Business
Pizza Hut workers in L.A.'s Historic Filipinotown go on 3-day strike, alleging wage theft
At a Pizza Hut restaurant in Historic Filipinotown, west of downtown Los Angeles, a slip of paper was taped Wednesday to the glass storefront announcing “STORE CLOSED” and “EMPLOYEES ON STRIKE.”
A handful of workers rallied outside with organizers from a new union for California fast-food workers to protest what they allege is ongoing wage theft by the Pizza Hut franchise owner.
Six current and former workers are staging a three-day strike to bring attention to their cause, and with help from the new union, five of them filed a complaint with the state labor commissioner’s office Wednesday alleging that store management skimmed hours from their paychecks, required training and overtime work while refusing to pay for it, and declined to pay for sick leave — amounting to some $81,443 in back pay and penalties.
Julieta Garcia goes on a three-day strike to protest alleged wage theft at a Pizza Hut in L.A.’s Historic Filipinotown, west of downtown.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
The complaint also alleges store management enforced “abusive and chaotic scheduling,” with changes to workers’ schedules multiple times a week; workers at times have been sent home at the beginning of their shifts without prior notification or pay.
“Management is subjecting us to nearly every form of wage theft,” the complaint reads.
The Pizza Hut store’s management did not respond to a phone call requesting comment.
Although the number of workers involved in the labor action is small, the accusations of wage theft illustrate a pervasive problem in restaurant and other low-wage industries, labor advocates say.
Forms of wage theft can include violations such as failure to pay for all hours worked, paying workers less than minimum wage, refusing to pay overtime, denying workers meal breaks or rest periods, and requiring employees to finish tasks before or after their shifts. The Economic Policy Institute said in 2014 that wage theft costs American workers as much as $50 billion a year.
The strike comes as part of a broader push from the newly formed California Fast Food Worker Union for improved work standards as well as predictable and stable scheduling for workers.
The union, inaugurated early last month, is a unique effort that seeks to pave the way for more than half a million workers at fast-food chains across the state to bargain as a single sector as a member of California’s Fast Food Council.
Problems have plagued the Pizza Hut on Temple Street since a new store manager took over about six months ago. The franchisee that owns the location announced the day before Christmas that it would be laying off delivery drivers, said workers and union representatives. Workers protested the layoffs and what they describe as abusive scheduling during a one-day strike on Jan. 26.
Shwetha Ganesh, a spokesperson for the union, said when two Pizza Hut franchisees in California announced they were laying off delivery drivers and would rely on gig delivery services, analysts blamed the layoffs on the new $20 pay floor. But Pizza Hut began working with those services more than a year ago — not to save money but because management could not hire enough drivers, she said.
Three workers who walked off the job in the most recent strike Wednesday said they were intimidated by bosses to not take lunch breaks or cash in on time off. Two said their hours had been cut in retaliation for speaking out about their concerns.
Store management recently hired three new employees, even though current employees aren’t getting enough hours scheduled to pay their bills, workers said. The store has about a dozen workers total.
Pizza Hut workers and their supporters begin a three-day strike by marching.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re on strike because we are asserting our rights. We want to get paid, and we want our old schedules back,” said Kimberly Oliva, 20, who has worked as a cook at the Pizza Hut for about a year.
Oliva said she used to be scheduled about 46 hours per week; now, she gets only 16. The dramatic cut in hours has strained her wallet. She has been forced to borrow thousands of dollars from her aunt and uncle.
Oliva lives with her dad and two siblings, and helps pay for rent, food, gas, clothing and car insurance as well as sending money regularly to her mom in Guatemala.
Oliva said the loss of income and antagonistic attitude from the store manager have taken a toll. Last week, when Oliva asked for time off because her grandma had died, her manager shut her down, threatening to lay her off, she said.
“I’m very worried, I’m sick, I’m stressed. My nerves are really tense to the point where I have eye problems,” she said. “I have never felt so sick.”
