry Christmas is measured in how many decorations people put up, by that measure it’s going to be a slightly less merry Christmas,” he said.

    On a recent December day, Mark Latino and a handful of his workers spun sheets of vinyl into tinsel for Christmas tree branches. They worked on a custom-made machine that’s nearly a century old, churning out strands of bright silver tinsel along its 35-foot (10-meter) length.

    Latino is the CEO of Lee Display, a Fairfield, California-based company that his great-grandfather founded in 1902. Back then, it specialized in handmade velvet and silk flowers for hats. Now, it’s one of the only companies in the United States that still makes artificial Christmas trees, producing around 10,000 each year.

    Video above: RETRO FIND: Would you swap your Christmas tree for a Christmas weed?

    Tariffs shone a twinkling light this year on fake Christmas trees — and the extent to which America depends on other countries for its plastic fir trees.

    Prices for fake trees rose 10% to 15% this year due to the new import taxes, according to the American Christmas Tree Association, a trade group. Tree sellers cut their orders and paid higher tariffs for the stock they brought in.

    Despite those issues, tree companies say they aren’t likely to shift large-scale production back to the U.S. after decades in Asia. Fake trees are labor-intensive and require holiday lights and other components the U.S. doesn’t make, said Chris Butler, CEO of the National Tree Co., which sells more than 1 million artificial trees each year.

    Americans are also very price-sensitive when it comes to holiday décor, Butler said.

    “Putting a ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ sticker on the box won’t do any good if it’s twice as expensive,” Butler said. “If it’s 20% more expensive, it won’t sell.”

    About 80% of the U.S. residents who put up a Christmas tree this year planned to use a fake one, according to the American Christmas Tree Association. That percentage has been unchanged for at least 15 years.

    Mac Harman, the founder and CEO of Balsam Brands, which sells hundreds of thousands of Balsam Hill trees each year, said Americans like to set up their trees on Thanksgiving and leave them up for weeks, which dries out fresh-cut trees. Others prefer fake trees because they’re allergic to the mold spores on real trees, he said.

    Video below: ‘Seems like a real-life Grinch’: Police searching for Christmas tree thief

    Americans also like convenience; 80% of the fake trees sold each year have the lights already strung on them, Butler said.

    That preference is one reason artificial tree production shifted away from the U.S., first to Thailand in the early 1990s and to China about a decade later. Winding lights around the branches is time-consuming and tedious, Harman said.

    “Where are we going to get 15,000 people in America who want to string lights on Christmas trees?” Harman said.

    It takes an hour or two to make an artificial Christmas tree, from molding and cutting the needles to tying branches together and attaching the lights, Butler said. Workers in China, where 90% of fake trees are made, are paid $1.50 to $2 per hour, he said.

    Harman said the workers who wrap the lights on Balsam Hill’s trees are so efficient “it’s like watching an Olympian.”

    One of Balsam Brands’ Chinese partners employs 15,000 to 20,000 people; another in Indonesia has up to 10,000, he said. Many are seasonal workers, since orders for Christmas décor slow down between October and February.

    Balsam Brands, which is based in Redwood City, California, studied whether it could make faux trees in Ohio during the first Trump administration, when President Donald Trump threatened — but eventually delayed — tariffs on imported Christmas décor, Harman said.

    The company hired consultants and considered automating some work. But it concluded a tree that currently sells for $800 would cost $3,000 if it was made in the U.S. Harman said Balsam couldn’t even find a U.S. company to make the pair of gloves it includes in each box for fluffing out branches.

    Lee Display employs three or four people for most of the year, adding more during the holiday rush to help with installations and displays. About half its business is making custom displays for companies such as Macy’s, while the other half is selling directly to consumers.

    Video below: Christmas celebrations return to Bethlehem

    Latino said he likes that he can produce an order quickly instead of waiting for it to ship from overseas.

    “You have more control over it. I like to think that everything here is either my fault or my mistake or my careful planning and skill,” he said.

    The tariffs still affected Lee Display. Latino’s son James, who leads business development and marketing, said the company didn’t import lights or decorations from China this year and relied on items it already had in stock. It’s getting low on lights, so next year it will have to pay more to import them, he said.

    Some artificial tree companies are branching out so they’re less reliant on China. National Tree Co., which is based in Cranford, New Jersey, moved some manufacturing to Cambodia in 2024, and could source all its trees from outside China by next year if it wanted to, Butler said.

    But diversifying their suppliers didn’t make those companies immune from the impact of tariffs either. In April, the Trump administration threatened a 49% tariff against products from Cambodia. That rate was eventually reduced to 19%. Tariffs on artificial trees from China also bounced around but now average 20%, according to the American Christmas Tree Association.

    Butler said his company imported fewer trees this year and also raised prices by 10%. He said he used a lot of the money to offer customer discounts since demand was weak because of consumer worries about the economy.

    “It’s a discretionary item. People say, ‘I can wait one more year,’” Butler said.

    Balsam Brands cut its workforce by 10%, canceled travel, froze raises and even stopped serving lunch in the office once a week to absorb the impact of tariffs, Harman said. It also raised tree prices by 10%.

    Harman said his sales are down 5% to 10% this year in the U.S. but up 10% or more in Germany, Australia, Canada and France. That tells him tariffs have decreased U.S. demand.

    “If a merry Christmas is measured in how many decorations people put up, by that measure it’s going to be a slightly less merry Christmas,” he said.

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  • This L.A. car wash depends on immigrant labor. Can it survive Trump?

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    The car wash hadn’t yet opened for the day, but its owner was already on edge.

    He scanned the street for law enforcement vehicles and hit refresh on a crowdsourced map that showed recent immigration sweeps.

    “They were busy in our area yesterday,” he warned his employees. “Be careful.”

    But except for staying home, there were few precautions that the workers, mostly men from Mexico, could take.

    The business is located along one of L.A.’s busiest thoroughfares. Workers are exposed to the street as they scrub, wax and buff the parade of vehicles that streams in between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., seven days a week.

    Immigration agents descended on the business multiple times this summer as part of a broader campaign against L.A. car washes. Masked men hauled away around a dozen workers, most of whom were swiftly deported. The Times is not identifying the business, the owner or the workers.

    The raids had spooked remaining employees — and many had stopped showing up to work. The replacements the owner hired were mostly other immigrants who showed him Social Security cards that he hoped were legitimate.

    Still, it was an open secret that the car wash industry, which paid low wages for back-breaking labor, largely attracted people without legal status.

    “Americans don’t want to do this work,” the owner said.

    After the raids, he had been forced to close for stretches during the typically lucrative summer months. He was now operating normally again, but sales were down, he had maxed out his credit cards and he was unsure whether his business would survive. Clients — frightened by the raids — were staying away.

    “My target is to pay the rent, pay the insurance and pay the guys,” the owner told his manager as they sipped coffee in the early morning November chill and waited for their first customer. “That’s it.”

    The manager, also an immigrant from Mexico, nodded. He was juggling his boss’ concerns with personal ones. He and his team had all seen friends, relatives and co-workers vanish in immigration raids. He left home each morning wondering whether he would return in the evening.

    The mood at the car wash had once been lighthearted, with employees joking as they sprayed down cars and polished windows. Now everybody, the manager included, kept one eye on the street as they worked. “We say we’re OK,” he said. “But we’re all scared.”

    A few minutes before 7 a.m., a BMW sedan pulled in for a wash. The manager flipped on the vacuum and said a prayer.

    “Protect me. Protect my colleagues. And protect the place I work.”

    The owner was born abroad but moved to Los Angeles after winning the U.S. green card lottery.

    He used his life savings to buy the car wash, which at the time seemed like a sound investment. There are some 36 million vehicles in California. And in Los Angeles, at least for most of the year, people can’t rely on rainfall to keep them clean.

    His business already took a major financial hit this year during the L.A. wildfires, which filled the air with smoke and ash. Customers didn’t bother to clean cars that they knew would get dirty again.

    Then came President Trump, who promised to deport record numbers of migrants.

    I’m not brave. I need the work

    — Car wash employee

    Previous administrations had focused on expelling immigrants who had committed crimes. But federal agents, under pressure to meet arrest quotas, have vastly widened their net, targeting public-facing workplaces that pay low wages.

    Car wash employees — along with street vendors, day laborers, farmworkers and gardeners — have become low-hanging fruit. At least 340 people have been detained in raids on 100 car washes across Southern California since June, according to the CLEAN Car Wash Worker Center, which advocates for workers in the industry.

    The owner was shocked when agents toting rifles and dressed in bulletproof vests first stormed his business, blocking exits with their vehicles and handcuffing employees without ever showing a search warrant.

    “It was a kidnapping,” he said. “It felt like we were in Afghanistan or Iraq, not in the middle of Los Angeles.”

    Some of the men that the agents dragged away in that raid and subsequent ones had been living in the U.S. for decades. Many were fathers of American children.

    The manager was racked with survivor’s guilt. He was from the same small town in Mexico as one of the men who was detained and later deported. Another worker taken by agents had been hired the same morning as the raid.

    That’s when many employees stopped showing up. One stayed home for almost a month straight, surviving on groceries his friends and family brought to his apartment.

    But eventually that employee — and his brother — returned to the car wash. “I’m not brave,” the brother said. “I need the work.”

    The brother had been in the country for nearly 25 years and had three U.S.-born children, one of whom had served as a Marine.

    He had toiled at car washes the whole time — crouching to scrub tires, stretching to dry roofs and returning home each night with aching heels and knots in his neck. Less punishing industries weren’t an option for somebody without valid work documents, he said, especially in the Trump era.

    He had been at the car wash during one of the raids, and had avoided being detained only when the owner stepped in front of him and demanded agents speak to him first.

    The man said he had made peace with the idea that his time in the U.S. might come to an end. “At least my children are grown,” he said.

    The two brothers were working this brisk November day, hand-drying Audis, Mercedes and a classic Porsche. They earned a little over minimum wage, and got to keep most of their tips.

    Their bosses had told them that if immigration agents returned, the workers should consider locking themselves inside the cars that they were cleaning. “Don’t run,” the manager said. “They’ll only chase.”

    At the cash register, the cashier watched a website that tracked Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions around the region. So far, there was no activity nearby.

    She had been present during the immigration sweeps, and was still mad at herself for not doing more to stop agents from taking her co-workers. “You think you’re gonna stand up to them, but it’s different when it happens,” she said. “I was like a deer in the headlights.”

    As workers cleaned his Toyota Camry, a retired history professor waited on a bench, reading a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. The ICE raids had scared some clients away, but had prompted others to express their support. He said he had made a point to patronize the business because he was angry at the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

    “They’re not getting the worst of the worst, they’re getting the easiest,” he said.

    He noted that a friend of his — a Latino born in the U.S. — now carried a copy of his birth certificate. Just in case.

    “That’s not the America I grew up in,” the customer said.

    The owner of the car wash, too, was trying to square the promise of the United States with the reality that he was living.

    “I thought Trump was a businessman,” he said. “But he’s really terrorizing businesses.”

    The owner had paid taxes on his employee’s earnings, he said. So had they. “They were pushing the economy, paying rent, paying insurance, buying things.”

    “Fine, take the criminals, take the bad guys,” he continued. “But these are hard workers. Criminals aren’t working at a car wash or waiting in front of a Home Depot.”

    The owner had recently obtained American citizenship. But he was disillusioned — by the raids, L.A.’s homelessness crisis, high healthcare costs. He said his wife longed to leave the U.S. and return home.

