Business

Hot labor summer: How L.A. became the epicenter of solidarity

Published

2 years ago

August 11, 2023

Hot labor summer: How L.A. became the epicenter of solidarity

It’s hot, sweaty and built on solidarity: Los Angeles has become a city of picket lines this summer, with more than 100,000 workers out on strike in the region.

Each set of workers — screenwriters, actors, hotel employees, city staffers and more — is fighting its own particular fight, but organized labor is having a moment on the streets of L.A.

“There’s a perception that we have little in common, but we’re both fighting for our future,” playwright Sam Chanse said recently as she walked a picket line alongside hotel workers.

But is this hot labor summer just a perfect storm of organizing, economics and contract expiration? Or is this a new normal?

Strike activity in the U.S. has quadrupled since last year, and Los Angeles is the work stoppage capital for 2023, largely because of the huge number of L.A.-area writers and actors represented by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA unions.

Nationally, however, this level of labor action is a return to pre-pandemic form. More than 400,000 workers went on strike in both 2018 and 2019, which saw the “Red for Ed” teacher strikes and a major work stoppage at General Motors. This year’s picket population has topped 300,000 so far — but still has time to set a recent record, if the nearly 150,000 workers at the Big Three automakers go out on strike after their contracts expire in September.

On a longer timescale, the last decade has seen significantly less industrial action than most decades of the 20th century, when union membership was much higher across the U.S. And despite a wave of new union organizing at companies such as Starbucks and Amazon, workers have had a difficult time bargaining first contracts and fending off anti-union tactics from employers.

Still, it’s hard to deny that there’s something in the air this season. Johnnie Kallas, a doctoral candidate at Cornell University who runs the Cornell-ILR Labor Action Tracker that keeps tabs on labor actions nationwide, points to the pandemic as a proximate cause.

“For a lot of these workers, this is the first contract that they’re negotiating since the beginning of the pandemic,” Kallas said.

Meanwhile, the cost of living has been jumping, which means even standard raises are still tantamount to pay cuts; corporate profits have been on the rise across the economy since 2020; and unemployment has remained low, giving workers more bargaining power.

That potent combination of factors, Kallas said, has made workers willing to fight.

“The pandemic had the effect of delegitimizing management in every which way,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, who teaches labor history at UC Santa Barbara.

Especially in the early days of the pandemic, managers “were discredited whether or not they tried to do the right thing,” Lichtenstein said. Office workers learned that they could have been working from home the whole time, even before lockdown rules made it necessary. “Essential workers,” who had to report to work in person, learned that their health was less important than the bottom line.

Then, as the COVID-19 recession turned into a stock market boom, rising prices ate away at the spending power of the average employee while many of the companies they worked for reported blockbuster earnings.

“Corporations lost their credibility,” Lichtenstein said, “and it was very intimate. It wasn’t something like a Madoff or big banks doing something. It was right there in everyone’s face.”

Los Angeles in particular sits at the vanguard of two trends: increasingly expensive housing and an increasing amount of cross-union solidarity.

Unite Here Local 11, the union representing workers on strike at dozens of hotels across the region, has explicitly tied its demands at the bargaining table to housing issues. In negotiations, the union has asked hotel owners to charge customers a new fee that would feed into a fund to help workers obtain affordable housing and support a 2024 ballot measure that would require Los Angeles hotels to rent vacant rooms to unhoused people.

The decades-long decay in regular residual payments and show staffing has also put housing costs front and center for writers and actors who are on strike.

Even the group representing local businesses agrees that housing costs are contributing to labor unrest.

Maria Salinas, president of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, said that her group is “very concerned about the affordability issues, mainly in housing” and that it advocates for regulatory changes to increase housing construction.

According to a recent informal poll of about 100 chief executives, Salinas said, “the top issue was housing affordability, followed by tightness in the labor market,” both of which are making it difficult to recruit and retain workers in Los Angeles.

Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, noted that housing costs also motivated the statewide UC graduate student worker strike last year, with workers facing “tremendous difficulty making ends meet, especially given the rising cost of housing.”

“The other major factor is that Los Angeles is an important focal point for the new American labor movement,” Wong said. Since Miguel Contreras assumed the leadership of the L.A. County Federation of Labor in the mid-1990s, the local labor movement has been at the forefront of organizing immigrant workers, nonunion workers and young workers across industries to push for political change, such as raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and beyond.

The L.A. labor movement is working together more than it has in past years. In March, L.A. school teachers represented by United Teachers Los Angeles coordinated a joint three-day strike with L.A. school workers represented by SEIU Local 99. Within weeks of the joint action, both unions secured contracts with major raises — 21% for the teachers and 30% for the workers represented by SEIU. This year is also the first time since 1960 that screenwriters and actors are simultaneously on strike, and the local Teamsters have committed to honoring their picket lines.

