03/28/2024

News

$15 State Minimum Wage in the Cards? Labor Union Says Initiative has Enough Signatures for 2016 Ballot

An initiative to raise California’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2021 has enough signatures to qualify for the November 2016 ballot, according to a press release from SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, which is sponsoring the measure.

Read More

After Raising Wages, Walmart Slashes Hours

The cost of that wage increase has been estimated at more than $1 billion, and it seems as though the retailer is offsetting that cost with cuts to employee hours. The reductions began weeks ago, during the busy back-to-school shopping period.

Read More

Governor Loosens Deffinition of “Made in USA” for California Products

Gov. Jerry Brown approved legislation on Tuesday that expands the definition of “Made in U.S.A” to more closely resemble a federal standard for domestically-produced goods in 49 other states.

Read More

Oakland Labor Lawyer: Tech Companies are Next Targets for Overtime Pay Cases

An Oakland lawyer who just won a $36 million settlement from Bank of America for failing to pay overtime to 365 employees said he expects to see an uptick in overtime-related lawsuits in the Bay Area — particularly for companies in the sharing economy, such as Uber or Lyft.

Read More

Tesla Rival Seeking Billion-Dollar California Factory? Here’s What We Know

A secretive electric car developer recently announced that it’s scouting several locations for a new factory, fueling speculation about a state tax-credit race similar to last year’s push for Tesla’s gigafactory.

Read More

Finance Department Opposition May Kill $13 California Minimum Wage

The finance department opposes this year’s minimum wage bill because it would boost the state payroll by an estimated $1.2 billion once the wage reaches $13 in 2017. Finance officials also think the economic impact of a $13 minimum wage likely would be negative because it would slow the growth of employment.

Read More

Who is Paid Minimum Wage? Fewer Than You Think

The Fed’s finding: “Currently, a little over a million workers are paid the federal minimum wage, and most of them are not employed full-time.” In addition, “A little less than a million workers are paid less than the federal minimum wage, a large majority of whom are employed full-time.”

Read More

California Set to Give Tesla Another Multi-million Dollar Tax Break

The $15 million state tax credit would be in return for Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) creating about 4,500 jobs across its facilities in Fremont, Hawthorne, Lathrop and Newark, said Brook Taylor, a deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. The agency administers the California Competes program.

Read More

Sky-High Housing Prices Force CEOs Across Industries to Adapt

The cost of housing — and concerns about commutes — are causing anxiety among Jindal’s clients. He recently had to revise a deal that involved recruiting a crack team of hackers for projects in Silicon Valley. Instead, partially based on the projected cost to lure them, he was forced to export the projects — and the cash infusion it would have meant locally — to a coding team in Dallas and Charlotte. . . “It’s very difficult. I just lost three servers to Texas, and one cook and a busboy to Oregon,” Rocca said. “They can’t make enough money to get ahead, so they spend every dime they make. So they left. They just didn’t like that.”

Read More

Port of Oakland Shuts Down as Union Skips Work, Federal Officials Intervene

The Port of Oakland shut down operations Thursday as longshore workers attended a union meeting instead of showing up to work amid a protracted labor dispute with shippers.

Read More

Engineer Salaries Grew Even More in 2014; Exodus to SF Continued

In 2014, the average software engineer at a Series B funded company made $142,000, up from $130,000 in 2013. Series C funded companies paid programmers $137,000 salaries on average, up from $128,000 the previous year.

Read More

San Jose is Top US Advanced-Industries Hub, but Faces Challenges in Expanding

San Jose’s metro area leads the U.S. as an advanced-industries hub, but the crucial expansion and improved competitiveness of this high-tech workforce could be challenging, the Brookings Institution says in a new report.

Read More

Standard and Poor’s Upgrades California’s Credit to A+

Following voter approval of a state rainy day fund, Standard and Poor’s raised California’s credit to an A+ stable rating on Wednesday, the state’s fourth upgrade by a credit ratings agency in the past two years. The rating was raised from A.

Read More

What Propositions 1 & 2 Mean for Business, California’s Economy

If the dollars flow in the intended areas, the newly approved water bond and rainy-day fund both have the power to improve California’s economy, local business leaders said Wednesday.

Read More

Google Seals Massive Sunnyvale, Redwood City Deals

Google Inc. has cemented a pair of massive real estate deals in Sunnyvale and Redwood City that boost the company’s Silicon Valley footprint by 2.8 million square feet – about the size of the Empire State Building and enough room for more than 10,000 workers.

Read More