Julieta Garcia, a cook at the Pizza Hut who participated in the protest, said in her statement to the labor commissioner’s office that she had to miss work Dec. 3 and 4 after going to the emergency room for a muscular lesion, and requested paid sick time. But a shift manager told her the store manager said paid sick time was not yet available to Garcia.
Garcia said in her written statement that she realized she had been lied to when she spoke with organizers with the California Fast Food Workers Union who told her she is legally entitled to paid sick time after being employed for 90 days; at that point she had been working at Pizza Hut for some seven months.
Garcia said in an interview that stress at work and heavier workloads have aggravated her health issues. She had to visit the emergency room again in February because she was experiencing severe headaches, and she was once again denied paid sick time. In addition to her responsibilities as a cook, she is now also expected to sweep, mop and wash dishes — all duties that delivery drivers used to take care of, she said.
“I feel stress, I feel headaches, I get migraines — I need my paid time off,” Garcia said.
Ganesh, the union spokesperson, said problems Garcia and other Pizza Hut workers are facing are widespread in the fast-food industry. Ganesh pointed to a report published by the union on Wednesday finding that 88% of California fast-food workers do not know their rights on the job and broadly lack information about essential benefits and programs.
The report, co-authored by the Step Forward Foundation, an immigrant advocacy group providing free legal services, also found that 73% of California fast-food workers do not know how much additional pay they are entitled to if they are forced to work through a meal break or rest breaks.
The union has called on local officials in Los Angeles and San Jose to draft and approve “fast-food fair work ordinances” securing paid time off provisions, predictive scheduling tools and mandatory “know your rights” training for workers.
Daniela Soto, a shift manager at the Pizza Hut who opened the store Wednesday morning, was working when workers and Service Employees International Union organizers gathered outside for a noon protest.
Soto hadn’t originally planned to participate in the strike, but she closed the store to show solidarity and joined the protest. Staff from a nearby Pizza Hut location arrived about 30 minutes later to reopen the store, she said.
“I am upset about what they did to the drivers,” Soto said. “I got involved in the strike because I’m seeing a lot of unfairness there.”
A gig drivers organization filed a lawsuit against Uber, alleging the company violated their rights by not providing a sufficient appeals process for deactivated accounts.
The lawsuit was announced Monday during a news conference by Rideshare Drivers United, an independent organization that represents more than 20,000 app-based drivers in California.
The organization, represented by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan, said thousands of drivers have been terminated with little to no explanation, many of whom had worked as drivers for years and had high ratings.
“Drivers want to stand up for themselves and for basic fairness, and we can’t when there is no fair appeals process,” said Jason Munderloh, the chairman of the organization’s Bay Area chapter.
The lawsuit is the latest in a long battle between drivers and major ride-hailing service companies. Uber, a frequent target of lawsuits, has often faced claims of labor violations and vehicle collisions.
The tension could reach the November ballot, as the ride-hailing giant attempts to curb the laundry list of legal action. Uber is advocating for legislation that could cap how much attorneys can earn in vehicle collision cases.
Rideshare Drivers United said Monday that Uber is violating Proposition 22, which passed in 2020 and was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2024. The legislation was a win for gig economy companies, allowing them to classify drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, provided certain requirements are met.
Uber is violating a clause in the proposition that requires the company to provide an appeals process for drivers who are terminated, the organization said.
“Uber has had six years of hiding behind Prop. 22 on issues favorable to it and ignored the law when it seemed inconvenient,” Munderloh said.
The lawsuit seeks a statewide judgment that Uber has failed to comply with Proposition 22, along with an opportunity for the thousands of deactivated drivers to appeal their terminations. The suit also seeks reactivation and back pay for drivers who were unfairly terminated.
Uber denied the claims in the lawsuit and reaffirmed that it offers a clear appeals process, in compliance with Proposition 22, a spokesperson told The Times.
