Take a break from doom scrolling California stories to celebrate the victory of charter school teachers over the union that came to crush them.  Teachers at Gompers Preparatory Academy, a public charter school in the Chollas View neighborhood of San Diego, have successfully voted to remove San Diego Education Association (SDEA) union bosses from their...

“The ruling is also an implicit endorsement of the state Public Employment Relations Board’s conclusion that the employees hired since the measure took effect must be made whole and get a pension equivalent to what they would have received pre-Proposition B.” – Editorial, San Diego Union Tribune, March 18, 2019 The ruling in question is the...

Republican City Councilman Kevin Faulconer handily defeated Democrat City Councilman David Alvarez with 54.4% of the vote in a February 11, 2014 special election runoff for Mayor of San Diego. The result went against usual expectations. Contrary to the common perception that campaign spending by “big business” often overwhelms humble community-based union-backed campaigns, more money...

An article in the August 3, 2013 UT San Diego newspaper (Labor Continues to Back Filner) reported on what political insiders in San Diego already recognized: Mayor Bob Filner’s “list of supporters has shrunk to just one major group – organized labor and its allies…labor is steadfastly refusing to call for him to leave.” It...

This afternoon (Tuesday, July 30, 2013), the San Diego City Council voted 5-4 to cease taking advantage of its constitutional right to establish its own policies concerning government-mandated wage rates for construction contracts. It adopted a proposal from Mayor Bob Filner to submit to state law and require its construction contractors to pay “prevailing wage”...

Through relentless and tedious persistence and a willingness to disturb “the Establishment” of the country’s eighth most populous city, the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction (based in California) has finally succeeded in obtaining and exposing a document revealing how the office of former San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders (a Republican) arranged a secret and...

The explosion of Project Labor Agreements on government projects in California since the November 6 elections is not surprising to long-time observers of labor union initiatives at local governments. In the six months after the November 2008 Presidential Election, emboldened and confident construction trade unions won Project Labor Agreements at eleven local governments in California. It...

For five months, the City of San Diego refused to give the public a Project Labor Agreement negotiated for its planned $520 million convention center expansion. This union agreement was reportedly the result of a backroom deal involving top union leaders, but multiple requests for it under the authority of the California Public Records Act failed to dislodge it. But today (April 23,...

According to its national web site, UNITE HERE represents workers in the hotel, gaming, food service, manufacturing, textile, distribution, laundry, and airport industries. But one might conclude, after looking at the public activities of UNITE-HERE Local Union No. 30 in San Diego, that UNITE HERE is actually an environmental organization, marketing itself as a much more aggressive alternative...