What elementary schools are slowly learning about screens
Technology came to “optimize” education. Young children pay a heavy price.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/08/03/screens-change-elementary-school-education/
August 3, 2026 at 7:00 a.m. EDTToday at 7:00 a.m. …EDT
A photo illustration of a girl with a backpack standing in front of an ipad and on the screen of the ipad is an image of an elementary school. All on blue background.
(Illustration by Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post; iStock)
By Sarah Schneider Kavanagh and Katie A. Danielson
Sarah Schneider Kavanagh is an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Katie A. Danielson is an associate professor at the University of Portland School of Education.
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Walk into a second-grade classroom today and it may seem like little has changed over the past few decades: Teachers still greet students at the door. Classrooms still have colorful rugs and educational posters on the walls.
But the picture book the children are listening to isn’t being read by the teacher sitting beside them on the rug — it’s playing on an interactive whiteboard. The book itself isn’t even physically in the room. Instead, its pages (with added animations) are projected on a screen while audio narrates the text. Later, children wear headphones while clicking through individualized reading lessons. After lunch, they each complete their own adaptive math activities on Chromebooks instead of gathering at tiny tables to solve problems together.
These changes happened so gradually (and then so suddenly during the pandemic) that many parents don’t realize how different many aspects of elementary school have become. And it all happened with little public debate. Today, nearly 80 percent of school districts issue kindergarteners, first-graders and second-graders devices or allow them to bring them from home.
Screens are no longer occasional classroom tools. They organize the school day. This isn’t simply a story about technology. It’s a story about what happens when the medium through which children learn reshapes learning itself.
Elementary school always taught more than reading and mathematics. Children learned how to wait for someone else’s idea to be expressed before sharing their own, to negotiate disagreements and explain their thinking. This was an essential aspect of growing up, it wasn’t just a nice byproduct of being in a classroom. When the relational aspect of learning is removed, the conditions that allow these skills to grow are also removed.
Developmental psychologists have spent decades showing that children’s thinking matures through interaction with other people, not just through exposure to information. In many classrooms today, however, children learn individually through personalized software designed to maximize efficiency, and the individualized data it generates is shared with the teachers.
These technological changes in elementary classrooms might look like progress. Classrooms are quieter. Adaptive software promises individualized instruction at exactly the right level. To many, these are real benefits. But every decision involves trade-offs.
When stories are delivered through videos instead of being read aloud by the teacher, something changes about storytelling itself. When mathematics becomes a sequence of individual clicks rather than collective problem-solving, children lose opportunities to hear different ways of thinking.
Even if some technologies improve some learning outcomes under some conditions, is this the type of education young Americans need? Do we want classrooms organized by continuous digital engagement? Or do we want schools where children spend substantial portions of the day interacting and creating?
The skills that will matter most in an artificial-intelligence-powered future may be the ones computers can’t cultivate: attention span, curiosity, judgment, empathy and collaboration. Attention span in particular is weakened when schools prioritize constant stimulation over intellectual endurance. As technology becomes more powerful, distinctly human capacities become more valuable, not less.
Norway, a country that gave all students iPads in 2016, has begun reversing course, following a decline in reading scores. Some U.S. school districts and states are doing the same. Adults are realizing that schools that don’t give devices to children in early grades give them experiences they cannot obtain elsewhere.
Children don’t need school to become more like the digital world. They are already immersed in that world for much of the time outside school hours. They need a place designed for other aims, such as conversation instead of consumption and collaboration instead of personalization. That isn’t resisting the future; it’s preparing children to be fully human in it.
Technology came to “optimize” education. Young children pay a heavy price.
www.washingtonpost.comTesla targets 2027 launch for autonomous Semi as production accelerates
Tesla says autonomous capabilities for its all-electric Semi are expected to arrive as the company ramps up large-scale truck production.
…https://www.cleantrucking.com/battery-electric/article/15830749/tesla-targets-2027-launch-for-autonomous-semi
Jay Traugott
Jul 23, 2026Updated Jul 30, 2026
A front view of the updated Tesla Semi driving along a highway.
A front view of the updated Tesla Semi driving along a highway.Tesla
Tesla plans to shift greater attention toward developing a self-driving version of its Tesla Semi in late 2026 or early 2027, according to comments made by CEO Elon Musk during the company's Q2 2026 earnings call.
While Tesla's immediate priority remains expanding Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology across its passenger vehicle lineup—including the Model 3, Model Y, and the upcoming Cybercab—Musk said autonomous trucking development will follow as Semi production reaches higher volumes.
"It will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi," Musk said during the earnings presentation.
[Related: Tesla opens first public Megacharger station for Semi fleets in California]
Autonomous trucks remain a long-term strategy
Tesla has consistently promoted autonomous trucking as a way to address two major challenges facing the freight industry: persistent driver shortages and highway safety.
According to Musk, self-driving technology could help carriers operate more efficiently while reducing reliance on an increasingly limited pool of qualified commercial drivers. The company has raised similar arguments during previous earnings calls as it outlined its long-term transportation strategy.
The timing also aligns with broader momentum across the autonomous trucking sector. Several developers are expected to begin expanding commercial operations in 2027, while federal policymakers continue working toward a nationwide regulatory framework for autonomous commercial vehicles.
Semi production continues to scale
As autonomous development progresses, Tesla says manufacturing of the battery-electric Semi is continuing to ramp up at its Reno, Nevada, production facility.
The company expects to produce "many thousands" of Semi tractors before the end of 2026. Tesla's dedicated Semi factory has an annual production capacity of up to 50,000 trucks once fully operational.
The first production Semi rolled off the Reno assembly line late last April, marking a major milestone after years of development delays.
Tesla completed construction of the manufacturing facility in late 2025, followed by installation of production equipment during the first quarter of 2026. Site work on the expansion began in 2023 adjacent to the company's Gigafactory Nevada campus.
A long road to market
Tesla originally introduced the Semi in 2017 with plans to begin production in 2019. The program experienced multiple delays before finally entering series production this year.
As we've known for quite some time, the company will offer two North American configurations:
Standard Range: Approximately 325 miles of driving range.
Long Range: Approximately 500 miles of driving range.
[Related: Tesla Semi final specifications confirmed by Tesla]
Industry watching closely
The autonomous trucking market is becoming increasingly competitive, with several technology companies preparing commercial deployments over the next few years. As production of the Tesla Semi increases, industry observers will be watching to see whether Tesla can deliver autonomous capabilities on the timeline outlined by Musk.
If successful, the combination of high-volume electric truck production and self-driving technology could represent one of the most significant shifts in commercial transportation since the introduction of battery-electric Class 8 vehicles.
Tesla plans to launch autonomous Semi trucks in 2027 as production ramps up at its Reno factory and electric truck output expands. Read more on Clean…
www.cleantrucking.comWhite Supremacists Took Over a City in 1898. The Fallout Continues.
A new book by the journalist Lauren Collins chronicles the ongoing effects of the violent takeover of Wilmington, N.C., on those living in its aftermath.
…https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/15/books/review/they-stole-a-city-lauren-collins.html
An old black-and-white photo of the smoldering remains of a two-story building with several dozen armed men standing in front of it.
An armed white mob in front of the smoldering remains of The Wilmington Daily Record, a Black newspaper, on Nov. 10, 1898.Credit…via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Jennifer Szalai.png
By Jennifer Szalai
July 15, 2026
THEY STOLE A CITY: Wilmington’s White Supremacist Coup and the Families Who Live With Its Legacy, by Lauren Collins
When Philip Gerard published “Cape Fear Rising” in 1994, he was met with angry letters, prank calls and a bloody deer’s head, deposited on his neighbor’s front lawn. The fury was bewildering. It wasn’t as if he had written a polemic, or even a work of nonfiction; his book was a novel set in the North Carolina port city of Wilmington, and the events that inspired it took place way back in 1898.