    “This is not the American dream,” he said. “This is an American nightmare.”

    As the sun began to sink on the horizon, the last car of the day pulled out of the car wash — a sparkling clean Tesla.

    The manager turned off the vacuum, recoiled hoses and exhaled with relief. He and his staff had survived another day. Tonight — at least — they would be going home to their families.

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    Kate Linthicum

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  • Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrives in Manhattan, kicking off New York’s holiday season

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    The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on Saturday, marking the start of New York City’s holiday season.This year’s tree is a 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from the upstate town of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany. After being cut down this week, it made the roughly 150-mile journey south on a flatbed truck, drawing curious onlookers along the way.The crowds were much bigger at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where workers used cranes to hoist the 11-ton tree into position overlooking the iconic skating rink. People gathered with coffee cups and phones as crews secured the spruce and began the careful process of stabilizing it.The tree will soon be decorated with more than 50,000 multicolored, energy-efficient LED lights and crowned with a Swarovski star weighing 900 pounds.It will be lit Dec. 3 during a live TV broadcast hosted by country music star Reba McEntire and remain on display until mid-January, after which it will be milled into lumber for use by the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.The tree was donated by homeowner Judy Russ and her family. She said it was planted by her husband’s great-grandparents in the 1920s.”For this to now become the center of New York City Christmas is incredible,” Russ told the radio station 1010 WINS.The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up by workers in 1931 to raise spirits during the Great Depression. The comparatively modest 20-foot balsam fir was outfitted with garlands handmade by the workers’ families.The tradition stuck as the first tree-lighting ceremony was held in 1933.

    NEW YORK —

    The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted aloft at its new home in Manhattan on Saturday, marking the start of New York City’s holiday season.

    This year’s tree is a 75-foot-tall Norway spruce from the upstate town of East Greenbush, a suburb of Albany. After being cut down this week, it made the roughly 150-mile journey south on a flatbed truck, drawing curious onlookers along the way.

    The crowds were much bigger at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where workers used cranes to hoist the 11-ton tree into position overlooking the iconic skating rink. People gathered with coffee cups and phones as crews secured the spruce and began the careful process of stabilizing it.

    The tree will soon be decorated with more than 50,000 multicolored, energy-efficient LED lights and crowned with a Swarovski star weighing 900 pounds.

    It will be lit Dec. 3 during a live TV broadcast hosted by country music star Reba McEntire and remain on display until mid-January, after which it will be milled into lumber for use by the affordable housing nonprofit Habitat for Humanity.

    The tree was donated by homeowner Judy Russ and her family. She said it was planted by her husband’s great-grandparents in the 1920s.

    “For this to now become the center of New York City Christmas is incredible,” Russ told the radio station 1010 WINS.

    The first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up by workers in 1931 to raise spirits during the Great Depression. The comparatively modest 20-foot balsam fir was outfitted with garlands handmade by the workers’ families.

    The tradition stuck as the first tree-lighting ceremony was held in 1933.

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  • Nonprofits, credit unions help impacted federal workers from government shutdown

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    Nonprofits, credit unions help impacted federal workers from government shutdown

    Updated: 2:41 PM PDT Oct 16, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    From nonprofits to credit unions, organizations across the country are stepping up to help military families and federal workers as the government shutdown continues. Many are reporting an alarming surge in demand.Since the shutdown, military spouse Alicia Blevins has faced a mountain of stress. Her family’s savings are depleted, stress-related health issues are emerging, and her job search has been put on hold 16 days into the shutdown. “It’s the stress that’s really gotten to us,” Blevins said. “Right now, I’ve got my resume out to every customer service job, entry level or not. I’ve got it out everywhere.”The desperation is being felt at nonprofits like the Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN). This week, the organization launched its emergency grocery support program in response to the shutdown, noting that more than 6,000 verified military families applied for its 1,600 grocery packages in the first 24 hours alone.”This moment really puts families at a very fragile place,” MFAN’s Chief Advancement Officer Kara Pappas said. “The need has so quickly eclipsed the demand that we need support from Americans.”Financial institutions are also escalating aid to military members and federal workers who qualify. The Navy Federal Credit Union, for example, is offering 0% interest loans through its paycheck assistance program.The USAA is offering the same and reports that it’s issued nearly $270 million in loans to more than 71,000 of its members so far.The Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund (FEEA) is giving those eligible up to $150 in micro-grants to support federal employees impacted by the shutdown.Patrick Malone, Director at the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, emphasizes prioritizing mental health during the shutdown. Malone advises those impacted to reach out and tap into resources immediately and scheduling time for self-care.Watch the latest coverage on the federal government shutdown:

    WASHINGTON —

    From nonprofits to credit unions, organizations across the country are stepping up to help military families and federal workers as the government shutdown continues. Many are reporting an alarming surge in demand.

    Since the shutdown, military spouse Alicia Blevins has faced a mountain of stress. Her family’s savings are depleted, stress-related health issues are emerging, and her job search has been put on hold 16 days into the shutdown.

    “It’s the stress that’s really gotten to us,” Blevins said. “Right now, I’ve got my resume out to every customer service job, entry level or not. I’ve got it out everywhere.”

    The desperation is being felt at nonprofits like the Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN). This week, the organization launched its emergency grocery support program in response to the shutdown, noting that more than 6,000 verified military families applied for its 1,600 grocery packages in the first 24 hours alone.

    “This moment really puts families at a very fragile place,” MFAN’s Chief Advancement Officer Kara Pappas said. “The need has so quickly eclipsed the demand that we need support from Americans.”

    Financial institutions are also escalating aid to military members and federal workers who qualify.

    The Navy Federal Credit Union, for example, is offering 0% interest loans through its paycheck assistance program.

    The USAA is offering the same and reports that it’s issued nearly $270 million in loans to more than 71,000 of its members so far.

    The Federal Employee Education and Assistance Fund (FEEA) is giving those eligible up to $150 in micro-grants to support federal employees impacted by the shutdown.

    Patrick Malone, Director at the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, emphasizes prioritizing mental health during the shutdown. Malone advises those impacted to reach out and tap into resources immediately and scheduling time for self-care.

    Watch the latest coverage on the federal government shutdown:

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  • Democratic candidates for governor focus on affordability and healthcare at labor forum

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    SAN DIEGO — Six Democrats running for governor next year focused on housing affordability, the cost of living and healthcare cuts as the most daunting issues facing Californians at a labor forum on Saturday in San Diego.

    Largely in lockstep about these matters, the candidates highlighted their political resumes and life stories to try to create contrasts and curry favor with attendees.

    Former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon, in his first gubernatorial forum since entering the race in late September, leaned into his experience as the first millennial elected to the state Legislature.

    “I feel like my experience and my passion uniquely positioned me in this race to ride a lane that nobody else can ride, being a millennial and being young and having a different perspective,” said Calderon, 39.

    Concerns about his four children’s future as well as the state’s reliance on Washington, D.C., drove his decision to run for governor after choosing not to seek reelection to the Legislature in 2020.

    “I want [my children] to have opportunity. I want them to have a future. I want life to be better. I want it to be easier,” said Calderon, whose family has deep roots in politics. State leaders must focus “on D.C.-proofing California. We cannot continue to depend on D.C. and expect that they’re going to give a s— about us and what our needs are, because they don’t.”

    Former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who also served as the state’s attorney general after a 24-year stint in Congress, argued that it is critical to elect a governor who has experience.

    “Would you let someone who’s never flown a plane tell you, ‘I can fly that plane back to land’ if they’ve never done it before?” Becerra asked. “Do you give the keys to the governor’s office to someone who hasn’t done this before?”

    He contrasted himself with other candidates in the race by invoking a barking chihuahua behind a chain-link fence.

    “Where’s the bite?” he said, after citing his history, such as suing President Trump 122 times, and leading the sprawling federal health bureaucracy during the pandemic. “You don’t just grow teeth overnight.”

    Calderon and Becerra were among six Democratic candidates who spoke at length to about 150 California leaders of multiple chapters of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

    The union has more than 200,000 members in California and is being battered by the federal government shutdown, the state’s budget deficit and impending healthcare strikes. AFSCME is a powerful force in California politics, providing troops to knock on voters’ doors and man phone banks.

    The forum came as the gubernatorial field to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is in flux.

    Former Vice President Kamala Harris announced earlier this summer that she has opted against running for the seat. Former state Senate leader Toni Atkins suspended her gubernatorial campaign in late September.

    Rumors continue to swirl about whether billionaire businessman Rick Caruso or Sen. Alex Padilla will join the field.

    “I am weighing it. But my focus is first and foremost on encouraging people to vote for Proposition 50,” the congressional redistricting matter on the November ballot, Padilla told the New York Times in an interview published Saturday. “The other decision? That race is not until next year. So that decision will come.”

    Wealthy Democratic businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck and Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco declined an invitation to participate in the forum, citing prior commitments.

    The union will consider an endorsement at a future conference, said Matthew Maldonado, executive director for District Council 36, which represents 25,000 workers in Southern California.

    Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa leaned into his longtime roots in labor before he ran for office. But he also alluded to tensions with unions after being elected mayor in 2005.

    Labeled a “scab” when he crossed picket lines the following year during a major city workers’ strike, Villaraigosa also clashed with unions over furloughs and layoffs during the recession. His relationship with labor hit a low in 2010 when Villaraigosa called the city’s teachers union, where he once worked, “the largest obstacle to creating quality schools.”

    “I want you to know something about me. I’m not going to say yes to every darn thing that everybody comes up to me with, including sometimes the unions,” Villaraigosa said. “When I was mayor, they’ll tell you sometimes I had to say no. Why? I wasn’t going to go bankrupt, and I knew I had to protect pensions and the rest of it.”

    He pledged to work with labor if elected governor.

    Labor leaders asked most of the questions at the forum, with all of the candidates being asked about the same topics, such as if they supported and would campaign for a proposed state constitutional amendment to help UC workers with down-payment loans for houses.

    “Hell yes,” said former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, who teaches at UC Irvine’s law school and benefited from a program created by state university leaders to allow faculty to buy houses priced below the market rate in costly Orange County because the high cost of housing in the region was an obstacle in recruiting professors.

    “I get to benefit from UC Irvine’s investment in their professionals and professors and professional staff housing, but they are not doing it for everyone,” she said, noting workers such as clerks, janitors and patient-care staff don’t have access to similar benefits.

    State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, who entered the gathering dancing to Dr. Dre and Tupac’s “California Love,” agreed to support the housing loans as well as to walk picket lines with tens of thousands of Kaiser health employees expected to go on strike later this month.

    AFSCME local leaders listening to former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra speak at a gubernatorial forum Saturday in San Diego.

    (Seema Mehta / Los Angeles Times)

    “I will be there,” Thurmond responded, adding that he had just spoken on the phone with Kaiser’s chief executive, and urged him to meet labor demands about staffing, pay, retirement and benefits, especially in the aftermath of their work during the pandemic. “Just get it done, damn it, and give them what they’re asking for.”

    Former state Controller Betty Yee agreed to both requests as well, arguing that the healthcare employers are focused on profit at the expense of patient care.

    “Yes, absolutely,” she said when asked about joining the Kaiser picket line. “Shame on them. You cannot be expected to take care of others if you cannot take care of yourselves.”

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    Seema Mehta

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  • Loyola Marymount abruptly rescinds recognition of faculty union after months of negotiation

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    After 10 months of negotiations, Loyola Marymount University abruptly announced it would no longer recognize its faculty union.