But still, organized labor in the U.S. is relatively weak compared with earlier decades — and efforts to organize new groups of workers and get them under union contracts has faced stiff opposition from employers.

“Normally when you think of moments of mobilization and discrediting of the old order, from the ‘30s to the ‘60s and ‘70s, organization expands,” Lichtenstein said. “But right now that’s not happening.”

To explain the gap, Lichtenstein points to weaker labor laws and management hostility.

“The management strategy now is basically to not recognize the union and wait it out, even if they take a reputational hit, and that’s often successful,” Lichtenstein said. “The playbook works, given the current state of the labor laws,” which hit employers with small penalties for violations and have little power to force employers to the bargaining table.

“In this country, management is very antagonistic to the idea of unions and collective bargaining, even when it could be in their interest or lead to good outcomes,” said Kallas, the Cornell researcher. Starbucks workers, for instance, have organized unions at more than 300 coffee shops, but the company has waged an intense campaign to avoid recognizing them or bargaining a first contract.

But if hardball tactics from management keep colliding with a workforce that’s losing purchasing power, losing their homes and losing their patience, then workers could keep organizing and keep resorting to strikes when negotiations fall apart.

The summer’s strikes are “a reflection in an upsurge in worker consciousness and a reflection of a deep dissatisfaction with a status quo that is not working for most workers,” Wong said.

Wong added that economic inequality in California grew during the pandemic despite the ostensibly pro-labor makeup of the state government. “More workers are seeing the necessity of organizing, mobilizing and fighting for better wages and conditions at the work site.”

Business

Commentary: Crypto was already in bad odor before jumping into bed with Trump. Now it smells worse

Published

1 hour ago

May 15, 2025

Press Room

Commentary: Crypto was already in bad odor before jumping into bed with Trump. Now it smells worse

One problem that promoters of cryptocurrencies have faced since the asset class first emerged is that its reputation stinks.

Crypto trading has become identified by regulators and in the public mind as a haven for scams, theft and other forms of sharp practice. The FBI, in its most recent annual report on cryptocurrency, found that crypto-related fraud has exploded. Criminality is “pervasive” in the field, the agency warned.

The elusive use case for crypto assets seemed to have been narrowed down to facilitating criminal fraud, ransomware attacks, drug and human trafficking.

Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures are nothing more than a fig leaf for pay offs from foreign nationals.

— Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Then came Donald Trump. During the presidential campaign and after his election, crypto promoters thought they were entering the nirvana of officially recognized legitimacy.

Trump signaled that he would end government regulatory initiatives on crypto, “in order to promote United States leadership in digital assets and financial technology while protecting economic liberty,” to quote the executive order he issued Jan. 23, effectively wiping out federal regulations on the class.

Things aren’t working out as they hoped. Since Trump returned to the presidency, his and his family’s involvement in crypto-related deals has critics charging that crypto has become an entirely new path for official corruption and conflicts of interest in the White House.

“Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures are nothing more than a fig leaf for payoffs from foreign nationals & foreign gov’ts,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tweeted on May 7. Blumenthal’s target was the offer of a sit-down private dinner with Trump scheduled for May 22 at his Virginia golf club, and personal tours of the White House for the biggest buyers of $TRUMP, a “memecoin” assiduously promoted by Trump and his family.

The price of the coin soared to about $74 on Jan. 19, the day before Trump’s inauguration. It immediately fell in value, though its price has been propped up by the offer of the dinner and tours; the most recent quotes place it at about $13. The top 220 holders of the Trump coin, who are entitled to the dinner, spent nearly $148 million for the privilege, according to an estimate by Reuters.

More than half of the biggest holders appear to be foreign entities, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. That implies that the purchases might be designed to circumvent federal laws barring foreigners from making political contributions in the U.S.

Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts demanded that the federal Office of Government Ethics, an independent executive branch agency, open an inquiry into the “severe risk that President Trump and other officials may be engaging in ‘pay to play’ corruption by selling presidential access to individuals or entities, to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interests in federal action, while personally enriching the President and his family.”

DWF, a crypto firm based in the United Arab Emirates, announced last month that it had bought $25 million in coins issued by the Trump-affiliated firm World Liberty Financial, in part to “enhance regulatory engagement with U.S. policymakers.” Freight Technologies, a Houston logistics company, announced April 30 that it had borrowed $20 million to buy Trump coins, calling the transaction “an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between Mexico and the US.”