“I wrongly imagined that the events were historical,” Gerard would later recall, “that they were far in the past, removed from present passions and agendas.” Gerard, who died in 2022, makes a cameo appearance in “They Stole a City,” a powerful new book by Lauren Collins. He had moved to Wilmington in the late 1980s. His novel broached “the thing that no one in Wilmington talked about,” Collins writes, and he used the actual names of the principals involved — all long since dead.
What happened in Wilmington on Nov. 10, 1898, has been variously called a riot, a massacre and — by the white people who perpetrated it — a revolution. Collins calls it both a massacre and a coup.
The violence that day — estimates of the death toll range from a dozen to several hundred — was ostensibly sparked by an editorial in a Black newspaper rebutting a white woman’s call for more lynchings of Black men. But the bloodshed wasn’t just a spontaneous outburst; it was ultimately strategic.
By 1898, Wilmington’s population was about 60 percent Black, and the city was one of the most integrated in the South. Its so-called Fusionist government brought together white populists and Black Republicans. The afternoon of the massacre, white Democratic leaders brought a group of armed men to City Hall and seized control.
“The most critical phase of the so-called 1898 revolution had been achieved,” Collins writes, “replacing an interracial coalition with a new regime whose singular goal was to make Wilmington white again.”
Collins is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker who is known for pieces that are often witty and delightful. In 2016, she published a memoir, “When in French,” about falling in love with her French husband. Needless to say, “They Stole a City” is a categorically different kind of book. Collins, who lives in Paris, was born and raised in Wilmington. Her parents had moved there in the 1970s, “white, upper-class newcomers” who were welcomed into the fold as long as they didn’t ask too many questions. Collins may not have any ancestral ties to the massacre; she didn’t even know much about it until a decade ago. But she still considers herself an “implicated subject.”
“They Stole a City” follows “Wilmington on Fire,” a 2015 documentary by Christopher Everett, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Wilmington’s Lie,” by David Zucchino, published in 2020. Everett and Zucchino took a history that had been distorted and forgotten and brought it back to light. Collins builds on their work. Soon after starting her research, she realized that the massacre couldn’t be contained to its particular time period. It had numerous antecedents, and its effects continued to reverberate across generations: “The event begged to be examined in its longitudinal fullness.”
The cover of “They Stole a City,” by Lauren Collins.
Her book traces the experiences of four families: the Moores and the Bellamy/MacRaes, who are white; and the Howes and the Halseys, who are Black. Collins begins with a scene on a Wilmington-area plantation in the 1770s and ends with pointed commentary about the “white nationalists of 2026” who nurture “a narrative of victimhood” in order to justify cruelty.
In between she shows how white Wilmingtonians were particularly resentful of Black success after the Civil War, complaining of “Negro domination” and “insolence.” The panic was so unhinged that it could border on parody, with unintentionally ridiculous headlines to match: “Negro on Train With Big Feet Behind White,” or “Stole Cheese: Negro Man Boldly Purloins a Cheese.”
The elite planners of the coup meticulously laid the groundwork. They created a paramilitary and placed a notice in The Wilmington Messenger headlined “Attention White Men,” which called for a gathering at the courthouse on Nov. 9, 1898, promising that “business in the furtherance of White Supremacy will be transacted.” There, they signed a new city charter they called “The White Declaration of Independence.” The next day, they attacked the offices of the Black newspaper that ran the offending editorial and proceeded to take over City Hall.
The consequences were enormous and enduring, though the exact number of deaths is unknown. Collins considers the higher estimates more realistic, given the likelihood that some victims were never found. Black survivors were pushed out of Wilmington at gunpoint or else terrorized into silence. The new government codified rules to ensure that nearly all white men could vote and Black men could not. It would take more than half a century before a historian would dare to call what happened “a coup d’état.”
Collins follows her four families through the ensuing decades. “They Stole a City” is bookended by her moving portrait of Cynthia Brown, a descendant of the Howes, one of Wilmington’s pre-eminent Black families at the time of the massacre. She died on Thanksgiving Day in 2023, two weeks after the city held commemorations for the 125th anniversary of 1898. As a child, she had visited her ailing great-grandmother, a survivor of the massacre. The dying woman grabbed young Cynthia’s wrist and whispered, “If it ever happens — run.”
I happened to be reading “They Stole a City” over the July 4 weekend, toggling between Collins’s historical descriptions of a white supremacist paramilitary marching through Wilmington and contemporary news reports of a white supremacist group marching through Washington, D.C. The effect was sobering. As Collins says, “Nov. 10, 1898, is a centuries-long day that isn’t over yet.”
A new book by the journalist Lauren Collins chronicles the ongoing effects of the violent takeover of Wilmington, N.C., on those living in its…
www.nytimes.comLONG LIVE LABOR INTERNATIONALISM!
AT THE UAW 39th CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
by Frank Hammer
frank.hammer13@gmail.com
Two dramatic changes on the international front occurred at the recent UAW Constitutional Convention held in Detroit June 15-18, 2026 – one standing out way …more than the other. What made for the drama was that both came by way of tenacious rank-and-file initiative.
RANK & FILE CONVENTION FLOOR VOTE
The standout was the vote on the convention floor in the last hour on the convention’s last day to endorse a constitutional by-law change mandating that the UAW will cease holding investments in Israeli bonds. The margin of support was relatively thin – 321 YES to 287 NO delegate votes. The impact promises to be consequential.
The resolution for divestment was first introduced – unsuccessfully – over 50 years ago, at the UAW’s 1974 Constitutional Convention (Los Angeles). It was the work of the UAW Arab Workers Caucus which, in the preceding year, had led a one-day wildcat strike at the historic Dodge Main plant and a downtown protest denouncing UAW President Leonard Woodcock’s ties to a pro-Zionist charity. The clash exposed a huge rift between the International Executive Board (IEB), dominated by the pro-Israel Reuther “Administration” Caucus, and the Arab American workers – and their UAW allies in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, who were committed to Palestinian liberation.
That clash re-emerged in 2014 when University of California Graduate Teaching Assistants, members of UAW Local 2865, voted for their local to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Two years later, the IEB successfully nullified the Local’s decision on the grounds that it was impermissible, antisemitic, and threatened the jobs held by UAW represented workers in the defense industry. (See The Real News interview here).
On the heels of the June 18, 2026 convention vote, divestment became UAW law and immediately won international appreciation, especially from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions The Federation expressed its gratitude to the UAW convention delegates for voting to “divest the union’s investments from Israel occupation bonds,” and to the activists of both Labor for Palestine and Unite All Workers 4 Democracy UAWD for their work. The latter did months of organizing, winning a few UAW locals’ support for the resolution, and winning enough delegates’ support to advocate for it on the convention floor.
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Wind in the UAWD’s sails came mostly from the UAW’s academic and legal aid workers. However, the resolution would not have succeeded had it not been for blocks of “yes” votes cast by two Detroit area Ford manufacturing locals – UAW 600 and 900. They tipped the scales. Though neither Local had submitted a pro-divestment resolution, the moral arguments for divestment – and growing public disenchantment with Israel – carried the day. (See the interview with Olga Karounos, Legal Aid Society UAW Local 2325, Brooklyn, NY and Jay Makled, Ford UAW Local 600, Dearborn, MI). According to sources, President Fain – who voted against divesting during a May, 2024 International Executive Board (IEB) meeting – said he would leave it to the delegates to decide. The report in the UAW’s summary of the day was low keyed:
Delegates voted to allocate funding to the Civil and Human Rights Department and the Women’s Department and voted to divest UAW investments from Israel bonds, among other business items.