    The news, delivered in an email to students and employees on Friday, sent shock waves through the union, which represents nearly 400 part-time and full-time educators who do not hold tenure-track positions.

    Paul S. Viviano, chairman of the university’s board of trustees, said in the email that the university was ending its engagement with the union by invoking its “constitutionally protected religious exemption” from the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board, which governs collective bargaining for private employers.

    “I was floored,” said Maureen Gonzales, 35, who has worked part-time as a dance instructor on campus since 2016 and serves as an elected member of the union’s bargaining team. “It’s outrageous.”

    The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that religious colleges are not under the purview of federal labor laws and need not recognize unions. Many religious colleges have chosen to do so voluntarily anyway.

    But in recent years, several educational institutions — now including Loyola Marymount — have claimed the religious exemption suddenly and without warning, effectively using it to shut down established faculty unions that they had previously recognized.

    Loyola Marymount’s announcement has sparked protest and drawn allegations of union-busting from faculty members as well as leaders of Service Employees International Union Local 721, the labor group that represents them. Unionized employees have accused the university of aligning with Trump administration efforts “to stomp out the labor movement,” and plan to file an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB.

    “Let’s be clear: This action is illegal,” said David Green, president and executive director of SEIU 721. “[F]aculty members will fight this with everything we have. LMU messed with the wrong union.”

    Administrators are defending the move, arguing that getting rid of the union will help support the university’s financial health, and thus “protect [its] Catholic mission.”

    Kat Weaver, the university’s interim executive vice president and provost, said that after months of bargaining and modeling the union’s proposals, the board of trustees found that the changes would force an 18% tuition increase, 300 layoffs and cuts to student programs, and determined “the responsible path was to invoke the religious exemption.”

    The university’s move is “firmly grounded in law and the U.S. Constitution,” Weaver said in a statement to The Times. “This right cannot be waived and may be exercised at any point.”

    Faculty members voted overwhelmingly last summer to join SEIU, citing issues of low pay and precarious job status. Many work on short, semester-long contracts across three colleges at the university: the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, the College of Communication and Fine Arts and the School of Film and Television.

    They teach subjects such as animation, communications, dance, English, music, philosophy, photography, political science and screenwriting, among others.

    On Tuesday, scores of staff members and union organizers rallied outside the entrance to the university’s campus in Westchester, which sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Armed with signs reading, “LMU: Back to the table now,” and, “Union busting is not a Jesuit value,” they marched back and forth across Loyola Boulevard.

    Bryan Wisch, a 33-year-old rhetorical arts instructor and alumnus of the university, said 75% of faculty in the union work part time on semester-long contracts for “poverty wages.” Those who work full time typically have slightly longer contracts that last one to three years, he said.

    Wisch said he’s “one of the lucky ones” who works full time. Still, he said his annual pay of $68,000 isn’t sufficient to live in costly Los Angeles, and he’s taken on a second job to make ends meet.

    Wisch said the university has disingenuously characterized the union as an outside party, even though the bargaining committee is made up of 15 employees elected from the three colleges.

    The university said it is still committed to working with non-tenure-track faculty to improve conditions, but wanted to remove the “third-party intermediaries of SEIU and NLRB.” The university said it has already implemented salary and merit wage increases for non-tenure-track faculty that amount to an average 7.8% pay raise, retroactive to August.

    “We are expanding full-time positions, strengthening contracts and promotion pathways,” Weaver said. “Respecting workers and workers’ rights and choosing a different governance path are not contradictions.”

    Many Catholic universities teach social justice doctrines of the Catholic Church, which have a long history of support for organized labor. Pope Leo XIII in 1891 used the platform of the papacy to offer a spirited defense of unions and the rights of workers in his seminal encyclical, “Rerum Novarum.”

    But while some Catholic universities embrace unions in line with such doctrines, others still object, said William A. Herbert, executive director of the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College, City University of New York.

    Typically, universities raise objections at the beginning of the union process, Herbert said. He called it “peculiar” that Loyola Marymount made an about-face after negotiating for months.

    “It raises questions as to the actual motivations. Is it a sincere belief unionization will interfere with the religious education of the school? Or is it to avoid having to engage in collective bargaining?” Herbert said. “It does not sound to me that they’re concerns of religious liberty.”

    Joshua D. Nadreau, an attorney and regional managing partner at the law firm Fisher Phillips, said the motivation may not ultimately have weight, since the labor board, even with a Democratic majority, has sided with universities on this issue in recent years.

    “I don’t foresee a real avenue for actual relief here,” Nadreau said “Courts are incredibly reluctant to weigh in on the authenticity of religious practices.”

    Some 600 Catholic institutions across the U.S., including universities, hospitals and other medical facilities, are unionized, according to a 2024 report by the Catholic Labor Network.

    A 1979 Supreme Court decision regarding the Catholic Bishop of Chicago ruled that the NLRB should not seek to regulate religious institutions, arguing that problems with religious freedom protections enshrined in the First Amendment can arise when a government office tries to determine if certain activities are religious or not.

    In the decades since, rulings by federal courts and the NLRB have focused on creating a standard to deem whether a school is a religious institution, and whether the labor board can assert itself when it comes to employees who are not involved with its religious mission.

    Recent rulings have further curtailed the NLRB’s reach. A U.S. Court of Appeals in 2020 blocked the board from requiring that Duquesne University, a Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, recognize an adjunct faculty union because it could lead to an “intrusive inquiry” that could infringe on the institution’s religious protections.

    In 2021, St. Leo University in Florida moved to nix its 44-year-old faculty union. The union contested the withdrawal of recognition, arguing the university changed the terms and conditions of employment without the union’s consent in violation of federal labor law.

    But in 2024, the NLRB sided with St. Leo, saying it could not exercise oversight at the religious institution.

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    Suhauna Hussain

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  • Commentary: The immigration raids are crushing L.A.’s fire recovery and California’s economy

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    The crew had just poured a concrete foundation on a vacant lot in Altadena when I pulled up the other day. Two workers were loading equipment onto trucks and a third was hosing the fresh cement that will sit under a new house.

    I asked how things were going, and if there were any problems finding enough workers because of ongoing immigration raids.

    “Oh, yeah,” said one worker, shaking his head. “Everybody’s worried.”

    The other said that when fresh concrete is poured on a job this big, you need a crew of 10 or more, but that’s been hard to come by.

    “We’re still working,” he said. “But as you can see, it’s just going very slowly.”

    Eight months after thousands of homes were destroyed by wildfires, Altadena is still a ways off from any major rebuilding, and so is Pacific Palisades. But immigration raids have hammered the California economy, including the construction industry. And the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week that green-lights racial profiling has raised new fears that “deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” as the UCLA Anderson Forecast warned us in March.

    There was already a labor shortage in the construction industry, in which 25% to 40% of workers are immigrants, by various estimates. As deportations slow construction, and tariffs and trade wars make supplies scarcer and more expensive, the housing shortage becomes an even deeper crisis.

    And it’s not just deportations that matter, but the threat of them, says Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist at the Anderson Forecast. If undocumented people are afraid to show up to install drywall, Nickelsburg told me, it “means you finish homes much more slowly, and that means fewer people are employed.”

    Now look, I’m no economist, but it seems to me that after President Trump promised the entire country we were headed for a “golden age” of American prosperity, it might not have been in his best interest to stifle the state with the largest economy in the nation.

    Especially when many national economic indicators aren’t exactly rosy, when we have not seen the promised decrease in the price of groceries and consumer goods, and when the labor statistics were so embarrassing he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and replaced her with another one, only to see more grim jobs numbers a month later.

    I had just one economics class in college, but I don’t recall a section on the value of deporting construction workers, car washers, elder-care workers, housekeepers, nannies, gardeners and other people whose only crime — unlike the violent offenders we were allegedly going to round up — is a desire to show up for work.

    Now here, let me give you my email address. It’s steve.lopez@latimes.com.

    And why am I telling you that?

    Because I know from experience that some of you are frothing, foaming and itching to reach out and tell me that illegal means illegal.

    So go ahead and email me if you must, but here’s my response:

    We’ve been living a lie for decades.

    People come across the border because we want them to. We all but beg them to. And by we, I mean any number of industries — many of them led by conservatives and by Trump supporters — including agribusiness, and hospitality, and construction, and healthcare.

    Why do you think so many employers avoid using the federal E-Verify system to weed out undocumented workers? Because they don’t want to admit that many of their employees are undocumented.

    In Texas, Republican lawmakers can’t stop demonizing immigrants, and they can’t stop introducing bills by the dozens to mandate wider use of E-Verify. But the most recent one, like all the ones before it, just died.

    Why?

    Because the tough talk is a lie and there’s no longer any shame in hypocrisy. It’s a climate of corruption in which no one has the integrity to admit what’s clear — that the Texas economy is propped up in part by an undocumented workforce.

    At least in California, six Republican lawmakers all but begged Trump in June to ease up on the raids, which were affecting business on farms and construction sites and in restaurants and hotels. Please do some honest work on immigration reform instead, they pleaded, so we can fill our labor needs in a more practical and humane way.

    Makes sense, but politically, it doesn’t play as well as TV ads recruiting ICE commandos to storm the streets and arrest tamale vendors, even as the barbarians who ransacked the Capitol and beat up cops enjoy their time as presidentially pardoned patriots.

    Small businesses, restaurants and mom and pops are being particularly hard hit, says Maria Salinas, chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those who survived the pandemic were then kneecapped again by the raids.

    With the Supreme Court ruling, Salinas told me, “I think there’s a lot of fear that this is going to come back harder than before.”

    From a broader economic perspective, the mass deportations make no sense, especially when it’s clear that the vast majority of people targeted are not the violent criminals Trump keeps talking about.

    Giovanni Peri, director of the UC Davis Global Migration Center, noted that we’re in the midst of a demographic transformation, much like that of Japan, which is dealing with the challenges of an aging population and restrictive immigration policies.

    “We’ll lose almost a million working-age Americans every year in the next decade just because of aging,” Peri told me. “We will have a very large elderly population and that will demand a lot of services in … home healthcare [and other industries], but there will be fewer and fewer workers to do these types of jobs.”

    Dowell Myers, a USC demographer, has been studying these trends for years.

    “The numbers are simple and easy to read,” Myers said. Each year, the worker-to-retiree ratio decreases, and it will continue to do so. This means we’re headed for a critical shortage of working people who pay into Social Security and Medicare even as the number of retirees balloons.

    If we truly wanted to stop immigration, Myers said, we should “send all ICE workers to the border. But if you take people who have been here 10 and 20 years and uproot them, there’s an extreme social cost and also an economic cost.”

    At the Pasadena Home Depot, where day laborers still gather despite the risk of raids, three men held out hope for work. Two of them told me they have legal status. “But there’s very little work,” said Gavino Dominguez.

    The third one, who said he’s undocumented, left to circle the parking lot and offer his services to contractors.

    Umberto Andrade, a general contractor, was loading concrete and other supplies into his truck. He told me he lost one fearful employee for a week, and another for two weeks. They came back because they’re desperate and need to pay their bills.

    “The housing shortage in California was already terrible before the fires, and now it’s 10 times worse,” said real estate agent Brock Harris, who represents a developer whose Altadena rebuilding project was temporarily slowed after a visit from ICE agents in June.

    With building permits beginning to flow, Harris said, “for these guys to slow down or shut down job sites is more than infuriating. You’re going to see fewer people willing to start a project.”

    Most people on a job site have legal status, Harris said, “but if shovels never hit the ground, the costs are being borne by everybody, and it’s slowing the rebuilding of L.A.”

