Business
California settles with big-box retailers and Dodgers over alleged hiring violations
California’s Civil Rights Department announced settlements Tuesday with Amazon, Ikea and Kohl’s over allegations that the big-box retailers illegally denied jobs to people based on their criminal histories.
Amazon allegedly denied a Bay Area applicant work as a delivery driver because of a conviction that was more than seven years old, while Ikea was accused of failing to justify its stance that a criminal history made an applicant unable to handle a job as a furniture builder in Carson, the Civil Rights Department said.
Another complaint said Kohl’s denied an applicant a job as a warehouse worker in Los Angeles based on criminal history information unlawfully obtained through a questionnaire.
Besides the retailers, California also reached a settlement with the Dodgers for failing to notify an applicant for a guest services job of the specific reason their hire had been blocked, and for failing to provide an opportunity for the applicant to submit evidence challenging the rejection.
The series of settlements marks an effort to enforce the Fair Chance Act, which went into effect in 2018 and limits how an employer can use an applicant’s criminal history when making hiring decisions. The law is intended to reduce barriers to work that people with criminal histories face.
The law prohibits employers with five or more employees from asking about a job applicant’s criminal history before making a conditional job offer, and sets in place specific procedures for considering an applicant’s criminal history after a job offer is made. Under the law, employers can decide against hiring an applicant only if a conviction has a direct link to the responsibilities that come with the job.
The law also requires that companies provide notice of decisions to deny applicants positions on the basis of their conviction histories, and gives applicants the ability to respond to these preliminary decisions.
The Civil Rights Department announced the settlements, which it reached in recent months, in a news release Tuesday. The department said it had also reached deals with a hotel in Sacramento and a private charter jet company in Monterey, both of which were accused of unlawfully considering information that had been sealed, dismissed or expunged from an applicant’s criminal record.
The settlements resolve complaints that rejected job applicants filed with the state last year. After investigating the allegations, the Civil Rights Department gave the companies the chance to settle the violations. Settlements can include payments to complainants to cover lost wages or other harms and agreeing to temporary monitoring by state officials to ensure compliance with the law.
The amount some of the companies paid as part of the settlements were kept confidential, while others are in the range of $15,000 to $18,500, according to copies of the settlement agreements reviewed by The Times.
“Nobody deserves to get locked out of the job market,” said Kevin Kish, director of the Civil Rights Department, according to the news release. “If we want to get serious about helping people get their lives back on track, we owe it to them to give them a chance to make a living. By giving people a pathway forward in their own lives, we’re also doing critical work to ensure public safety in our communities.”
An Amazon spokesperson said he did not have enough information about the settlement and could not yet provide comment. Ikea, Kohl’s and the Dodgers did not respond to requests for comment.
The Civil Rights Department said that since the law went into effect in 2018, it has investigated hundreds of complaints alleging discrimination in employment decisions based on criminal history information and has secured more than 100 settlements.
In one settlement, the Moraga-Orinda Fire Protection District agreed to pay nearly $100,000 last year. In 2022, a construction company agreed to pay the same amount after unlawfully denying a group of applicants jobs in 2018 and 2019.
Also last year, the department filed a lawsuit against Ralphs for allegedly denying jobs to hundreds of people based on their criminal history. The grocer allegedly included questions about convictions on its job application in violation of the law.
The department said it also has made efforts to identify and correct online job advertisements that violate the Fair Chance Act, sending notices to businesses to address hundreds of violations.
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
-
New York7 minutes agoShould a Straight Person Represent Stonewall’s City Council District?
-
Detroit, MI37 minutes agoBlake Miller has high floor, big upside, says Lions GM Brad Holmes
-
San Francisco, CA49 minutes agoHighway 1 closure in San Francisco expected to snarl Sunset traffic all weekend
-
Dallas, TX55 minutes agoHow UCF EDGE Malachi Lawrence Fits With The Dallas Cowboys
-
Miami, FL1 hour ago
Dolphins Select Two Players in The First Round of The 2026 NFL Draft
-
Boston, MA1 hour agoIn-Store Only
-
Denver, CO1 hour agoWolves Back Up the Big Talk With Blowout Win Over Denver in Game 3
-
Seattle, WA1 hour ago‘Rare’ Tiny-Home Compound Featuring 3 Adorable Abodes Hits the Market in Seattle for Just $900K