Divestment of approximately $400,000 won’t have a significant material impact on Israel’s relentless assaults against the Palestinian people, but signals to U.S. unions and labor movements worldwide that new steps on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinian working class are possible. It also serves to open new channels of communication with and within the UAW rank and file – a great opportunity to carry forward with a new, mind-expanding, internationalist education paradigm.
THE LEADERSHIP LEADS (!) ON BEHALF OF COLOMBIAN EX-GM WORKERS
The second breakthrough got little notice though it was significant in a different way. The UAW IEB for the first time appealed to the convention delegates to embrace and support the longstanding struggle by the fired injured GM autoworkers who once worked on the assembly line in Colmotores, Colombia.
The struggle by ASOTRECOL – an association of the injured & fired workers (pronounced Ah-S0-tray-col) – had been shunned for over a dozen years by three UAW administrations under Bob King, Dennis Williams, and Gary Jones. The latter two ended their union careers in disgrace, pleading guilty to corruption charges and serving prison time. Under King, UAW-GM Dept. Director Joey Ashton waited a year into the workers’ protest tent encampment before flying to Bogota with GM executives, and that was only after 8 workers were in the 22nd-day of a hunger strike with their lips sewn shut. Nothing came of it, and Ashton and the GM attorneys returned to the States and left the workers to fend for themselves. (Ashton would later get caught up in the corruption scandal as well, and served prison time, too) The ASOTRECOL members did not give up. Though they declined in numbers, they have sustained their encampment to this day; on August 2nd, it will be 15 years. This in a country where tens of thousands of unionists have been routinely murdered, mostly by assassination squads.
Stateside, a multi-faceted solidarity campaign ensued, organized chiefly by a rank & file activist collective, Autoworker Caravan, publicly targeting GM’s brutal employment practices. They were supported by labor, religious, community, and human rights organizations in the U.S. and abroad, among them the Portland Central America Solidarity Committee which featured prominently in materially sustaining the workers. Delegations which included UAW members journeyed to Bogota in solidarity with the workers. The Caravan won UAW Locals to endorse convention resolutions in both 2014 and 2018, calling on the UAW to take up the struggle, to no avail.
Justice For Colombian injured & ex-GM workers rally at GM HQ, Detroit November 2013mEAAAAASUVORK5CYII=.png
And then came the corruption scandal gripping the UAW’s top leadership, resulting in federal intervention. One of the outcomes was an agreement by the UAW to submit to members and retirees the option of direct elections for national and regional leadership instead of leaving the selections to convention delegates. The UAWD, a sequel to the Autoworker Caravan, seized the moment and campaigned for “one member, one vote” and won. Within months, the UAWD was able to field seven candidates for regional and national positions and win all seven. Among them were President Shawn Fain and Vice President Mike Booth, the latter stepping up as the Director of the UAW’s GM Dept. The UAW went on to lead the 40-day “Stand Up Strikes” at the Detroit 3, culminating in successful ratification votes by mid-November 2023.
During the strike there were some of us in the UAWD who carried forward with the work of its International Solidarity Committee in collaboration for a short time with the UAW’s International Affairs Dept. That communication inspired the Dept. to revisit what had become a “cold case.” That, in turn, triggered interest by the UAW in the Colombian ex-GM workers. In April 2024, Fain and Booth broke the 10+ years silence by the former UAW leadership. They sent a letter to GM CEO Mary Barra announcing that the UAW was going to pursue justice for GM’s Colombian workers. They wrote:
It is time for GM to follow through and reconcile with its former production workers. The company must compensate them with a fair settlement in line with their job-related disabilities. We will stand by our ASOTRECOL brothers and their families until this is achieved.
President Shawn Fain, UAW CAP Conference, Washington DC February 2026+MT+A96yKMLbzcrjgAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==.png
Five months later, Booth reported on this pledge in person to the UAWD’s founding convention. Soon after, the caucus was wracked with internal divisions leading to a split. The group that wanted to dismantle the UAWD rebranded itself Member Action and aligned with Labor Notes. What remained of the UAWD took a more openly ideological approach, advocating “class struggle unionism.” Though both sides had committed to supporting ASOTRECOL, neither were in for the long game and abandoned the campaign. Neither group has publicized what I’ve written here.
The optics from the June Convention are of the union leadership on stage promoting the Colombian ex-GM workers’ struggle to the delegates, while the reformers among the delegates were silent. The UAW included ASOTRECOL’s fight in its convention resolution that was voted on and endorsed by the delegates, showed a 5-minute video about internationalism including a segment about ASOTRECOL (see 3:30), while the International Affairs Dept issued a report of its work, including an entire page about ASOTRECOL. Noteworthy was the delegates’ enthusiastic applause to President Fain’s announcement that the UAW was soon headed to Colombia to assist the ex-GM workers in a scheduled meeting with GM executives. The parties have since met but remain far apart on a resolution. There will be follow-up.
Matters are now more precarious due to the sudden turn to the right with the recent election, by a razor thin margin, of Trump-endorsed presidential candidate Abelardo de la Espriella. Though the election results are in dispute, Abelardo is set to take power August 7. His ascendancy in Colombia poses grave threats to the broad human and workers’ rights movements in their country. It makes the future of the tent encampment increasingly uncertain and jeopardizes ASOTRECOL’s success.
ASOTRECOL is grateful for the financial help received from the UAW and UAW members, the Brazilian labor federation – CSP Conlutas, the International Autoworkers’ Coordination Council
Jorge Parra, Manuel Ospina & Carlos Trujillo at the tents in Bogota, Colombia June 2026
in Europe, UNIFOR – the Canadian autoworkers’ union, and many others in the global labor movement. ASOTRECOL needs assistance now. Donations can be sent without any extraneous fees via the solidarity website, asotrecol.org. Please donate any amount you can.
As President Fain stated at the convention, “it took GM less than 3 weeks after the end of our ‘Stand Up Strike’ to pay out $10 billion in stock buy backs and dividends to their shareholders. They’ve paid out almost $28 billion since the agreement!” Their naked greed is what is standing in the way of a fair and just agreement. GM and its Wall Street profiteers must be held to account and come to terms with the Colombian ex-workers from whom GM extracted huge profits.
These concrete acts of solidarity with the workers and people of Palestine, and the autoworkers in Colombia serve as profound examples of what solidarity looks like. They took root in the UAW rank and file and blossomed under conditions of greater union democracy. Solidarity Now! Solidarity Forever! Free, Free Palestine! Victory to the ASOTRECOL struggle!
Political signage posted on the tent encampment, May 2024 (including Palestine)
Frank Hammer is a 50+ years labor activist, former President and Chairman of UAW-GM Powertrain Local 909, Warren, MI and a founding member of Unite All Workers for Democracy, UAWD.
Unite Local 2 Workers walk out at Ghirardelli Square’s iconic shop over healthcare dispute
The union says the company is illegally withholding financial records while pushing to cut health coverage.
https://sfstandard.com/2026/07/30/sf-ghirardelli-chocolate-workers-strike/
People hold… signs reading "ON STRIKE" and "ULP STRIKE!" outside the Ghirardelli chocolate shop during a labor protest on a sunny day.
Unite Here Local 2 member Alicia Tamayo, 42, joins the picket line over unfair labor practices in their contract’s healthcare coverage at Ghirardelli Square’s flagship store on July 30, 2026, in San Francisco. | Source: Sean Fan/The Standard
By George Kelly and Sean Fan
Workers at the Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop in Ghirardelli Square launched a three-day strike Thursday, accusing the company of withholding information related to healthcare coverage.
The dispute over a healthcare fee that is tacked onto customers’ bills is the latest flashpoint in a contract fight that has dragged on for more than a year.
The tourist-magnet shop was scheduled to open at 8 a.m., but Ghirardelli closed the location and moved to two other nearby locations in the eponymous square, drawing picket lines in response.