    Lots of bumps on the road to the golden age of prosperity.

    steve.lopez@latimes.com

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    Steve Lopez

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  • Worker rescued from underground Costco gas tank after fainting, Sacramento Fire says

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    Worker rescued from underground Costco gas tank after fainting, Sacramento Fire says

    LET’S GO TO SOME BREAKING NEWS THAT WE’RE FOLLOWING RIGHT NOW. A WORKER WAS JUST RESCUED OUT OF A GAS TANK, REPORTEDLY AFTER HE FAINTED OR LOST CONSCIOUSNESS. THIS IS AT THE COSTCO OFF EXPOSITION BOULEVARD IN SACRAMENTO KCRA 3’S MICHELLE BANDUR JUST ARRIVED ON SCENE. WE CAN SEE THEY HAVE A LOT OF THE AREA TAPED OFF. MICHELLE, WHAT HAPPENED? WELL, YEAH, IT WAS AROUND 1045 THIS MORNING THAT SACRAMENTO CITY FIREFIGHTERS GOT THE CALL OF THAT. A WORKER HERE WAS DOWN. THE WORKER WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO CHECK OUT AND CLEAN SOME TANKS THAT ARE UNDERGROUND BEHIND ME HERE. WE WANT TO GET YOU ALL THE DETAILS. SO I’M GOING TO INTERVIEW. SACRAMENTO CITY. FIREFIGHTER PUBLIC INFORMATION OFFICER JUSTIN SYLVIA AND I MOVED OVER TO THE OTHER SIDE HERE SO YOU CAN TELL US YOU KNOW, WHAT HAPPENED. HE WAS OVERCOME BY THE FUMES DOWN BELOW IN THE TANK. YEAH, THAT’S EXACTLY RIGHT. SO AROUND 1045, OUR RESCUE CREWS GOT A CALL FOR SOMEONE THAT WAS DOWN INSIDE OF A FUEL TANK. THE FUEL TANK IS CURRENTLY EMPTY. THEY’RE IN THE PROCESS OF REMODELING ALL THEIR FUEL PUMPS. THIS COMPANY CAME OUT AS A THIRD PARTY COMPANY TO CLEAN THAT FUEL TANK. THE WORKER WENT DOWN IN THERE. I MEAN, YOU CAN SMELL THE GASOLINE THAT’S AROUND US. VERY STRONG ODORS IN THERE. EITHER HAD A MEDICAL EMERGENCY OR WAS OVERCOME BY THE FUMES DOWN THERE. BUT ONCE OUR RESCUERS GOT HIM OUT, HE WAS TRANSPORTED UNDER CPR. WELL, I MEAN, TALK ABOUT THE DANGER WITH THAT. DID YOUR RESCUERS HAVE TO GEAR UP BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, FOR FEAR OF THEM OVERCOMING GOING INSIDE THAT TANK? SO WE DO AIR MONITORING. WE KNOW THAT THERE’S A VERY HIGH EXPLOSIVE LIMIT TO THIS RIGHT NOW. SO OUR CREWS WERE ON AIR WHEN THEY WENT DOWN THERE TO GET HIM. BUT WE ALSO HAD TO GET A HAZMAT TEAM OUT HERE AS WELL FOR THAT AIR MONITORING TO MAKE SURE IT WAS ACTUALLY SAFE FOR RESCUERS TO GO DOWN IN THE HOLE. OKAY. SO BY BEING IN THAT ENCLOSED AREA AND BEING AROUND ALL OF THOSE FUMES, THAT’S WHAT CAUSES THE DANGER. ABSOLUTELY. YOU’RE IN A CONFINED SPACE, HIGH FUMES IN THERE THAT COULD EXPLODE. SO WE NEED TO REMOVE THAT EXPLOSION HAZARD. EVERYONE AROUND HAD TO BE IN FULL TURNOUTS. WE HAD HOSE LINES DOWN ON THE GROUND JUST IN CASE SOMETHING WERE TO HAPPEN. BUT VERY DANGEROUS SITUATION. WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER WORKERS? HIS COWORKERS? THEY WERE TRYING TO GET HIM OUT OF THE HOLE, BUT THEY COULD NOT MANAGE TO GET HIM OUT. SO WE HAD TO PUSH THEM BACK SO WE COULD LET OUR PROFESSIONAL RESCUERS GET IN THERE AND GET HIM OUT OF THE HOLE. AND SO BY THE TIME THEY DID THAT, WHAT WAS HIS CONDITION? HE’S IN CRITICAL CONDITION. HE WAS UNDER CPR. HE WAS NOT BREATHING, NO HEARTBEAT. SO CPR. OKAY. AND SO HE’S AT THE HOSPITAL NOW. HE’S CURRENTLY AT THE HOSPITAL, BUT UNKNOWN ON HIS CONDITION. WELL, WHAT ABOUT I MEAN, ARE WE IN A SAFE SPACE? I IMAGINE WE ARE. BUT WHAT ABOUT. IS THERE ANY DANGER TO THE PUBLIC NOW? THERE’S NO DANGER TO THE PUBLIC. WE HAVE OUR HAZMAT TEAMS THAT ARE GOING TO BE CONTINUING TO MITIGATE THIS HAZARD AND FIGURE OUT WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS. BUT NO, NO PUBLIC IS IN DANGER AT THIS POINT. OKAY. YEAH. AND WITH THE WIND BLOWING, YOU CAN REALLY GET A WHIFF OF THAT GAS. YOU CAN REALLY SMELL THAT. SO WHAT ABOUT JUST BEING OUTSIDE ENVIRONMENTALLY? ARE FOLKS OKAY? YEAH. FOLKS ARE TOTALLY FINE. WE DO HAVE A GOOD BREEZE. IT’S GOING TO KIND OF DISSIPATE. BLOWING THIS FUMES OUT, BLOWING THESE FUMES OUT OF THE WAY. SO ALL RIGHT. AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? OUR HAZMAT TEAM IS GOING TO MITIGATE THE SITUATION. THEY’RE GOING TO FIGURE OUT BEST STEPS MOVING FORWARD. THEY’RE GOING TO DO A LOT OF TESTING OF THE AIR QUALITY IN THE TANK. BUT WE’RE JUST TRYING TO KEEP THIS AREA CORDONED OFF RIGHT NOW TO KEEP EVERYONE OUT. OKAY. AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THAT INFORMATION. JUST WANT TO REITERATE AGAIN THAT WORKER IS IN CRITICAL CONDITION WAS TAKEN FROM THE SCENE NOT BREATHING. AND ALSO OBVIOUSLY THIS AREA IS GOING TO BE CLOSED FOR MOST OF THE DAY. WOULD YOU SAY JUSTIN CLOSED FOR HOURS HERE. YEAH. SO THIS IS AREA IS GOING TO BE CLOSED FOR HOURS AGAIN. BUT HE WAS OVERCOME BY ALL THOSE GAS FUMES WHILE WHILE BEING IN THAT UNDERGROUND TANK. NO FIREFIGHTERS INJURED, NO OTHER COWORKERS INJURED. BUT WE’RE GOING TO STAY ON SCENE HERE AS WE WATCH FIREFIGHTERS, YOU KNOW, GET THIS AREA CLEARED, GET THE AIR CLEARED, AND MAKE SURE EVERYONE’S OKAY. REPORTING LIVE IN SACRAMENTO MICHELLE BANDUR KCRA THREE NEWS. YEAH, THAT’S A LOT OF IMPORTANT INFORMATION, MICHELLE. AND I KNOW MICHELLE, YOU MENTIONED YOU’VE GOTTEN GAS AT THAT GAS STATION MANY TIMES, AND WHO KNOWS WHEN THEY’RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO REOPEN IT AFTER ALL THIS? YEAH, I THINK JUST FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO GET YOUR GAS FOR NOW. ALL RIGHT. MICHELLE BANDUR REPORTING LIVE FOR US. AND AGAIN, THAT WORKER SAID TO BE IN CRITICAL CONDITION. AND HE SAID THAT THERE WAS NO HEARTBEAT WHEN THEY DID TRANSPORT THAT PERSON THAT HE WAS

    Worker rescued from underground Costco gas tank after fainting, Sacramento Fire says

    Updated: 12:24 PM PDT Sep 8, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    A worker who fainted while inside a gas tank in north Sacramento has been rescued, officials said Monday morning. First responders were dispatched around 10:45 a.m. to the Costco on Expo Parkway. A third-party crew member brought in by Costco to clean its underground holding tanks had either passed out from the gas fumes or experienced a medical emergency after making his way down, the Sacramento Fire Department said.The tank was emptied while the fuel pumps were being remodeled. After the man collapsed, the workers were unable to pull him out. A rescue and hazmat team was dispatched and rescued the man. He was taken to a nearby hospital while CPR was performed on him, the fire department said. He is in critical condition. He wasn’t breathing and had no heartbeat. The fuel tanks pose no threat to the public. People should avoid the gas station at this time as it remains closed while an investigation is underway, the fire department said.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    A worker who fainted while inside a gas tank in north Sacramento has been rescued, officials said Monday morning.

    First responders were dispatched around 10:45 a.m. to the Costco on Expo Parkway. A third-party crew member brought in by Costco to clean its underground holding tanks had either passed out from the gas fumes or experienced a medical emergency after making his way down, the Sacramento Fire Department said.

    The tank was emptied while the fuel pumps were being remodeled. After the man collapsed, the workers were unable to pull him out. A rescue and hazmat team was dispatched and rescued the man. He was taken to a nearby hospital while CPR was performed on him, the fire department said. He is in critical condition. He wasn’t breathing and had no heartbeat.

    The fuel tanks pose no threat to the public. People should avoid the gas station at this time as it remains closed while an investigation is underway, the fire department said.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • South Korea, irked at U.S. raid at Hyundai plant, announces deal for detainees’ release

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    SEOUL — South Korea says the U.S. has agreed to release the hundreds of Koreans caught in the largest-ever immigration raid last week.

    South Korean presidential chief of staff, Kang Hoon-sik, said Sunday that negotiators were finalizing talks with U.S. officials to secure the release of the workers arrested in a federal immigration crackdown at a factory South Korean battery-maker LG Energy Solution and auto company Hyundai are building in Georgia.

    The workers could return home on a chartered flight as early as this week, he said.

    “The South Korean government will remain on guard and stay on the situation with responsibility until our citizens have safely returned home,” Kang said at a meeting with senior legislators and cabinet officials.

    On Thursday, federal agents arrested 475 people at the factory site in Ellabell, Ga. More than 300 of those detained were South Korean citizens employed by LG and its subcontractors.

    The crackdown came as South Korea’s biggest companies have pledged billions of dollars in new investment to boost their manufacturing operations in the U.S. as part of a trade deal reached by President Trump and his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae Myung earlier this year.

    Trump announced in late July that tariffs on most imports from South Korea would be only 15% after South Korea agreed to invest $350 billion in key U.S. industries and purchase $100 billion worth of its liquified natural gas.

    The fact that the raid targeted one of Korea’s most ambitious investments in the U.S at a time when the country is trying to rapidly ramp up its commitments prompted disbelief and indignation for some in Seoul.

    In a press conference held on Sunday, ruling party lawmaker Oh Gi-hyoung stated that South Koreans should be treated with a level of respect commensurate with their country’s status as a major U.S. ally and investor.

    The U.S. currently accounts for the greatest share of South Korea’s overseas investments, receiving $26 billion last year, according to South Korea’s finance ministry. South Korea is currently the U.S.’s 8th largest trading partner, with the two countries exchanging $242.5 billion in goods and services last year.