“This is a baseless lawsuit by an opportunistic trial lawyer seeking to overturn Proposition 22 and the will of California voters,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll fight this publicity stunt in court while continuing to strengthen drivers’ voice on the platform.”
The company posted on a blog Friday that details its termination and appeals process. Every deactivated driver is given a reason for termination and offered a review process for more information. Drivers can then appeal, and the appeal is evaluated by a real person, according to the website.
Rirdeshare Drivers United said drivers are often terminated for vague reasons and are met with endless automated chatbots when inquiring about their terminations.
Drivers who request an appeal are either automatically denied or given the runaround without being offered an actual appeals process, Liss-Riordan said.
Devins Baker had given about 18,000 rides for Uber in eight years and boasted a 4.96 rating when his account was unexpectedly terminated just before Christmas in 2024. An automated message from the company claimed Baker had driven recklessly and offered no other information, he said.
He wasn’t told what resulted in his termination, but said that during his last ride, he had to drive defensively to avoid crashing into a vehicle that was merging recklessly on the freeway.
Baker had to hit the brakes to avoid the collision, and the passenger, who wasn’t wearing a seat belt, fell off the seat.
Baker was not offered a chance to appeal, he said.
Proposition 22 carved out a new classification for gig economy workers, affording them limited benefits, but not the rights granted to full-fledged employees.
The legislation received strong financial backing from Uber.
A group of drivers challenged Proposition 20 in 2024, claiming the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with the state Legislature’s authority to provide workers’ compensation protections to drivers. Their claims were ultimately rejected by the state’s highest court.
Ride-hail drivers have long raised concerns about low wages, minimal workplace protections and exploitative practices.
More recently, they have grappled with rising gas prices amid the war in the Middle East, which has driven some away from the ride-hailing business.
“The pay is not good in the first place. We do what we can to create a solid framework for ourselves and our families,” said Munderloh, who works as a part-time Uber driver. “It’s hard enough with how little they pay us, and then even that is taken away.”
Various gig companies, including Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, have said Proposition 22 is a crucial component of their businesses and threatened to shut down in the state if the proposition were struck down. These companies poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign to sway voters on the proposition.
When Infowars, the website founded by the right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.
That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Guerra Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
Mr. Jones had no immediate comment.
The battle over Infowars has been a long and fraught saga, and Mr. Jones — a notorious peddler of lies and invective — has used his bully pulpit for more than a year to crusade against The Onion’s efforts to take over the platform. The site is in limbo because of a series of defamation lawsuits against Mr. Jones filed by families of victims of the mass shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which Mr. Jones falsely claimed was a hoax.
People who believed his lies that the shooting was staged subjected the families to years of online abuse, harassment and death threats.
In 2018, the families of two Sandy Hook victims sued Mr. Jones for defamation in Texas, where Infowars is based, and relatives of eight other victims sued him in Connecticut. In 2022, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one victim $50 million.
Mr. Jones declared bankruptcy later that year. A trial pitting him against the parents of a second victim was delayed indefinitely by that move. Later that year, a jury awarded the families and a former law enforcement official who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut a total of $1.4 billion.
Mr. Jones appealed the Connecticut verdict, the largest defamation award in history, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October, the justices declined to hear the case.
To help satisfy Mr. Jones’s debts to the Sandy Hook families and other creditors, Judge Christopher Lopez of U.S. Bankruptcy Court ordered in mid-2024 that a court-appointed trustee sell off equipment, intellectual property and other assets owned by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company.
In late 2024, a sealed-bid silent auction drew only two contenders: The Onion’s parent and a company associated with Mr. Jones. The trustee and the families chose The Onion’s bid, despite its potential to yield less cash than the rival company’s. Mr. Jones and his lawyers cried foul, and Judge Lopez intervened, saying that the process was opaque and that The Onion’s bid was not obviously superior. He rejected plans for a do-over of the auction, instead directing the families to seek a liquidation through Judge Guerra Gamble’s court in Texas, where the first defamation case was heard and won.