It was unclear whether Ghirardelli will continue to keep the location closes for the duration of the strike, according to Sonya Karabel, a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 2, which represents the workers.
“We’re not sure how management is going to respond,” Karabel said in a phone interview. “What we do know is that there will be a picket line outside, and that we will be calling on customers not to go in.”
Ghirardelli chocolate shop sign with lit letters above a banner reading “THE ORIGINAL CHOCOLATE SHOP EST. 1852" and people walking by outside.
Unite Here Local 2 marches in a picket line over unfair labor practices in their contract’s healthcare coverage at Ghirardelli Square’s flagship store on Thursday. | Source: Sean Fan/The Standard
The union alleges Ghirardelli has bargained in bad faith since talks began in May 2025, illegally withholding information about how much revenue the company collects from a 6% “healthcare fee” charged to customers — even as it has pushed to scale back workers’ union health insurance.
The historic chocolate shop is the only unionized Ghirardelli location in the city. The location has about 45 employees, according to the union.
Alicia Tamayo, a stocker who has worked at the store for nearly 22 years, said the company’s refusal to disclose financial information is at the heart of the walkout. “They didn’t want to give us all the information about it — all the guests they’re charging,” Tamayo said. “I really need the benefits, because I have two daughters, and they depend on the benefits,” she said.
Cynthia Cardoza, a stocker supervisor who has worked at the store for 30 years, said the dispute has left workers frustrated but united. “Everybody supports each other because we’ve been fighting almost more than a year, and the company doesn’t listen to us,” she said.
Cardoza said workers are striking to protect their health benefits and wages amid the high cost of living in San Francisco, arguing that Ghirardelli has not been transparent about its earnings even as it seeks concessions from staff.
“We’re working with the same salary and we need to smile and pretend that everything is perfect when it is not,” Cardoza said on the picket line
The Ghirardelli Square location, a fixture in the Fort Mason neighborhood near Fisherman’s Wharf, is popular with tourists. Mayor Daniel Lurie brought his children there for hot chocolate on the morning of his swearing-in.
Carrie Mottau, 47, a tourist visiting the Square on the sunny Thursday morning had brought her children to try the array of sweet treats. She was aware of the chocolate, but less about the company that made it.
“It certainly makes me question what’s happening and wondering whether or not we’re going to continue to support them,” Mottau said.
The last strike at the flagship location took place in 1984. Ghirardelli is owned by the Swiss company Lindt & Sprüngli. Ghirardelli did not respond to requests for comment.
The union says the company is illegally withholding financial records while pushing to cut health coverage.
sfstandard.comNewsom Demos In California slashing Medi-Cal asset limits by 84%. Here’s who will be affected
The modifications were part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to balance the state budgetamid soaring Medi-Cal costs and billions in cuts from the federal government due to the GOP’s tax and …spending megabill signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/personal-finance/article/medi-cal-medicaid-asset-california-22362049.php
By Jessica Roy,
Personal Finance Columnist
Aug 1, 2026
Clients receive help renewing Medi-Cal coverage at Families Together of Orange County in Tustin in 2023. Beginning in July 2027, some seniors, disabled Californians and people who need long-term care will face sharply lower asset limits to qualify for the program.
Clients receive help renewing Medi-Cal coverage at Families Together of Orange County in Tustin in 2023. Beginning in July 2027, some seniors, disabled Californians and people who need long-term care will face sharply lower asset limits to qualify for the program.
Many seniors and disabled people in California who need long-term care will soon face a dramatic reduction in assets they can keep and still qualify for Medi-Cal.
Starting in July 2027, the individual limit will fall from $130,000 to $21,000, while the limit for couples will drop from $195,000 to $31,000 when they apply for Medi-Cal — California’s Medicaid program — or renew their coverage. That’s an 84% decrease.
The rules will primarily affect people who qualify because of their age, disability or need for nursing-home or other long-term care.
The change is a turnaround from the approach the state adopted in 2022. Before that year, Medi-Cal assets were very low. Many enrollees could have only $2,000 in countable assets, or $3,000 for a two-person household — numbers that hadn’t been changed or adjusted for inflation since they were implemented in 1989.
Those limits left people in profound poverty, said Cindy George, the senior personal finance editor for prescription comparison cost website GoodRx.
“Advocates for seniors and people with disabilities had long pushed for higher Medi-Cal asset limits — or none at all — to allow individuals and families to keep their affordable health insurance without financial insecurity,” George said.
In 2022, the limits increased substantially: To $130,000 for an individual plus $65,000 for each additional family member. The asset limit was eliminated entirely in 2024.
California then revisited that decision, and in January 2026, the $130,000 individual and $195,000 married couple asset limits were put back in place. But that’s changing again beginning on July 1, 2027, to a much lower limit: $21,000 for one person, $31,000 for a couple, and another $1,550 for each additional qualified person who lives in your house.
The modifications were part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to balance the state budgetamid soaring Medi-Cal costs and billions in cuts from the federal government due to the GOP’s tax and spending megabill signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025.
These changes, along with others at the state and federal level to Medicaid programs, could have broader impacts on all Californians, said Kristof Stremikis, the director of market analysis and insight for the Oakland-based nonprofit philanthropy California Health Care Foundation. A report from the foundation found the policy changes could lead to up to 2 million Californians losing health care coverage.
“Medi-Cal finances so much of our delivery system here in California,” he said. “I think you’re going to start to see access challenges for Medi-Cal enrollees, but even more broadly, you’re really going to see strain on the system that shows up for everyone in longer waiting times, difficulty finding doctors, that type of thing. We’re in for a rough ride.”
If you or a family member is on Medi-Cal, here’s what you need to know about the new eligibility requirements.
Who is impacted by California’s 2027 Medi-Cal asset limit changes?
The new limit doesn’t apply to everyone on Medi-Cal. People who use the program under federal modified adjusted gross income rules, like many children, pregnant people, parents and working-age adults, are not subject to asset tests.
These changes will primarily impact people who are enrolled in Medi-Cal outside the federal MAGI rules, including people who are 65 or older, are blind, have a disability, live in a nursing home or receive other long-term care services paid for by Medi-Cal, or who use a Medicare Savings Program.
What’s changing for Medi-Cal asset limits?
Medi-Cal eligibility is determined in part by your assets. Here’s a list of current asset limits and what they’re changing to in July 2027.
Asset limits
What’s counted:
Money in your bank account
Cash
Secondary homes
Second vehicles
Other investments or financial resources
The current limit for the total value of those assets is $130,000, plus another $65,000 per person who lives in your home for up to 10 people.
The new limit will be $21,000 for one person, another $10,000 for a spouse, and then another $1,550 per each additional qualified person in your home, up to 10 people total. Adult children, roommates and some others do not qualify.
California has a program called Spousal Impoverishment that can protect some additional assets from being counted toward eligibility for a spouse or domestic partner.
Non-countable assets
There are certain types of assets that typically aren’t counted against Medi-Cal eligibility. These include:
A primary residence
One car
Household goods and personal items in the primary residence
Retirement funds, like 401(ks) and IRAs, if regular payments are being received from them
Though primary residences are not counted for eligibility, the state can pursue an estate to recover certain costs after death, said Mark Gilfix, an estate planning and elder law attorney based in Palo Alto. He said a primary home properly titled in a living trust generally keeps it out of probate, shielding it from the estate recovery process.
What do people currently on Medi-Cal need to do?
Not all enrollees will have their assets tested on July 1 of next year; the asset limits will be reported and assessed on a rolling basis when people renew their coverage.
To maintain eligibility for the program, participants will need to transfer or spend down assets to the new limits, Gilfix said, and administrators may review where those assets went to make sure transactions were made appropriately. Giving away or selling assets for less than they’re worth can delay long-term care coverage, according to an FAQ from the state Department of Health Care Services. Working with a qualified financial adviser or elder law attorney may help you protect eligibility.