    “If the U.S. genuinely wants to attract investment from South Korean companies, things like this cannot happen,” Oh said.

    In a statement released Friday, the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of Georgia said the operation — which was the largest single-site raid in the Department of Homeland Security’s history — was part of a nationwide initiative to “repel the invasion of illegal immigration” known as Operation Take Back America.

    ICE has said that those arrested were found to be working illegally, many on “short-term or recreational visas,” which do not allow visitors to work.

    As of 2022, there were around 110,000 unauthorized South Korean immigrants living in the U.S., representing 1% of the total, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center.

    Even if there is a swift release of the workers, experts in South Korea said this heavy-handed action could impact how the Asian nation sees its trade relationship with the U.S.

    Industry experts say that the crackdown could lead to logistical challenges for both ongoing and future efforts by South Korean companies in the U.S.

    South Korea recently announced a $150 billion project to help revive a declining American shipbuilding industry. There are also close to 10 other battery plant projects currently underway across the U.S.

    For years, companies here have dispatched their own technical specialists to oversee the construction of U.S. factories using nonwork travel permits such as ESTA (or the Electronic System for Travel Authorization), a visa waiver that allows tourists to stay in the country for up to 90 days.

    Though technically the visas do not allow holders to work, “it was tolerated for a long time by U.S. authorities,” said Hwang In-song, an industrial policy expert at the Korea Electronics Technology Institute, a government think tank.

    South Korean companies have long complained that the visas legally required for their dispatched workers are too time-consuming and challenging to obtain.

    For example, the H-1B visa, which allows people to work, is awarded through a lottery held once a year. And getting one has gotten increasingly difficult under Trump, who has limited its eligibility under the banner of “Buy American, Hire American.”

    “South Korean companies are reluctant to go that route because it takes at least 8 months of lead time before you can begin working on an H-1B, and there is no guarantee you will get it,” said Chun Jong-joon, a Korean American immigration lawyer based in Washington.

    Hwang said it is nearly impossible to find enough Americans with the skills needed in order to staff South Korea’s U.S. factories, such as lithium-ion battery manufacturing or shipbuilding.

    “As of now, there’s no way other than sending experienced South Korean specialists to help.”

    After the release of the detained workers, South Korean officials said that they would pursue improvements to U.S. work permits for South Korean citizens.

    Chile, Australia and Singapore have special work visa programs that allow their citizens to work in specialized roles in the U.S.

    Until then, the arrests at the Georgia battery plant will likely mean months of costly delays, as the joint venture struggles to redeploy workers.

    “In the case of LG Energy Solutions, they will have to think twice before sending their workers to the Georgia plant,” Hwang said.

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    Max Kim

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  • At Labor Day rallies, speakers decry Trump

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    Thousands of union members and others participated in marches, rallies and picnics on Labor Day throughout the Los Angeles region and across the country on Monday, decrying actions by the Trump administration that they say weaken unions and harm workers while strengthening and emboldening major corporations and the wealthy.

    A White House proclamation Monday said President Trump’s actions are “reversing decades of neglect and finally putting American Workers first” by rewriting tax laws and creating a better economic climate for businesses.

    His critics say he is undermining, in historic ways, the government and labor-union infrastructure established to protect workers — and therefore hurting individual workers.

    Participants at a massive Wilmington rally and parade — organized by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — united over a common foe: Trump.

    “Donald Trump has gone too far,” said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), as she and others linked typical Labor Day rhetoric directly to immigration raids. “On this Labor Day, we have an American president who takes parents from their children and workers from their jobs.”

    The raids are no longer about border security, Durazo said, but “about breaking the backbone of our economy and terrorizing families.”

    ”Fighting for workers’ rights means fighting for immigrant rights,” said Angelica Salas, the executive director of the immigrant advocacy group CHIRLA.

    The Trump administration, meanwhile, marked Labor Day by extolling the American worker and calling attention to new trade policies — including widespread tariffs — intended to spur a return of manufacturing to the United States.

    “Every day, my Administration is restoring the dignity of labor and putting the American worker first,” Trump said in a Labor Day proclamation. “We are making it easier to buy American and hire American, breathing new life into our manufacturing cities, and securing fair trade deals that protect our jobs and reward our productivity. … Under my leadership, we are bringing jobs back to America — and those jobs are going to American-born workers.”

    Tariff chaos at port

    The effect of tariffs and their uneven rollout is widely debated, including within Trump’s Republican Party, although a Congress controlled by Republicans has not acted to stop them.

    Trump’s tariffs — and the threat of them — have triggered unpredictable boom-and-bust cycles at L.A.’s ports, Mickey Chavez, president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Southern California District Council, said Monday.

    Standing with his French bulldog Gucci under an ILWU tent after the Wilmington parade, the union foreman described how the mood has fluctuated dramatically at the nearby union hall where ILWU members wait for work.

    “It’s been chaotic, more than anything, with the tariffs,” Chavez said as smoke from a barbecue a few tents over curled past his ILWU beret. “Either the workers really get a lot of work because they’re trying to beat the tariffs, or then [Trump] sets out more tariffs and the work slows down.”

    The uncertainty has made it difficult for workers to plan, particularly those at the lowest level, who are most affected by slowdowns.

    “If he sends out a tweet or makes a decision, we never know if there’s going to be work or not, so it’s been in flux,” the fourth-generation ILWU member said.

    Chavez’s great-grandfather first joined the union in the 1940s and his family has worked at the ports ever since. But he has never experienced anything like this before, where work is so dependent on the whims of a single man, he said.

    Trump bans most federal bargaining

    On the same day as his Labor Day proclamation, Trump issued an order banning collective bargaining at the International Trade Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office within the Commerce Department; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, and the National Weather Service; as well as at NASA and the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

    Trump cited national security concerns as providing legal grounds for the unilateral edict. The latest action follows a March order outlawing collective bargaining for a majority of the federal workforce, citing the same justification.

    Unions immediately filed suit, putting Trump’s action on hold.

    A study from the left-leaning Center for American Progress estimated that Trump’s orders have stripped 82% of civilian federal workers of their right to bargain. The total number of workers whose contracts Trump has abrogated exceeds 1 million, an estimated one-fifteenth of American workers covered by a union contract.

    In addition, Trump fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, although the National Labor Relations Act stipulates that board members serve for five years and her term was not to end until August 2028. Her dismissal has paralyzed the labor board by leaving it without a quorum. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to stop her dismissal as part of ongoing litigation.

    At least one speaker at the Wilmington rally spoke of the need for organized labor to support California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to redraw state congressional districts to flip as many as five seats from Republican to Democrat — a strategy to offset actions taken in Texas — urged on by Trump — to do exactly the opposite.

    Labor groups have already put millions of dollars behind it and have committed to help lead voter-mobilization efforts.

    Unlike in Texas, Newsom’s plan must be approved by voters, who will have the opportunity to support it by voting for Proposition 50.

    Passage of the measure at the ballot box is essential, state Assemblyman Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles) said at the Wilmington event, because Trump is already “destroying the fabric of the labor movement” months into his second term.

    California Republicans point out that the measure unravels reforms meant to make California districts more representative and competitive. Opponents of the retaliatory gerrymander include former California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    Festive vibes

    In Wilmington, although the thousands of union members and allies were fired up, the rally and parade retained a festive vibe.

    On a truck at the front of the procession, leaders of local and state labor groups danced with elected officials as Bob Marley and the Wailers sang about standing up for rights over a loudspeaker.

    Hammerhead cranes at the nearby port facilities dotted the horizon as classic cars turned down E Street, and posters and T-shirts in the crowd advertised membership in an alphabet soup of union locals.

    Children sharing space with political fliers in oversized wagons blew bubbles, and teenage girls from a local high school twirled pom-poms.

    At the helm of a massive shiny black truck bearing the Teamsters insignia, a driver clenched a cigar between his teeth as he steered with one hand and pulled an overhead horn with the other. Representatives from the local branch of the sheet metal workers union carried a carefully crafted, welded brown California bear in the back of their truck.

    Alongside carpenters and nurses and dockworkers, there were also representatives from a cadre of entertainment industry unions representing actors, writers and production workers.

    Rallies across the Southland and the country were united under the banner of May Day Strong, a partnership of labor, political and environmental organizations. The targets of the rallies included federal agencies carrying out immigration raids, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    “The billionaires continue to wage a war on working people, with their cronies in the administration, ICE and law enforcement backing up their attacks,” according to the organizers’ toolkit. “This Labor Day we will continue to stand strong, fighting for public schools over private profits, healthcare over hedge funds, shared prosperity over billionaire-bought politics.”

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    Julia Wick, Howard Blume

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  • ‘Moment of crisis’: Unions in somber mood this Labor Day

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    Thousands of workers and union organizers from across California will gather for picnics and marches this weekend to honor the contributions of the nation’s working people.

    But the Labor Day celebrations will be tempered by a sobering reality: Unions face mounting pressure to protect their members from the Trump administration’s immigration raids, cuts in Medicaid services and a weakened National Labor Relations Board.

    “We know how important we are to preserving and protecting democracy,” said Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation. “We have a special role in that. We are not going to get silenced, and we’re not going to be paralyzed.”

    From farm fields to car washes, labor groups have scrambled to support families of the hundreds detained and deported in numerous chaotic and violent raids that have resulted in the deaths of two people —a day laborer and a farmworker — killed while fleeing federal agents.

    The raids reverberated across the state’s local labor community in June when David Huerta of SEIU California was injured and detained by law enforcement while documenting the first major immigration enforcement raids in Los Angeles.

    “Farmworkers are afraid….They don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next with these raids, but they understand the only way we’re going to have power is if we come together,” said Teresa Romero, president of United Farm Workers.

    Romero and other union leaders said their focus remains on organizing more workplaces, while also working to educate people on their rights and staging legal and nonviolent protests against government policies.

    “We are all under attack by the federal government right now,” said Jeremy Goldberg, executive director of the Central Coast Labor Council. “The need is tremendous.”

    In early August, the Trump administration moved forward with a plan to end collective bargaining with federal unions across a swath of government agencies. The government said the changes were necessary to protect national security, but unions viewed it as retaliation for their participation in lawsuits opposing the president’s policies.

    The Trump administration has also proposed sweeping cuts to the staff of the National Labor Relations Board — which is tasked with safeguarding the right of private employees to unionize or organize in other ways to improve their working conditions — and canceled leases for regional offices in many states.

    Union officials contend the changes could hobble the board and prevent it from investigating unfair labor practice charges filed by workers and carrying out its other responsibilities, such as overseeing elections.

    “Important rules and regulations that were put in place during the Biden administration that were helpful to workers — those are systematically being rolled back,” said Enrique Lopezlira, director of the Low-Wage Work Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

    Unions are bracing for further challenges that could arise when Trump finally makes appointments to the federal labor board, which is currently nonoperational, because it doesn’t have enough board members to rule on cases.

    But even as many labor leaders have openly opposed the Trump administration, others have taken a more muted approach. Major national unions, such as United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, have supported aspects of the Trump agenda on tariffs abroad and a push for manufacturing jobs at home.

    The changes portend tough times ahead for California unions.

    John Logan, a professor of U.S. labor history at San Francisco State, said that Trump’s hostility toward California and withholding of federal funds from universities, healthcare facilities and other institutions will squeeze the state budget, with major effects on public sector workers in the form of layoffs and other cost-cutting. And the administration’s relentless immigrant raids are consuming the time, attention and resources of unions, he said.

