In a story reported widely in northern California last month, agents from the Department of Industrial Relations showed up unannounced at the tiny Westover Winery, in Castro Valley, and slapped its owners with more than $115,000 in fines and assessments for using volunteer workers.
For decades, the German people have been among the world’s most environmentally conscious. The strongest sign of this has been the commitment of successive governments to Energiewende – or “energy change” – designed to make the economy predominantly dependent on renewable sources such as wind and solar power. Renewables today account for 23 per cent of electricity production, a figure set to rise to 65 per cent by 2035.
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This emphasis places burdens on households and businesses. The cost of the subsidies offered by the German government to green energy producers is passed on to consumers. Domestic energy bills are 48 per cent higher in Germany than the European average. Germany’s Mittelstand companies are even worse off. Their costs are twice the level facing their US rivals, many of whom benefit from cheap shale gas.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) is providing significant assistance with electric rates to 10 California employers so they can keep, expand or launch new operations in California rather than leave the state. In just over four months, the utility’s new Economic Development Rate, which was approved by state regulators this spring at PG&E’s request, has already saved or potentially added a total of 861 jobs in the state.
Small businesses in the Central Valley are increasingly finding themselves the targets of ADA claims by a handful of people who file lawsuit after lawsuit claiming discrimination. In fact, nearly 40 percent of the ADA lawsuits filed in the United States are in California. Tort reform advocates say that is largely because our state’s Unruh Civil Rights Act paves the way for bigger awards and California doesn’t require plaintiffs to demonstrate injury.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Tuesday unveiled a proposed roadmap for developing massive solar and wind projects in California’s Mojave Desert while trying to minimize damage to desert habitat and animals. The plan — covering 22 million acres of public and private land— follows a renewable-energy building boom in southeastern California’s Mojave desert during the first term of the Obama administration, when the federal government gave billions of dollars in loans to developers siting sprawling, utility-scale solar projects in virgin desert.
Of 27 bills the California Chamber of Commerce labeled this year as “job killers,” just two made it to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk.
One would prohibit contracts that require someone to waive his or her right to pursue a civil action for a civil rights claim. The other would hold businesses liable when subcontractors violate wage, workplace safety or workers’ compensation rules.
The second zip code is 93640, the Central Valley town of Mendota, population 11,800, with a median annual household income of $28,660, which is less than the $36,625 sticker price of a battery-powered Honda Fit EV. Mendota is in the top 10 percent of California zip codes for pollution and vulnerabilities such as childhood asthma, according to the CalEnviroScreen. And how many vehicles were purchased there under state subsidies? Exactly one, a lone car whose owner received $2,500.
Gov. Jerry Brown, appealing to world leaders for joint action on climate change, issued a forceful defense Tuesday of plans to expand California’s cap-and-trade program to vehicle fuels next year.
Gov. Jerry Brown will soon sign California’s ban on single use plastic grocery bags. Nothing better represents the de-industrialization of this state; the aversion of California’s elites to the manufacture of products they don’t like even if they are a convenience provided free to consumers.
By some estimates, thousands of California construction workers are left to toil in the shadows, exploited by contractors who use an illegal scheme to save money and avoid paying employment taxes and workers compensation.
Construction in California is a $152-billion industry, one in which so-called gray employment has surged 400% since 1972. The upswing has been especially pronounced since the most recent recession because only two-thirds of the formal construction jobs that disappeared have since returned.
California would be particularly affected because much of the state does not meet the current, weaker standard for ozone that has been in place since 2008. . . “We’re going to need to have zero or near-zero emissions across the entire economy, from transportation to businesses, to residences and personal products,” said Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which includes Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Californians already pay the nation’s second highest gas tax at 68 cents a gallon — and now it will go up again in January to pay for a first-in-the-nation climate change law.
A hike in San Francisco’s minimum wage would benefit more than one in five city workers without harming the local economy, a new study concludes.
Industrial companies and other businesses paid a combined $331.8 million for carbon credits in California’s latest cap-and-trade auction, state officials said Thursday.