Labor & Workers News

On November 13, over one thousand union baristas launched a “Red Cup Rebellion” unfair labor practice strike protesting Starbucks’ union busting and failure to finalize a fair union contract. The open-ended strike begins with 65 stores across 40+ cities and comes after six months of Starbucks refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay, and resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges.

Pesticides continue to be pervasive in the air throughout California’s agricultural regions, according to the 2023 Air Monitoring Network Report released in September by the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR). Weekly samples collected at DPR’s four air monitors detected 19 different pesticides at trace or quantifiable levels and 8 pesticides at quantifiable levels, with 80% of samples including at least one pesticide detection.

The SF Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is calling on the University of California, San Francisco to reinstate professor of medicine Dr. Rupa Marya and publicly affirm that it will safeguard academic freedom and free speech. Dr. Marya was terminated from UCSF in May 2025, which came after her medical privileges were suspended in September 2024 over social media posts in which she criticized Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

On September 24, Bay Area poets and other writers organized a poetry reading outside of U.S. Senator Adam Schiff's office in San Francisco, calling on him and Senator Alex Padilla to support the Block the Bombs legislation, and to defend freedom of the press and protect Palestinian journalists. Arts activist David Solnit transformed the building's plaza into a mini auditorium with rows of folding chairs, and using the corporate offices as a background.

Hundreds of Bay Area residents attended an emergency protest in San Francisco organized in response to Israel's assassination of six journalists in Gaza. Israel killed four Al Jazeera staff in a targeted airstrike on August 10: correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal. Two freelancers who worked with Al Jazeera, Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, were also killed.

In recognition of the 90th birthday of the Social Security Act, on August 14, workers who administrate benefits through the Act gathered at the U.S. Federal Building in San Francisco to protest the DOGE staff cuts and Trump administration’s move towards privatization. The workers said that staff cuts have resulted in their having to serve more people than ever while “experiencing one of the lowest staffing levels in 60 years.”

Activists in Northern California are not waiting for court challenges to stop Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Protests are ongoing and have cropped up outside Tesla showrooms in Berkeley, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Corte Madera and Seaside, amongst other locations. The earliest of these happened on a national day of action on February 15. The action at the Van Ness Tesla location in SF grew to about a thousand people.