    Although California has a larger share of its workforce represented by unions compared with many other states, that density is overly reliant on public sector workers, and membership of those unions is likely to shrink in the coming years, Logan said.

    Unions are “ill-equipped to deal with this moment of crisis,” Logan said. “The labor movement is fighting for its survival over the next four years.”

    Challenges are especially acute in the healthcare industry.

    Unions representing in-home care providers, nurses and other healthcare workers said their members are already feeling the squeeze wrought by the lead up to and approval of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which includes tax spending cuts that will affect millions of Medicaid recipients while growing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by thousands of workers.

    SEIU Local 2015 President Arnulfo De La Cruz said many in-home care providers who have cared for people for decades are now faced with the prospect that the people they care for are going to lose their healthcare, and that they themselves may lose their healthcare and their jobs.

    “To have our healthcare under attack, to have our families under attack — that’s a huge reversal in how we are recognizing essential workers,” De La Cruz said.

    Major medical facilities, including Sharp HealthCare, UC San Diego Health and UCSF Health, have in recent months announced plans to cut public health services and conduct hundreds of layoffs, citing significant financial headwinds and the uncertainty of federal funding.

    “It’s a nasty bill. There’s nothing beautiful about that bill,” said Cynthia Williams, an Orange County resident and member of AFSCME Local 3930. Williams is a full-time caregiver for both her daughter, who is blind and has cerebral palsy, and her sister, who is a veteran living with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Williams said the In-Home Supportive Services program — funded primarily by Medicaid — has preemptively cut funding for transportation to her sister’s weekly appointments. The hours Williams is paid for to care for her daughter have been reduced.

    “The last few months have been very stressful and very unpredictable,” Williams said.

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    Suhauna Hussain

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  • Altadena ICE raid highlights fears that roundups will stymie rebuilding efforts

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    When ICE agents raided the construction site of a burned property in Altadena this month, they made no arrests. The man they were after was not there. But the mere specter of them returning spooked the workers enough to bring the project to a temporary halt.

    The next day, half of the 12-man team stayed home. The crew returned to full strength by the end of the week, but they now work in fear, according to Brock Harris, a real estate agent representing the developer of the property.

    “It had a chilling effect,” he said. “They’re instilling fear in the workers trying to rebuild L.A.”

    Harris said another developer in the area started camouflaging his construction sites: hiding Porta Potties, removing construction fences and having workers park far away and carpool to the site so as not to attract attention.

    The potential of widespread immigration raids at construction sites looms ominously over Los Angeles County’s prospects of rebuilding after the two most destructive fires in its history.

    A new report by the UCLA Anderson Forecast said that roundups could hamstring the colossal undertaking to reconstruct the 13,000 homes that were wiped away in Altadena and Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7 — and exacerbate the housing crisis by stymieing new construction statewide.

    “Deportations will deplete the construction workforce,” the report said. “The loss of workers installing drywall, flooring, roofing and the like will directly diminish the level of production.”

    A house under construction in Altadena.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    The consequences will spread far beyond those who are deported, the report said. Many of the undocumented workers who manage to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be forced to withdraw from the labor force. Their specialties are often crucial to getting projects completed, potentially harming the fortunes of remaining workers who can’t finish jobs without their help.

    “The productive activities of the undocumented and the rest of the labor force are often complementary,” the report said. “For example, home building could be delayed because of a reduction in specific skills” resulting in “a consequent increase in unemployment for the remaining workforce.”

    Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the Anderson Forecast and author of the quarterly California report released Wednesday, said the “confusion and uncertainty” about the rollout of both immigration and trade policies “has a negative economic impact on California.”

    Contractors want to hire Americans but have a hard time finding enough of them with proper abilities, said Brian Turmail, a spokesperson for the Associated General Contractors of America trade group.

    “Most of them are kind of in the Lee Greenwood crowd,” he said, referring to a country music singer known for performing patriotic songs. “They’d rather be hiring young men and women from the United States. They’re just not there.”

    “Construction firms don’t start off with a business plan of, ‘Let’s hire undocumented workers,’” Turmail said. “They start with a business plan of, ‘Let’s find qualified people.’ It’s been relatively easy for undocumented workers to get into the country, so let’s not be surprised there are undocumented workers working in, among other things, industries in construction.”

    The trade group said government policies are partly to blame for the labor shortage. About 80% of federal funds spent on workforce development go to encouraging students to pursue four-year degrees, even though fewer than 40% of Americans complete college, Turmail said.

    “Exposing future workers to fields like construction and teaching them the skills they need is woefully lacking,” he said. “Complicating that, we don’t really offer many lawful pathways for people born outside the United States to come into the country and work in construction.”

    A home under construction in Altadena, where immigration agents visited earlier this month.

    A home under construction in Altadena, where immigration agents visited earlier this month.

    (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

    The recently raided Altadena project had plenty of momentum before the raid, Harris said. The original house burned in the Eaton fire, but the foundation survived, so the developer, who requested anonymity for fear of ICE retribution, purchased the lot with plans to rebuild the exact house that was there.

    Permits were quickly secured, and the developer hoped to finish the home by December. But as immigration raids continue across L.A. County, that timeline could be in jeopardy.

    “It’s insane to me that in the wake of a natural disaster, they’re choosing to create trouble and fear for those rebuilding,” Harris said. “There’s a terrible housing shortage, and they’re throwing a wrench into development plans.”

    Los Angeles real estate developer Clare De Briere called raids “fearmongering.”

    “It’s the anticipation of the possibility of being taken, even if you are fully legal and you have your papers and everything’s in order,” she said. “It’s an anticipation that you’re going to be taken and harassed because of how you look, and you’re going to lose a day’s work or potentially longer than that.”

    De Briere helped oversee Project Recovery, a group of public and private real estate experts who compiled a report in March on what steps can be taken to speed the revival of the Palisades and Altadena as displaced residents weigh their options to return to fire-affected neighborhoods.

    The prospect of raids and increased tariffs has increased uncertainty about how much it will cost to rebuild homes and commercial structures, she said. “Any time there is unpredictability, the market is going to reflect that by increasing costs.”

    The disappearance of undocumented workers stands to exacerbate the labor shortage that has grown more pronounced in recent years as construction has been slowed by high interest rates and the rising cost of materials that could get even more expensive because of new tariffs.

    “In general, costs have risen in the last seven years for all sorts of construction,” including houses and apartments, said Devang Shah, a principal at Genesis Builders, a firm focused on rebuilding homes in Altadena for people who were displaced by the fire. “We’re not seeing much construction work going on.”

    The slowdown has left a shortage of workers as many contractors consolidated or got out of the business because they couldn’t find enough work, Shah said.

    “When you start thinking about Altadena and the Palisades,” he said, “limited subcontractors can create headwinds.”

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    Roger Vincent, Jack Flemming

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  • O.C. man charged with workers’ comp fraud involving $100 million of billings

    O.C. man charged with workers’ comp fraud involving $100 million of billings

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    In a major California workers’ comp insurance case, authorities have charged an Orange County man who was twice convicted of fraud, along with a San Diego neurosurgeon and two others, in connection with allegedly billing nearly $100 million in fraudulent fees.

    Following a three-year investigation, the Orange County district attorney’s office said on Friday that David Fish, 55, of Laguna Niguel allegedly masterminded an extensive scheme “to control clinics and providers who would see patients, refer them to specific providers in order to receive illegal referral payments, and then unlawfully bill workers’ compensation insurance companies for these services.”

    Workers’ comp fraud is estimated to be a $30-billion annual problem in the U.S., and California employers have long complained about the high cost of insurance premiums to cover employees from work-related injuries. One common scheme at so-called medical mills involves steering workers to seek medical treatment from specific doctors.

    “At a time when families across America are struggling to keep up with increasing prices for everything from gas and rent to just being able to put food on the table for their families, criminals like these only increase the cost of insurance premiums and put the American dream just that much further out of reach for so many hardworking people,” said Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.

    Benjamin N. Gluck, Fish’s attorney in Los Angeles, said the charges are unfounded.

    “The Orange County District Attorney’s Office has a history of filing similar cases only to have them collapse under scrutiny,” Gluck said. “We think this case will be just one more in that line.”

    Spitzer’s office Friday also named two co-conspirators — Martin Brill, 78 of Los Angeles and Robert Lee, 61 of Rancho Mirage — alleging that they formed a firm, Southern California Injured Workers, that offered medical management services, including marketing, billing and collections. The company, in fact, was controlled entirely by Fish, authorities said.

    The three co-defendants, along with San Diego neurosurgeon Dr. Vrijesh Tantuwaya, also created a medical group called Injured Workers Medical Group, which was the main client for Southern California Injured Workers. Tantuwaya was designated as the owner and CEO of this medical professional corporation, Spitzer’s office said.

    The four men have been charged with 13 separate felony counts, including violations related to referral of clients for pay, conspiracy to commit a crime and insurance fraud.

    Scott A. Simmons, an Irvine-based attorney for Tantuwaya, said in a statement that his client “maintains his complete innocence and is confident that the evidence will demonstrate his lack of involvement in any illegal activities.”

    “Dr. Tantuwaya is a respected and highly skilled neurosurgeon, with a 22-year unblemished career,” Simmons said. “The records will show that Dr. Tantuwaya did not receive a single penny in kickbacks. It will become clear that he was a victim of fraud himself and, in fact, has filed a civil lawsuit against Southern California Injured Workers.”

    Attorneys for Brill and Lee could not immediately be reached for comment.

    Simmons said that his client, Tantuwaya, and the other three men have all pleaded not guilty and been released on bail.

    If convicted, Fish faces a maximum sentence of 18 years and four months in prison; Brill, a maximum of 12 years and four months in prison; Tantuwaya, 13 years, four months in state prison; and Lee, 12 years and four months in prison.

    According to the O.C. district attorney’s office, Fish was convicted twice before for workers’ comp fraud. That included a conviction in 2010 for compensation or inducement for referral of clients who went to preferred medical providers to run up high bills.

    In December 2017, Fish was barred from participating in the state’s workers’ comp system by California’s Department of Industrial Relations.

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    Don Lee

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  • Newsom vetoes bill aiming to increase protections for farmworkers overcome by heat

    Newsom vetoes bill aiming to increase protections for farmworkers overcome by heat

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    Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that aimed to make it easier for farmworkers to make a workers’ compensation claim for heat illness.

    SB 1299 would have changed the burden of proof in workers’ compensation claims when a farmworker develops a heat-related injury after laboring outdoors for an employer who fails to comply with the state’s heat safety standards. Instead of the farmworker having to prove the injury occurred on the job, as is typical in workers’ compensation cases, it would have been the employer’s responsibility to prove the illness was not work-related.

    Under the bill’s provisions, if an employer failed to comply with the rules, any resulting heat-related injury to an employee would be “presumed to arise out of and in the course of employment.” It would have created a “rebuttable presumption,” which is more commonly used for law enforcement officers and firefighters who develop certain injuries that could arise from the risks inherent to their jobs.

    In a veto message issued Saturday, Newsom said there is “no doubt” that California farmworkers need strong protections from the risk of heat-related illness, especially as climate change drives an increase in extreme temperatures.

    “However, the creation of a heat-illness presumption in the workers’ compensation system is not an effective way to accomplish this goal,” he said. Newsom said heat safety rules are currently enforced by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, which is better equipped to enforce those worker protections.