In August, Judge Guerra Gamble ruled that a court-appointed administrator would take over and sell Infowars’ assets, reopening the door to The Onion. “We’re working on it,” Ben Collins, the chief executive of Global Tetrahedron, wrote on social media on the same day as Judge Guerra Gamble’s ruling.
The Onion’s proposal, worth $486,000 in its initial six-month term, does little to satisfy the enormous damages awarded to the Sandy Hook families. The families have been fighting to collect since Mr. Jones filed for personal and business bankruptcy. Mr. Jones is expected to lose access to his studio and equipment as part of the deal, Mr. Collins said.
The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially planned to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”
Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker hopes to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy, he said.
“I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, he traveled to the Liberty Bell to film a video in character as the new creative director of Infowars.
“The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.
“We are excited to lie constantly for cold, hard cash, but this time in a cool way, and we’ll make sure some of it gets back to the families,” Mr. Collins said.
While broadcast programming is “out of my lane,” Mr. Mattei said, “satire and humor can be universal. If their programming can be of interest to Jones’s former audience, and help bring them out of the dark, that would be wonderful.”
In the meantime, the company has been filming satirical videos in antipation of the court’s ruling. One of them features a fictional anchor from the satirical Onion News Network, “Jim Haggerty,” who defects from the mainstream media to become a conspiracy monger. He will be played by the actor Brad Holbrook.
“For 35 years, I was part of the problem,” Mr. Haggerty intoned in a dramatic trailer released by The Onion. “But now, I’m free of my corporate shackles, and my only business is freedom.”
Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, is getting a new chief executive, marking a new chapter in the story of what has become arguably the most influential company in consumer technology.
The Cupertino, Calif., smartphone maker said Monday that John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become Apple’s chief executive on Sept. 1.
Tim Cook, who has served as chief executive for roughly 15 years, will become executive chairman of the company’s board of directors, the company said. He was long expected to step down soon.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple’s market capitalization grew to $4 trillion from about $350 billion, according to the company. Its revenue ballooned from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Apple also expanded its business under Cook’s tenure, including its presence in entertainment with Apple TV and Apple Music. People also use other services such as Apple Pay and iCloud to store their photos, videos and other content.
The leadership transition marks a new era for Apple, which turned 50 years old in April. The company has revolutionized technology, selling popular consumer electronics including iPhones and smartwatches.
But the company has lagged behind as its rivals such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and more move quickly to dominate the artificial intelligence race. It has also had to grapple with tariffs and criticism for manufacturing its products in other countries, such as China and India, during President Trump’s second term.
“These will be big shoes to fill and the timing of Cook exiting stage left as CEO could make sense but also creates questions. Apple is making a major transition on its AI strategy, and longtime CEO and legendary Cook leaving now is a surprise,” Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a statement.
In a statement, Cook expressed gratitude for his time leading Apple. The 65-year-old succeeded chief executive and co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011 after he passed away from pancreatic cancer.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Cook said in a statement. “He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
Ternus was widely expected to be next in line as chief executive.
In a statement, he said he’s worked at Apple for nearly his entire career, including under Jobs. He described Cook, who will work with him during the transition, as his mentor.
“I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century,” Ternus said in a statement.
Ternus has served as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering since 2021, working on new products such as the iPad and AirPods. Before that role, he was on Apple’s product design team in 2001 before becoming vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, according to the company.
“Ternus’s work on Mac has helped the category become more powerful and more popular globally than at any time in its 40-year history,” Apple said in its news release about the transition.
In the fiscal year ending in September, Apple reported revenue of $416 billion and a net income of $112 billion. Worldwide, there are more than 2.5 billion active Apple devices.
Apple’s stock was down less than 1% in early after-hours trading, changing hands at around $271 a share.
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