California will sharply reduce how much some Medi-Cal enrollees can keep in savings and other assets. Here’s who is affected and what counts.
www.sfchronicle.comNon profits, Union Organizing & Independent Unions
https://youtu.be/V79l1cCogjY
Non-profit and NGO unionization is the fastest growing militant wing of the labor movement. Despite being ignored by the left media, these new mostly self-organized independent unions are taking on the …“due gooder” myth of long hours, low wages and bad bosses—and they’re winning. Panelists at this LaborFest event include current and former non-profit & NGO workers and union staff union organizers.
Panelists:
Robert Ovetz, moderator, Senior Lecturer, Political Science, SJSU
Author of the Rebels For the System: Non-Profits, NGOs, Capitalism and the Labor Movement (Haymarket Press 2027)
Katie Duberg, Bargaining Committee Member, CAWFC Workers United, CWA Local 9415, IG: @cawfcworkersunited
Fátima Murrieta, Pacific Northwest Staff Union (PNWSU), Writers Guild Staff Union NPEU, Shop Steward
Jeff Armstrong, PNWSU Organizing Officer
Additional Media:
CA SEIU Tops Pushing Union Busting Two Tier"Non-Profits" Like HealthRight 360 Harming Public Workers
https://youtu.be/OfiDKxRdn84
Conflicts Of Interest, Public Education, The AFT/NEA Corruption Through Non-Profits
https://youtu.be/WYCl1tw8rj8
War On Public Education, Tech, Reed Hasting & Writers Guild West With Ed Lawyer Kathleen Carroll
https://youtu.be/HYYCqNFVdBU
Non profit Workers Fight Zionists, Corruption & Union Busting
https://youtu.be/2xhNZUA3-fI
LaborFest
www.laborfest.net
Production of Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
Non-profit and NGO unionization is the fastest growing militant win…
youtu.beNon profits, Union Organizing & Independent Unions: “Due Gooder” Myth Of Long Hours & Low Wages
San Diego APWU Fight Closure of Post Office
Postal workers and residents protested the planned closure of the L…
youtu.beUnsafe at Any Speed: Delivery Workers Deaths Are on the Rise in 2024
10 immigrant delivery workers died on the streets of New York this year, marking a stark increase from the last two years.
https://documentedny.com/2024/12/05/delivery-worker-deaths-safety/
AMIR KHAFAGY
DEC 05, …2024
The job of delivery workers have changed since the inception of apps and platforms.jpeg
DELIVERY WORKERS MARCH IN NEW YORK CITY. PHOTO BY SOL ARAMENDI PROVIDED TO DOCUMENTED BY THE WORKERS JUSTICE PROJECT
10 immigrant delivery workers died on the streets of New York this year, marking a stark increase from the last two years, according to data collected by the Workers Justice Project (WJP) exclusively shared with Documented.
In 2023, seven delivery workers died, and in 2022, WJP counted five deaths. During the height of the pandemic in 2021, when online food ordering was much higher, the number of fatalities was 14.
Victor Hidalgo is the most recent delivery worker killed this year. On Oct. 30 while delivering for Capsule, an online prescription-delivery service app, Hidalgo was hit by an ambulance. With his death, the delivery worker death rate this year averages to one death a month.
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“This increase in the number of tragic delivery worker deaths demonstrates just how little protection these workers have been afforded by the multibillion-dollar companies that demand so much of them,” said Ligia Guallpa, executive director of WJP and co-founder of Los Deliveristas Unidos.
Over the past few years, app-based delivery has been a booming business in the city and a vital lifeline for thousands of immigrant workers. It’s estimated that about 65,000 delivery workers are buzzing across New York City’s streets, and the industry shows no sign of slowing down. This year alone has shown an 8% growth in deliveries from last year, with 2.77 million deliveries being completed during the first quarter of 2024 alone, according to city data.
However, delivery workers are taking more risks to meet the demands of delivery app algorithms that track their every move. A 2021 surveyof 1,650 delivery workers conducted by the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection found that 21.9% and 20.8% of delivery workers surveyed reported being injured and assaulted while on the job, respectively. A 2024 report by WJP highlights how workers, afraid of being deactivated from the apps, are working longer and faster.
“The pressure to accept all offers and to deliver them within a specific amount of time determined by the apps is increasing workers’ stress levels and pushing delivery workers to take on unnecessary risks on the roads,” the report states.
Guallpa says the delivery industry has increasingly become one of the most fatal occupations in New York City because workers are being forced to contend with meeting corporate demands that ask more of the workers while offering them less. However, Guallpa sees a path forward by advocating reforms that could make the job safer.
“To avoid these painful losses, we must invest in human dignity and worker safety, including safety education, protected bike lanes, equitable access to safe vehicles and battery charging services for these low-wage workers as well as safety-oriented reforms to the corporate algorithms that privilege speed and maximization of company revenues over workers’ health,” she said.
Meanwhile, the effects of the deaths could be felt in immigrant communities all across the city. Victor Hidalgo’s aunt, Tomasa Hidalgo, recalls the night she got the call from the hospital informing her of his death.
“It affected me greatly,” she said. “I still can’t quite believe the news.”
Victor was 24 years old when he was struck and killed by an ambulance. It was his second year in New York after immigrating from Mexico in 2023. His aunt Tomasa was the only family he had in New York and he shared an apartment with her in the Bronx, paying his $600 share of the rent monthly.
In addition to the rent, Victor supported his girlfriend and his 18-month old son back home in Mexico. His aunt says that Victor was known for his kindness and playfulness. She said he aspired to one day finish school and perhaps become a police officer.
When he first became a delivery worker, his family was nervous and warned him about the dangers of the job.
“His parents told him they didn’t like it and even now I see accidents every day on the news but he [was] older and you [couldn’t] really tell him what to do.”
After his death, it took several weeks and $7,000 to return his body to Mexico. But for Tomasa, Victor’s absence in their apartment weighs heavy on her.
“He would leave in the afternoon and come home late at 11 when we had gone to bed early and you could hear him preparing his food,” she said. “It’s weird not hearing him —it’s really difficult.”
The following is a list of the names of all delivery workers who died on the job this year:
Unknown, 31, Mar 18, 2024
Andrés Santiago Gaona, 22, Mar 6, 2024
Endy Donaldo González Gómez, 19, March 2024
Marco Antonio Betancurt 25 years, from Puebla México, April, 8, 2024
Cesar Linares Morales unknown, from Guerrero México, April 2024
Juan Aguilar Rosas, 47, from Mexico, Feb 2024
Marcos Alcantara Hernandez, age unknown, from México, 2024
Juan Francisco Jeronimo, age unknown, from Veracruz México, March 2024
Unknown, age unknown, March 2024
Victor Hidalgo, 24, from Mexico, Oct 2024
10 immigrant delivery workers died on the streets of New York this year, marking a stark increase from the last two years.
documentedny.comCalifornia’s proposed billionaire tax exposes rifts among labor unions
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-30/labor-organizers-spearheading-california-billionaire-tax-rebuffed-by-parent-union
SEIU-UHW Chief of Staff Suzanne Jimenez leaves the stage after delivering a speech …during a news briefing of the California Billionaire Tax Coalition at the Intercontinental hotel in Los Angeles in April. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Los Angeles Times staff writer Nicole Nixon
By Nicole Nixon
Staff Writer
July 30, 2026 Updated 3:44 PM PT
California’s largest SEIU affiliate has refused to back Proposition 40, a proposed one-time tax on billionaires’ assets, exposing deep rifts inside labor over how to respond to federal cuts.
The measure, crafted by healthcare workers to plug an estimated $100-billion hole in safety-net programs, drew opposition Thursday from other unions such as the California State Council of Laborers and United Domestic Workers.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and tech titans including Sergey Brin are shaping a broader fight over taxing extreme wealth.