    Newsom also noted that Cal/OSHA is establishing an agricultural unit that specializes in worker protections and hazards found at agricultural worksites, and opening new district office locations in Fresno, Santa Barbara and Riverside.

    “This dedicated unit will increase Cal/OSHA’s reach to farmworker communities throughout the Central Valley, where the largest number of farmworkers and their families reside,” Newsom said.

    The legislation came as many farmworkers continue to labor in unsafe conditions and Cal/OSHA confronts a severe staffing shortage that is hampering its ability to enforce heat regulations for outdoor workers.

    First enacted in 2005, the state’s heat illness prevention rules require employers to provide outdoor workers with fresh water, access to shade at 80 degrees and warmer, and cool-down breaks whenever a worker requests one. Employers must also maintain a heat illness prevention plan with effective training for supervisors to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat illness.

    But nearly two decades after the rules were first enacted, ensuring compliance has remained challenging.

    In 2009 and 2012, the United Farm Workers sued Cal/OSHA, accusing the agency of failing to enforce the regulations.

    A 2022 study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center found many farmworkers were still laboring without the protections. Of more than 1,200 workers surveyed, 43% reported their employers had not provided a heat illness prevention plan and 15% said they had not received heat illness prevention training.

    The bill’s author, Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José), previously described SB 1299 as a “creative work-around” that was “taking the tools that we do have available and trying to cobble together an approach that will hopefully spur greater compliance.”

    “The employers hate the workers’ comp presumptions so much that it makes me feel like it might actually work,” Cortese previously told The Times. “The avoidance factor is so high with them that they’ll say, ‘My God, it’s actually easier for us to provide shade and water than to have to deal with a proliferation of expedited workers’ comp claims.’”

    “We’re trying to take something that they view as kind of a thorn in their side and use it as a disincentive for the kind of behavior we’re seeing,” he said.

    The UFW backed SB 1299.

    “Despite the Governor’s veto of SB 1299, the UFW will continue to work to save farm worker lives,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement Saturday.

    Opponents of the bill, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau, acknowledged the importance of protecting farmworkers from heat illness, but had argued the issue should not be addressed through the workers’ compensation system.

    This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

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    Rebecca Plevin

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  • Jury finds stone companies at fault in lawsuit by countertop cutter sick with silicosis

    Jury finds stone companies at fault in lawsuit by countertop cutter sick with silicosis

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    A Los Angeles County jury found businesses that make or distribute engineered stone at fault Wednesday for the suffering of a 34-year-old stonecutter afflicted with an incurable disease.

    In a decision watched closely by silicosis experts and the stone industry, jurors deliberating at Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A. decided largely in favor of Gustavo Reyes Gonzalez, who was diagnosed with silicosis and had to undergo a double lung transplant after years of cutting engineered stone countertops.

    The decision followed deliberations that spanned five days of the multi-week trial. Before the verdict, the two sides in the case had agreed that economic losses for Reyes Gonzalez exceeded $8 million.

    The jury decided that other damages — which could include physical pain, mental suffering and emotional distress — amounted to more than $44 million. However, because the jury did not deem the defendants wholly responsible for those damages, they will not be collectively liable for the full amount.

    It concluded that Caesarstone USA bore 15% of the responsibility, Cambria 10% and Color Marble 2.5%. The court will ultimately determine how much each defendant must pay.

    Reyes Gonzalez is among scores of California countertop cutters who have sued companies like Caesarstone and Cambria after falling ill with silicosis, which is caused by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica.

    His case was the first to go to trial, according to his attorneys. It tested whether companies that manufacture or distribute slabs of artificial stone, commonly marketed as quartz, could be held responsible for the ravages of silicosis, an ancient disease now emerging among countertop cutters barely in middle age.

    Scientists have linked the eruption of silicosis cases among stonecutters to the booming popularity of engineered stone, which is typically much higher in lung-scarring silica than natural stone such as granite or marble. In California, more than a dozen countertop cutters have died of silicosis in recent years. In a recent study of the emerging cases and fatalities, researchers found the median age at death was 46.

    Attorneys for Reyes Gonzalez argued that the companies had failed to provide sufficient warning about the dangers of cutting the slabs and that the risks far outweighed the benefits of their products. Gilbert Purcell, one of his lawyers, told the jury that engineered stone has “nasty, nasty risks” that had not been properly disclosed.

    “A company should never needlessly cause risk to others,” Purcell said, “and that’s what they did.”

    For instance, Purcell argued, Cambria had failed for a decade and a half to warn that silica dust could be an invisible hazard. How can workers avoid breathing dust, he argued, “when you can’t even know you’re breathing it because it’s invisible?”

    A cloud of dust envelops a countertop fabricator cutting engineered stone at a Sun Valley shop last year.

    (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

    Lawyers representing companies that make or distribute engineered stone argued that the operators of the Orange County workshops where Reyes Gonzalez worked were to blame. If they had used the proper protections, he would not have gotten silicosis, said Peter Strotz, an attorney representing Caesarstone USA.

    “They knew what they had to do. They didn’t do it. … Worst of all, they deceived Mr. Reyes Gonzalez. They led him to believe he would be protected when he was not,” Strotz told the jury. He argued Caesarstone USA had done its part by providing safety information and should not be blamed for the “misuse” of its products.

    Cambria attorney Lindsay Weiss said the company had provided warnings, including labels on the slabs themselves, and offered free training to the “fabricators” who cut, grind and polish the material to shape it into countertops.

    She held up a sample of its quartz surfacing material to the jury, telling them it was safe. “The problem is when people don’t follow the law when they handle this product,” Weiss said.

    And Color Marble, a distributor, argued there was no proof that Reyes Gonzalez had cut or polished slabs sold by its company. The jury found Color Marble liable for negligence — as it did Caesarstone USA and Cambria — but did not deem it liable for other claims for product liability as it had for those firms.

    The lawsuit initially targeted a long list of companies, but all but three — Caesarstone USA, Cambria and Color Marble — were dismissed or settled before the jury reached a verdict. Attorney James Nevin, who represents Reyes Gonzalez, said most had “resolved the case pursuant to confidential agreements.”

    Strotz, representing Caesarstone USA, declined to comment on the verdict.

    Weiss said her client, Cambria, disagreed with the decision. “We think this is not a product issue. It’s a workplace safety issue,” she said. “This is handled safely every single day.”

    Raphael Metzger, one of the attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez, called the decision “a win for public health and occupational safety.”

    He grew emotional as he praised the jurors for their work. “Only in America,” he said, “can Hispanic immigrants come here and receive justice — as they have.”

    The trial, which stretched more than a month, spotlighted the dangers facing workers like Reyes Gonzalez, who testified that he came to the U.S. from the Mexican state of Veracruz as a teenager to escape poverty. For years, he worked from morning to evening cutting slabs for countertops.

    Dust was rampant in the Orange County workshops where he labored, Reyes Gonzalez testified, at times so much that it looked like fog. His mask would grow filthy. Even when he used water while cutting, he said, “a lot of dust would come off” when the liquid had dried.

    His wife, Wendy Torres Hernandez, said that when Reyes Gonzalez got his diagnosis, he called her crying. “He was told that there was no cure for it. There was nothing that he could do,” she said.

    “I told him we would figure something out to help him, because I couldn’t just let him die,” she testified. Despondent, he told her “that he was going to start planning for his funeral.”

    Reyes Gonzalez ultimately became so sick that both his lungs needed to be replaced in a transplant. The surgery may afford him only six more years to live before he needs another set of transplanted lungs — and a doctor testified that if that did happen, he would be unlikely to get a third transplant because of his age.

    He will have to take a host of medications and carefully monitor his health until he dies. Because of the medicines he takes, Reyes Gonzalez said he cannot have children, which pains him because his wife adores them. Doctors might find a way for them in the future, he said, but cannot guarantee it.

    Lawyers for Caesarstone and other companies focused much of their questioning on members of the Silverio family, who paid Reyes Gonzalez for his work in a string of Orange County workshops. When a co-worker named Guillermo Mora de los Santos took the stand, a defense attorney questioned him about whether the Silverio shops had ever provided trainings on workplace safety or had any “silica control program.”

    Mora de los Santos said no. “We didn’t know about that — about that disease,” he said about silicosis.

    Weiss, representing Cambria, stressed to the jury that Reyes Gonzalez had described sweeping up dry dust and using compressed air to clean — practices that send dust into the air — and that he wasn’t provided with an adequate mask. Nor was water used properly, she said.

    In court, one of the Silverios denied having seen safety information from Caesarstone that included a video on silicosis risks, despite having signed a form saying he had received such materials.

    Purcell, in his closing remarks, argued that whatever the Silverios had done or not done could not absolve the defendants. “This chain of safety starts with them.”

    In its verdict, the jury had the opportunity to assign a percentage of the total responsibility to “others” besides Reyes Gonzalez and the engineered stone companies. Jurors assigned 70% to “others” and 2.5% to Reyes Gonzalez himself.

    The Silica Safety Coalition, an industry group that maintains that engineered stone can and should be cut safely, said the 70% fault attributed to “others” was an acknowledgment of the unsafe practices at his workplace.

    “We think the California jury was wrong to blame the slab suppliers for any of Mr. Reyes-Gonzalez’s injuries from his unsafe workplace condition, and we anticipate the verdict will be appealed by one or more parties,” the coalition said in a statement.

    Juror Laura Miller, who said she disagreed with most of her fellow jurors in finding the companies liable, said after the verdict that she felt the blame lay with the Silverios. To reach their decisions in the civil case, at least nine of 12 jurors had to agree on the verdicts.

    “The employer was using no precautions,” Miller said.

    Nevin, one of Reyes Gonzalez’s lawyers, said in a statement that the jury had “rightly rejected” efforts to blame “unsophisticated hirers” who had not been warned of the dangers themselves.

    His firm, Brayton Purcell LLP, now represents more than 150 countertop cutters with silicosis who labored at more than 350 shops, it said in a statement. “The problem is the products, not the shops.”

    Much of the court case revolved around the kinds of measures needed to protect workers from silica dust from engineered stone, as a string of experts testified about the risks of cutting such slabs. Among them was Dr. Kenneth Rosenman, who testified that Reyes Gonzalez got silicosis despite having used some tools that dispense water because they were “not sufficiently protective.”

    “They do not lower the dust level low enough to prevent this severe disease,” said Rosenman, chief of the division of occupational and environmental medicine at Michigan State University.

    Another witness for the plaintiff, industrial hygienist Stephen Petty, said that N95 masks would be “bottom of the barrel” protection for engineered stone dust. Even the most protective respirators, which use a tank of clean air, are not a “permanent solution” because workers tend to adjust them, breaking the seal, he said.

    Defense attorneys turned to other witnesses, including industrial hygienist Brian Daly, who said that engineered stone can be cut and polished safely. Reyes Gonzalez “would not have developed silicosis had his employer had a program that was protective” and followed workplace safety regulations, Daly testified.

    Judge William F. Fahey had excluded testimony that attorneys representing Reyes Gonzalez had sought from Georgia Tech scientist Jenny Houlroyd, saying her study was based on data that were not provided to the court, among other issues. Her analysis had concluded that it wasn’t economically feasible to employ the measures needed to safely cut engineered stone, especially for small workshops.

    Artificial stone is “a uniquely toxic product,” and neither “wet methods” nor wearing a mask would make it safe to cut and grind, Houlroyd wrote in a prepared list of her opinions.

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    Emily Alpert Reyes

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  • New law promises retail workers in unincorporated L.A. County ‘fair workweek’

    New law promises retail workers in unincorporated L.A. County ‘fair workweek’

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    Workers at big retail and grocery stores in unincorporated L.A. County can retain a little more control over their schedules — and rely a little less on managers’ whims — starting next summer.

    On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to require that employers give those workers their schedules two weeks in advance, compensate them for last-minute schedule changes and space out their shifts by at least 10 hours.

    The ordinance, which will go into effect July 2025, applies to any retailer and grocer in unincorporated L.A. County with 300 or more employees nationwide.

    The county has estimated that the ordinance would affect about 200 businesses, many of them large chains, and up to 6,000 workers. Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who spearheaded the policy, said Tuesday’s vote would benefit both.

    “It is a win for retailers committed to a work environment that gives them a competitive edge and for our retail workers who deserve the dignity of a predictable schedule so they can plan for childcare, school and other life obligations,” she said.

    The policy closely mirrors the “fair work week” ordinance the City of Los Angeles passed in 2022.

    Like the city’s version, the county’s policy requires that retailers provide “predictability pay” if they change a worker’s schedule last-minute and get employee’s approval before assigning them so-called “clopening” shifts — a closing shift followed immediately by an opening shift the next day. The ordinance also bars an employer from retaliating against an employee who reports violations.

    Several business and trade groups argued that the policy needlessly complicates the delicate art of scheduling staff. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce said it would hamper businesses already struggling to compete against e-commerce companies, saddling them with fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. The California Grocers Association argued it would create needless bureaucracy, making eleventh-hour staffing changes “extremely challenging.”

    Both groups said they wished the policy included a grace period for a store to solve “honest clerical mistakes” without getting penalized.

    “Scheduling flexibility is one of the industry perks that many enjoy about working in grocery stores, yet this ordinance will make schedule changes, especially within a week of a shift, nearly impossible,” wrote Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the grocers association. “Taken together, its pay penalty requirements and the likely increase in needless lawsuits, will only lead to higher costs at the grocery store for Los Angeles shoppers.”

    The county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs would be responsible for enforcing the policy. Each violation comes with a penalty of $500 to $1000.

    Janna Shadduck-Hernández, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, said she believes the policy will bring stability to the lives of thousands of low-income workers. A 2018 study from the center found that the vast majority of retail workers, many of whom are people of color, get their schedules a week or less in advance.

    “What this allows is people to organize their lives,” she said.

    In recent years, major cities including Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York City, as well as the state of Oregon, have passed laws to protect the time of shift workers. Kristen Harknett, a professor of sociology at University of California, San Francisco who studied the impact of Seattle’s policy, said she found workers’ well-being improved as their schedules became more predictable.

    “When you don’t know when — or how much — you’re going to work from one day or the next, it’s very disruptive,” she said. “It really just messes up your ability to plan.”

    Harknett said the county’s version has the same components as the other jurisdictions, with one key difference: food service workers aren’t included.

    “The carve-out for the restaurant and food industry is pretty unique,” she said. “Food service is pretty unstable and unpredictable, [and] those workers are not going to experience the enhanced protections that their counterparts in retail will.”

    The county indicated in a report last May that it would look at providing “coverage for workers in several other vulnerable industries, particularly food service” in the future.

    Amardeep Gill with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocacy group that pushed for the county policy, said she hoped other industries would enact a similar ordinance for their own sectors.

    “We’re hoping the work that we’ve done here really lays like a strong foundation where others can build upon this,” said Gill.

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    Rebecca Ellis

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  • Worker killed when he gets pulled into wood chipper at lumber yard, Georgia cops say

    Worker killed when he gets pulled into wood chipper at lumber yard, Georgia cops say

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    The incident happened at the Pollard Lumber Company in Appling, Georgia, officials said. Appling is about 20 miles northwest of Augusta. 

    The incident happened at the Pollard Lumber Company in Appling, Georgia, officials said. Appling is about 20 miles northwest of Augusta. 

    Street View image from Oct. 2022. © 2024 Google

    An investigation is underway into how a man working at a Georgia lumber plant ended up in its wood chipper, according to investigators.

    The victim was identified as 63-year-old Ralph Pickens of McCormick, South Carolina, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia told McClatchy News.

    He died on the job at Pollard Lumber Company in Appling, Georgia, 20 miles northwest of Augusta. The incident happened the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 5, The Augusta Chronicle reports.

    Investigators say Pickens died after entering “an industrial conveyor wood chipper” at the plant, which manufactures southern yellow pine for wholesale.

    Details of how Pickens got onto the conveyor belt have not been released.

    His home in McCormick is about 30 miles north of the plant, across the state line.

    Conveyor wood chippers come in various forms, but are designed to feed wood into a machine that breaks it into pieces. The wood typically rides atop a conveyor belt before dropping into the machinery.

    Mark Price is a National Reporter for McClatchy News. He joined the network of newspapers in 1991 at The Charlotte Observer, covering beats including schools, crime, immigration, LGBTQ issues, homelessness and nonprofits. He graduated from the University of Memphis with majors in journalism and art history, and a minor in geology.

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  • Hotel workers go on strike at Hyatt, Hilton in Pasadena ahead of Rose Parade

    Hotel workers go on strike at Hyatt, Hilton in Pasadena ahead of Rose Parade

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    Workers at two Pasadena hotels went on strike Sunday, picketing for better wages and increased staffing, as preparations were underway for the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day.

    Members of Unite Here Local 11, which represents a range of hotel workers including housekeepers and cooks, walked out at dawn Sunday and will continue to strike Monday at the Hilton Pasadena and the Hyatt Place Pasadena, said union spokesperson Maria Teresa Kamel.

    As of Sunday morning, dozens of people were picketing outside the two hotels, chanting “Si se puede!” — “Yes we can” — and tents were set up for some protesters planning to camp overnight.

    The union chose this weekend for the walkout because “it’s probably the biggest tourist event in Pasadena,” she said. Workers decided that “if they’re expected to work on such a busy weekend, they should be compensated with a fair contract.”

    Unite Here is calling for an immediate $5-an-hour hike in wages and for a return to “pre-pandemic staffing levels,” which have not rebounded despite a resurgence in hotel business, Kamel said.

    “We have a lot of workers doing the work of two or three people for the same wages as they were getting before,” she said. The union has also raised concerns about pensions.

    The Hilton Pasadena is among several hotels involved in talks with the union that are operated by Aimbridge Hospitality, which said in a statement that it was “continuing conversations with the union and remain[s] focused on reaching an agreement that puts our associates and their best interests at the center.”

    “While these conversations are ongoing, the hotel has processes in place to limit disruptions and ensure consistent service and exceptional guest experiences at all times,” Aimbridge said in its statement.

    Hyatt Place Pasadena is owned and operated by private equity firm Ensemble. Hyatt and Ensemble did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Sunday on the walkout and the union demands.

    Joseph Co, general manager at Hyatt Place Pasadena, told the Pasadena Star-News that the hotel has been “actively engaged in talks with the union” and “continues to honor the expired union contract and its union employees as it seeks to reach a new agreement.”

    A representative for the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles declined to comment.

    Housekeeper Andrea Zepeda, who has worked more than a year and a half at Hyatt Place Pasadena, said she had struggled to make ends meet on roughly $18 an hour. She cares for two of her grandchildren and pays $1,800 in rent for a one-bedroom apartment, she said.

    “The money doesn’t go far enough,” she said in Spanish. “Everything is very expensive — food, bills — and the costs are going up.” Zepeda also said that skimpy staffing had piled on pressure at her job to clean as many as 15 rooms before the end of her shift without being offered overtime.

    Pasadena hotels fill up each year for the Rose Parade, which began in 1890 as a promotional event by a local social club and has evolved into a beloved tradition. Hundreds of campers flock the day before to find curbside seating available on a first-come, first-served basis along the parade route. Those working on floats or participating in the parade look for breakfast spots in the wee hours of the morning on Jan. 1.

    Although workers don’t plan to picket at the Rose Bowl itself, the proximity of the hotels means picket lines probably will be noticeable to parade attendees, union officials said. Dozens of other hotels have reached tentative agreements with Unite Here Local 11 since their contracts expired in July, but these two have not, Kamel said.

    “Our beef isn’t with the Rose Bowl,” she said. But “private equity groups have been harder to negotiate with than other hotels.”

    Times staff writer Suhauna Hussain contributed to this report.

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    Emily Alpert Reyes

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  • One of California's largest ICE detention centers could close. Staff urge Biden to keep it open

    One of California's largest ICE detention centers could close. Staff urge Biden to keep it open

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    WASHINGTON — 

    Workers at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, one of California’s largest immigrant detention facilities, are urging the federal government not to shut it down next year following discussions over its potential closure, according to the union that represents many of them.

    Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said a contract extension by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement gives the agency until Feb. 19 to decide the facility’s future.

    “This is a major employer in that area,” Erwin said. “If you close a facility like that, it would be absolutely devastating to the local economy and devastating to these workers.”

    A former state prison that began operating as an ICE detention center in 2011, Adelanto currently holds few detainees though it has a capacity of 1,940. Its population dropped dramatically in 2020 after an outbreak of COVID-19 cases tore through the facility, prompting a federal judge to order the release of detainees, and to prohibit new intakes and transfers.

    Adelanto has also faced scrutiny from federal and state watchdogs over health and safety violations.

    In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a warning to the GEO Group, the Florida-based private prison corporation that operates the facility, after finding that misuse of a chemical disinfectant spray caused detainees nosebleeds and nausea. A few years earlier, federal inspectors found nooses in cells and overuse of disciplinary segregation. Detainees reported waiting months to see a doctor.

    ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A GEO Group spokesman declined to comment, referring questions to ICE.

    Advocates said closing Adelanto would be a victory for immigrants and the local community. A coalition of groups called Shut Down Adelanto has urged the facility’s closure for years.

    Erwin voiced his concerns about a possible closure in a Nov. 29 letter to President Biden, noting he learned that the “dramatic underutilization” of the facility could prompt its closure on Dec. 19, when the facility contract was up, which would lead to the termination of 350 union members just days before Christmas.

    “This Administration considering the closure of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center at a time when capacity is so desperately needed in this area is genuinely perplexing and seemingly counter-intuitive,” he wrote, pointing to the Biden administration’s supplemental budget request in October to fund 12,500 more ICE beds.

    Erwin argued that the request was inconsistent with a closure of the Adelanto facility, which is already paid for under existing appropriations.

    Workers were happy to learn they would not immediately lose their jobs, Erwin said Tuesday, but they worry about what will happen long-term.

    A GEO Group economic impact analysis provided to The Times by Erwin shows the company spent more than $46 million in the city of Adelanto this year, including nearly $40 million in wages.

    Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Big Bear Lake) wrote to ICE leadership on Oct. 3 urging them to seek relief from the 2020 court order so that intakes could resume. Though the population of detainees at Adelanto has dwindled, the facility has remained fully staffed and operational, he said.

    “This striking example of exorbitant government waste and resource mismanagement is completely unacceptable,” he wrote, noting that Adelanto is the only detention facility in the country with an absolute intake prohibition related to COVID-19.

    Carlos Castillo Mejia, 52, of El Salvador is one of the six people who remain detained at the Adelanto facility. Castillo Mejia, who has been detained there for nearly five years and is currently appealing his deportation at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, said Friday that the facility was operating as normal, with no indication from staff that it would close.

    “I can’t understand how the government has thought to keep this facility open with such a minimal number of people, paying millions and millions,” Castillo Mejia said.

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    Andrea Castillo

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