SACRAMENTO — In a blow to backers of a proposed state billionaires tax, a handful of California labor unions joined the growing campaign against the controversial ballot measure while another labor giant opted to remain on the sideline.
A collection of unions — among them the California State Council of Laborers, United Domestic Workers and the California Police Chiefs Assn. — announced their opposition to the measure Thursday, a sign of simmering divisions over the proposal, which will appear on the November ballot as Proposition 40.
A day earlier, the executive board for Service Employees International Union California voted to take a neutral position on the tax, which would impose a one-time, 5% tax on the assets of billionaires who resided in the state at the start of this year.
In a statement, that 750,000-member union noted revenue from the “one-time tax proposal [is] dedicated 90% to healthcare,” echoing concerns from other unions opposed to the measure. Teacher, police and firefighter unions that previously announced their opposition argue the tax largely would benefit the healthcare sector and fear it would destabilize the state budget and, along with it, services such as education and public safety.
Instead of uniting the left, California’s billionaire tax measure has split Democratic allies
SEIU California is a parent organization of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the union that crafted the measure and moved to put it on the ballot before securing broad support from other labor groups.
SEIU-UHW President Dave Regan said he pushed the tax to backfill an estimated $100 billion in cuts to healthcare and food assistance programs that California is expected to shoulder under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump last year.
“Trump’s ‘Big, Ugly Bill’ slashed funding for healthcare in California to pay for more billionaire tax breaks. Now, millions of Californians are losing their health coverage, and millions more are being forced to pay skyrocketing costs,” SEIU-UHW Press Secretary Renee Saldana wrote in a statement to The Times.
Saldana pointed to an internal poll showing 70% of union members in California support the billionaire tax, adding: “We’re confident that SEIU members will be joining millions of their fellow Californians and voting YES on Prop. 40 this November to protect healthcare, keep hospitals and clinics open, and stand with California working families.”
In negotiations with Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, Regan offered to pull the tax from the ballot in exchange for concessions for his union, including help securing contracts at several medical facilities around the state, two sources told The Times. Regan denies making the demand and said the proposal is meant to solve an impending “catastrophe in California’s healthcare system.”
Los Angeles, CA – February 18: Billionaire Tax Now sign placed on chairs at the Billionaire Tax Now rally where Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to speak on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Several unions and Democratic allies, including Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, argue the one-time tax is the wrong solution for the cuts, which are unlikely to be reversed while Republicans hold power in Washington.
United Domestic Workers President Astrid Zuniga said the union supports the goal of taxing billionaires more but opposes Proposition 40 because it would not fund in-home or child care and “does not create the sustainable funding stream that is required to fully fund vital care programs.”
“Instead, we need a long-term plan for funding these programs, so that our communities can grow and thrive for years to come” Zuniga said. “For these reasons, we’re urging our members to vote no on Prop. 40, because we know it’s possible to deliver a better funding plan for our communities.”
SEIU California said its members are focused on “a multi-year campaign to secure California’s fiscal foundation with ongoing revenue,” including an effort to tax large companies that pay wages so low that their workers rely on public benefits.
Surrounded by members of the SEIU California executive board, Newsom this month signed a bill punting the “Fair Share” measure to next year, when a new governor will take office.
Sunrise at the McMackin's beach on Billionaire Row in Manalapan, Florida on Tuesday, Feb 24, 2026. The McMackins were early members of a wave of wealthy Californians moving to south Florida including Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg. They are currently constructing a larger home down the beach. (Jennifer Ortiz / For The Times)
HOLLYWOOD INC.
Some labor unions and elected Democrats worry that in the long run, the proposed billionaire tax will hurt the state budget — which raises more money from wealthy people taxed at higher rates — by pushing rich Californians to move to other states.
Some already have. Google co-founder Sergey Brin last year moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe to preemptively avoid the tax and has pumped $82 million into a committee fighting Proposition 40.
Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, has begun arguing for a federal wealth tax that the rich could not escape by moving to a new state.
“You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do,” he wrote on Substackin June. “The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”
SEIU California on Wednesday also announced “strong opposition” to Proposition 39, a proposed voter ID measure; and Proposition 43, which would make it harder for local governments to raise taxes.
The tax, which will appear on the ballot as Proposition 40, drew opposition from unions such as the California State Council of Laborers and United…
www.latimes.comEducation, AI & Commodification Of Education
https://youtu.be/EYG9_0UABOQ
The issue of the commodification of education and AI are connected. In this panel Professor emeritus George Wright and lawyer, whistleblower and education activist Kathy Carroll talk about the re-structuring of …education to make it a profit center
and commodity and how that is effecting the students, teacher sand public.
This LaborFest event took place on July 15, 2026
Additional Media:
AFT Pres Randi Weingarten, AI, The Deal With The Techno Fascists & Destruction of Public Education
https://youtu.be/w5fMTunNBmE
National AI training hub for educators to open, funded by OpenAI and Microsoft
https://www.chalkbeat.org/2025/07/08/openai-microsoft-teachers-union-ai-training-partnership/?utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawLbbwpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFRSzdKYkhpbEVzaDhvWWpXAR4jhejodv5yLy0Od6-XN2WJttalRS_WddYmotALv2R3s_3HZRRv2HkvvQ6Vow_aem_Jo5RTGzrWRC09NACid8MkA
War On Public Education, Tech, Reed Hasting & Writers Guild West With Ed Lawyer Kathleen Carroll
https://youtu.be/HYYCqNFVdBU
Privatization of Education, Online Tech and MOOC
https://youtu.be/iisAfnadAV4
Web Of Corruption-The CTC, Gates Foundation, West Ed, Destroying Public Teachers & Public Education
https://youtu.be/ic2ehvnykt0
The CA Charter Repeal Initiative & Public Education With Lawyer Kathy Carroll
https://youtu.be/IL-HF-jDnq4
Billionaires at Netflix and Walmart attempt to buy State Board of Education seats to pave the way for charter schools
https://www.texasaft.org/policy/privatization/charters/billionaires-at-netflix-and-walmart-attempt-to-buy-state-board-of-education-seats-to-pave-the-way-for-charter-schools/
Who Is Behind The Privatization Of Education:Gates, Broad, KIPP, Pearson, WestEd & The Gulen Schools
https://youtu.be/JAeRbh1KVkg
The Impact of AI, From the Writers Strike to Education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T250Fr37F0o
AFT President Weingarten's Charter School In New York City
https://www.uppublicschools.org/about#WhoWeAre
UFT accused of hypocrisy after national union boss Randi Weingarten’s charter school gets NYC space
https://nypost.com/2023/04/23/uft-opposes-charter-schools-except-for-boss-randi-weingartens/
Charter school network CEO slams teachers union as hypocrite for silence about Randi Weingarten's latest move
The NYC Dept. of Education voted 22-0 to expand space for a charter school co-founded by national teachers union official Randi Weingarten
https://www.foxnews.com/media/success-academy-ceo-speaks-out-against-uft-for-being-silent-about-randi-weingartens-charter-school-expansion
LaborFest
www.laborfest.net
Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
LaborFest
www.laborfest.net
Labor Video Project
www.labormedia.net
The issue of the commodification of education and AI are connected….
youtu.beEducation, AI & Commodification Of Education: Destroying Public Education For Profits
2026 UAW President Election Debate
If you are a UAW member in good standing, to help ensure that you r…
www.youtube.comGhirardelli closes flagship San Francisco shop as Unite Here Local 2 workers strike
The chocolate maker directed customers to two other Ghirardelli Square locations after union workers began a three-day walkout over health insurance and a 6% surcharge.
…https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ghirardelli-san-francisco-workers-strike-22367269.php
By Aidin Vaziri,
Staff Writer
Updated July 30, 2026 12:15 p.m.
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Ghirardelli closed its flagship chocolate and ice cream shop in San Francisco on Thursday after union workers walked off the job, prompting picketers to move to another company location that remained open in Ghirardelli Square.
The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop shut down after workers began a three-day strike, according to Unite Here Local 2, which represents employees at the store.
Ghirardelli directed customers to the nearby Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience and Ghirardelli Chocolate To Go, the union said.
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Ghirardelli had not responded to requests for comment by late Thursday morning, or said how long the flagship shop would remain closed. Its website continued to display regular hours for all three Ghirardelli Square locations.
The closure escalated a contract dispute centered on employee health insurance and a 6% surcharge added to customers’ bills.
Local 2 accused Ghirardelli of bargaining in bad faith by refusing to provide information about how much money the surcharge generates while proposing changes that the union says would weaken workers’ health coverage.
The union asked customers not to patronize Ghirardelli locations while workers are picketing.
The dispute highlights a long-running source of confusion and frustration for San Francisco diners: surcharges described as covering employee health care or other city-required labor costs.
San Francisco does not require restaurants or retailers to add such a fee. Businesses choose whether to impose one.
But when a covered employer says a surcharge is intended to pay for obligations under the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance, it must report annually how much the fee generated and how much it spent on covered workers’ health care, according to the city’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement.
If collections exceed qualifying health care spending, the excess must ultimately be spent on those employees’ health care.
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
Unite Here said negotiations began in May 2025 and have failed to produce a new agreement.
Alicia Tamayo, a stocker who has worked at the shop for 22 years, said she relies on the union health plan to cover herself and her two daughters.
“They charge customers an extra 6% fee that’s supposed to be for our healthcare, but they won’t tell us how much they earn from that fee,” Tamayo said in a statement released by the union. “Now they want to cut our health insurance. My two daughters are on my insurance. I’m not going to let them take our union healthcare plan away from me and my daughters.”
The union did not release the company’s full health care proposal.
The Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop is one of several Ghirardelli businesses at the waterfront shopping complex near Fisherman’s Wharf. The company says the original ice cream shop opened in 1966, although the chocolate maker traces its San Francisco history to 1852.
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Ghirardelli workers walk off the job today on a three-day Unfair Labor Practice strike due to bad faith bargaining by Ghirardelli management outside of the chocolate factory in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, Calif. Thursday, July 30, 2026
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
The union said the shop employs about 50 people and is the only unionized Ghirardelli location in San Francisco.
Local 2 also said the shop’s workers had not gone on strike since 1984.
Swiss chocolate company Lindt & Sprüngli owns Ghirardelli.
It was not immediately clear whether the shop would remain open during the strike. Ghirardelli’s website continued to list the location and its regular hours Thursday morning.
Workers at Ghirardelli’s flagship San Francisco shop are asking customers to stay away during a three-day strike involving health insurance and a …
www.sfchronicle.com2026 UAW President Election Debate
If you are a UAW member in good standing, to help ensure that you r…
www.youtube.comReview: WRECKAGE – A MUSICAL TRAGICOMEDY at San Francisco Mime Troupe
https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-francisco/article/Review-WRECKAGE-A-MUSICAL-TRAGICOMEDY-at-San-Francisco-Mime-Troupe-20260716
Review: WRECKAGE – A MUSICAL TRAGICOMEDY at San Francisco Mime TroupeWhat did our critic …think of WRECKAGE – A MUSICAL TRAGICOMEDY at San Francisco Mime Troupe?
By: Steve Murray
Jul. 16 2026M
Could it possibly be that events have finally confirmed just what the San Francisco Mime Troupe has been howling at the wind for 67 years! The troupe whose shows have been called whacko conspiratorial commie and alarmist now find themselves leading the pack when it comes to shining a bright light on social injustice. Wreckage is a tongue-in-cheek satire that hits a bullseye on pray for pay evangelism the dangers of AI in the wrong hands and the disillusionment of a patriotic immigrant when he realizes he’s being used to destroy the liberty he came here for. Mime Troupe Image(L – R) 5. Keiko Shimosato Carreiro Chloris Li Michael Gene Sullivan Jed Parsario.With musical direction by Daniel Savio and Will Durkee four actors (veteran SF Mime Troupe collective members: Michael Gene Sullivan (Security, Nestor, Bobby, Paul); Jed Parsario (Gideon, Businessman, Bertrand, Karl, Lance); Keiko Shimosato Carreiro (Stage Manager, Mari, Jeribeth); Chloris Li (Felicity, Businesswoman, Fredericka, Claudine, Sergeant Nicola, Mari’s Mother) present the good and the very bad with little nuance or subtlety. The divisions couldn’t be more stark- and the alarm presented here is now ominously palpable, and very real.
This new show premieres amongst the backdrop of new ICE murders, a nebulous Iran war, the savaging of voting rights and a bold kleptocracy that had no limits is preaching to a growing audience that is not just a usual choir. The Tony-Award winning SFMT recently received The Prize of Hope 2026 from Åsen Theatre in Denmark for a body of theatrical work created over years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Michael Gene Sullivan received the Charles Dean Award for Outstanding achievement in acting and dedication to Bay Area Theatre – deserved recognition for their bold and critical role as harbingers of the truth.
Review: WRECKAGE – A MUSICAL TRAGICOMEDY at San Francisco Mime Troupe Image
Jed Parsario.
Wreckage runs July 3 – Sept. 7, 2026.
All shows are FREE and open to the public unless otherwise listed. Paid Ticketed performance: Z Space’s Steindler Stage: Wed., Aug. 19, 2026 – 7:00 pm (Indoors).
Three (3) shows will require RSVPs:
For a complete schedule and more information, visit sfmt.org or call 415-285-1717.
Could it possibly be that events have finally confirmed just what the San Francisco Mime Troupe has been howling at the wind for 67 years! The troupe…
www.broadwayworld.comSan Francisco Supervisors show support for Kaiser therapists at special hearing over introduction of chat-boxes & digital algorithms — instead of licensed clinicians — to triage patients.
https://home.nuhw.org/2026/07/06/workers-meet-with-oaklands-mayor-lee-over-hospital-funding/
…July 27, 2026
Featured, News
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The San Francisco Board of Supervisors appears ready to formally oppose Kaiser’s “terrible three” contract proposal after conducting a July 21 special hearing on contract negotiations.
Supervisors criticized Kaiser for refusing to participate in the hearing as mental health clinicians and leaders of behavioral health advocacy organizations laid out the dangers posed by Kaiser’s contract proposals — not only for Kaiser patients and providers, but for behavioral health care in California.
“This is not a very good plan at all for quality care,” Linda Michaels, a psychologist and cofounder of the Psychotherapy Action Network, told board members. “And I think, while a lot of these policies may save Kaiser money in the short term… they will actually create new and higher costs in the long term. In terms of replacing therapists. It’s a very costly long-term gambit that Kaiser is playing here, and it’s not good for patients, for therapists, or really for Kaiser itself.”
Several news outlets covered the hearing, including KTVU-2, KPIX-5, KPFA, KQED, KALW, Behavioral Health Business, SFist, CalMatters, and the San Francisco Standard, which reported on a complaint NUHW filed against Kaiser for using digital algorithms — instead of licensed clinicians — to triage patients.
Check out the video on YouTube to watch the full hearing. The video description includes links to key moments, including remarks by NUHW members and allies.
The hearing was convened more than a year after negotiations began between Kaiser and its 2,400 NUHW-represented mental health clinicians, including psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists.
Mediation is scheduled to start August 11 in an attempt to break a deadlock caused by Kaiser’s insistence on three contract demands, which center around:
Artificial intelligence: Kaiser wants to be able to replace therapists with A.I. and exert total control over a technology that stands to dramatically shift how therapy is provided. Kaiser is already using A.I. to record therapy sessions and algorithms to screen patients seeking care, and is now unwilling to agree to language that it accepted in its Southern California contract, stating that the intention of new technologies like A.I. “is not to replace” clinicians.
Layoffs and outsourcing: Kaiser is proposing language that would allow it to lay off clinicians in order to refer far more patients to third-party contractors for behavioral health services, divorcing behavioral health from the rest of Kaiser’s integrated model of care.
Disempowering clinicians: Kaiser is demanding that the contract state that it has the “sole discretion” to “determine or modify the behavioral health operating and clinical models of care,” thereby ending any requirement that it work collaboratively with therapists to improve care.
NUHW members Tianna Lui, Molly Parsons, and Ilana Marcucci-Morris addressed those three issues with the board and answered questions.
Parsons noted that Kaiser’s outsourcing proposal flies in the face of its marketing pitch to patients that their doctors, pharmacists, and therapists are all under one roof with Kaiser and able to work together to support patients.
“In fairness, Kaiser’s integrated health care system is an excellent model,” Parsons told the supervisors. “That’s why I can’t understand why Kaiser wants to segregate behavioral health from it and treat it as a second-class service.”
Parsons added, “Kaiser clearly wants to radically downsize its behavioral health workforce and rely more on apps and external vendors. We want Kaiser to provide good care and good jobs — just like their ads say.”
Supervisor Chyanne Chen, who called the hearing, said she was “shocked” and “very disappointed” that Kaiser refused to participate in the hearing. “Mental wellness is incredibly important and how we are taking care of our patients and workers, especially with emerging technology, is more important now than ever,” she said.
Chen has introduced a resolution that will go to a vote later this summer, putting the board on the record opposing Kaiser’s “terrible three” contract demands.
Board President Rafael Mandelman said that Kaiser’s refusal to participate in the hearing suggested “that the picture being painted by the workers is pretty accurate of a large business that is interested in squeezing efficiencies out of an under-resourced part of its operation.”
The hearing came one day after NUHW filed a complaint against Kaiser with state and federal regulators. The complaint documents how Kaiser is using digital algorithms to make immediate determinations for patients seeking mental health services, including deciding whether they need an urgent appointment or should receive therapy at all. This violates state law governing how health plans must triage patients and contradicts how Kaiser says its e-visits are supposed to work.
Tianna Lui, a therapist for Kaiser in San Francisco, told supervisors that the non-human-based triage makes it harder for patients to get the right care for themselves.
“I’ve had LGBTQ+ patients tell me they’ve waited forever to find a clinician with my background,” Lui said. “When patients are essentially told, ‘Here is your option, take it or leave it,’ that’s not ethical, and that’s not good clinical care. Not at all.”
Workers at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland had a sit down meeting with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who committed to making sure that hospital…
home.nuhw.orgWorkers meet with Oakland’s Mayor Lee over UCSF Benioff Children’s hospital funding
https://home.nuhw.org/2026/07/06/workers-meet-with-oaklands-mayor-lee-over-hospital-funding/
July 6, 2026
One year after UCSF initiated a hospital integration plan that forced more than 1,300 …NUHW members at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland into other unions, the workers haven’t given up hope of returning to NUHW or given up fighting for their patients and East Bay communities.
On Saturday, June 27, about a dozen workers, who used to be NUHW stewards at Children’s Hospital Oakland before UCSF “integrated” it with its children’s hospital in San Francisco’s Mission Bay District, had a sit-down meeting with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee.
Lee listened as workers discussed how the integration has resulted in additional services being moved across the Bay to San Francisco, forcing Oakland families to travel farther for care. The reduction in services came as no surprise to workers who held a strike in June 2025 opposing the integration plan, which also effectively cancelled their NUHW contracts and forced them into other unions, whose contracts included higher healthcare costs and pension contributions.
A federal judge is considering NUHW’s objections to the “integration,” but Lee stated that she is committed to making sure that funds from the 2020 Measure C sales tax ballot measure are used in the best interest of Oakland kids and the people who serve them at Children’s Hospital.
NUHW members helped pass the Alameda County tax measure six years ago, which generates about $20 million a year for the hospital. However, the measure wasn’t clear about how the money should be distributed, which left NUHW members at Children’s Hospital teaming up with the local unions to have a say in how it’s spent.
“UCSF is not doing what was intended with Measure C dollars,” Griselda Chavez, an infant development specialist at the hospital, told Lee during the meeting. “They took money that came from the pockets of everyday people, money meant for helping children, and spent it on construction.”
Lee was receptive to Chavez and her coworkers, and pledged to talk to UCSF Health President Nicolas Holmes and county officials to make sure they follow through on a plan ensuring that 5 percent of the proceeds go towards programs that hospital workers identify as major problems, including lack of equipment and lack of staff, which leads to long waitlists for important pediatric services. The mayor is making good on her pledge and is convening a meeting with workers and Holmes on August 3.
“I was happy with the commitment we received from Mayor Lee,” Chavez said. “She listened, and I believe she will follow through, but I’m not optimistic that UCSF will honor any commitment. Over the past year of being under UCSF, I’ve seen them ignore rules and requirements that they don’t like.”
Workers at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland had a sit down meeting with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who committed to making sure that hospital…
home.nuhw.orgWorkers meet with Oakland’s Mayor Lee over UCSF Benioff Children’s hospital funding
https://home.nuhw.org/2026/07/06/workers-meet-with-oaklands-mayor-lee-over-hospital-funding/
July 6, 2026
One year after UCSF initiated a hospital integration plan that forced more than 1,300 …NUHW members at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland into other unions, the workers haven’t given up hope of returning to NUHW or given up fighting for their patients and East Bay communities.
On Saturday, June 27, about a dozen workers, who used to be NUHW stewards at Children’s Hospital Oakland before UCSF “integrated” it with its children’s hospital in San Francisco’s Mission Bay District, had a sit-down meeting with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee.
Lee listened as workers discussed how the integration has resulted in additional services being moved across the Bay to San Francisco, forcing Oakland families to travel farther for care. The reduction in services came as no surprise to workers who held a strike in June 2025 opposing the integration plan, which also effectively cancelled their NUHW contracts and forced them into other unions, whose contracts included higher healthcare costs and pension contributions.
A federal judge is considering NUHW’s objections to the “integration,” but Lee stated that she is committed to making sure that funds from the 2020 Measure C sales tax ballot measure are used in the best interest of Oakland kids and the people who serve them at Children’s Hospital.
NUHW members helped pass the Alameda County tax measure six years ago, which generates about $20 million a year for the hospital. However, the measure wasn’t clear about how the money should be distributed, which left NUHW members at Children’s Hospital teaming up with the local unions to have a say in how it’s spent.
“UCSF is not doing what was intended with Measure C dollars,” Griselda Chavez, an infant development specialist at the hospital, told Lee during the meeting. “They took money that came from the pockets of everyday people, money meant for helping children, and spent it on construction.”
Lee was receptive to Chavez and her coworkers, and pledged to talk to UCSF Health President Nicolas Holmes and county officials to make sure they follow through on a plan ensuring that 5 percent of the proceeds go towards programs that hospital workers identify as major problems, including lack of equipment and lack of staff, which leads to long waitlists for important pediatric services. The mayor is making good on her pledge and is convening a meeting with workers and Holmes on August 3.
“I was happy with the commitment we received from Mayor Lee,” Chavez said. “She listened, and I believe she will follow through, but I’m not optimistic that UCSF will honor any commitment. Over the past year of being under UCSF, I’ve seen them ignore rules and requirements that they don’t like.”
Workers at UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland had a sit down meeting with Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, who committed to making sure that hospital…
home.nuhw.org