The unease has spread to Republicans on Capitol Hill, who fear that the Trumps’ crypto deals will undermine their efforts to enact crypto-friendly regulations.

“This gives me pause,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), a leader in the legislative movement to pass a pro-crypto law, told NBC News. “Even what may appear to be ‘cringey’ with regard to meme coins, it’s legal, and what we need to do is have a regulatory framework that makes this more clear, so we don’t have this Wild West scenario.”

Trump’s activities already have derailed, if temporarily, the so-called GENIUS Act, which would regulate a form of cryptocurrency known as “stablecoins,” which are supposedly pegged to the value of underlying currencies such as dollars. Schiff and eight other Senate Democrats who had supported the measure have bailed on it, making passage in its current form virtually impossible.

Democrats in both chambers have introduced the “End Crypto Corruption Act,” which would bar the president, vice president, members of Congress and high-level executive branch appointees from issuing, sponsoring or endorsing any “cryptocurrency, meme coin, token, non-fungible token, stablecoin, or other digital asset that is sold for remuneration.”

Even some crypto promoters are no happier than the politicians. “They’re plumbing new depths of idiocy with the memecoin launch,” Nic Carter, a crypto investor and Trump supporter, told Politico.

As a crypto category, memecoins are disdained even by many participants in the field. They generally have even less utiilty or authenticity than mainstream cryptocurrencies, often originate as joke investments, and ride waves of pure hype. The Trump coin has no discernible value apart from its identification with Trump himself.

I asked the White House for comment on the accusations of corruption and received this reply from spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt: “President Trump is compliant with all conflict-of-interest rules, and only acts in the best interests of the American public.”

The memecoin isn’t Trump’s only venture into crypto, though some of his arrangements seem designed to give him plausible deniability if legal or ethics questions are raised. World Liberty Financial, which markets a crypto token designated $WLFI and a stablecoin designated USD1, is 60% owned by Trump and members of his family, who are entitled to up to 75% of the proceeds of sales of $WLFI.

The firm’s website features an image of Trump striking a heroic pose and says the WLFI token is “inspired by Donald J. Trump.” In the small print it asserts, however, that “any references to or quotes or imagery attributed to or associated with Donald J. Trump or his family members should not be construed as an endorsement or representation or warranty.”

Crypto investors really stepped up to the plate with political donations during the 2024 election cycle. Fairshake, the super PAC representing the class, spent nearly $41 million in contributions. That included $13 million to defeat two congressional candidates in Democratic primaries, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York). Both were known to favor stricter regulation of the asset class, and both lost their races.

The biggest crypto firms spent lavishly in 2023 and 2024 to fatten Fairshake’s war chest, which collected more than $162 million in that time frame; Coinbase contributed $46.5 million, Ripple Labs, $45 million and Andreessen Horowitz, a major crypto investor, $44 million. Much of the total was funneled to two other crypto-related political action committees, according to federal election records.

After the election, many of the firms, like more traditional businesses, made contributions of $1 million or more to Trump’s inauguration fund.

One can hardly deny that the crypto camp has gotten its money’s worth from the Trump administration so far. The Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped or deferred more than a dozen enforcement cases against Ripple, Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken and other crypto promoters.

The largest victory arguably belongs to Coinbase, the biggest crypto trading platform in the U.S. The SEC in 2023 charged the firm with running an unlawful trading exchange and marketing unregistered securities. The case reflected the SEC’s position that what crypto firms are marketing are securities by a different name, and thus need to be registered as securities so buyers and sellers get the same legal protections as stock and bond investors.

A federal judge in New York cleared the enforcement action to move ahead in 2024, after finding that the SEC had made a plausible case that Coinbase was operating illegally. The SEC dropped the case in February. Coinbase had asserted that the SEC was wrong “on the facts and the law,” and that “the case should never have been filed in the first place.”

Earlier this month, the agency settled its case against Ripple, which it had charged in 2020 with having raised $1.3 billion through unregistered securities. As part of the settlement, the SEC agreed to return to Ripple $75 million of a $125-million penalty it held in escrow. The settlement elicited a crisp rebuke from Commissioner Caroline A. Crenshaw, a member of the commission’s Democratic minority.

Crenshaw noted that the deal was part and parcel of the SEC’s effective abandonment of crypto regulation. “This settlement, alongside the programmatic disassembly of the SEC’s crypto enforcement program, does a tremendous disservice to the investing public,” she wrote.

That won’t be the end of the deregulation drive. On April 7, Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche — who was Trump’s defense attorney in the New York criminal case that resulted in guilty verdicts on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — ordered an end to Justice Department regulatory cases based on interpreting crypto assets as securities or commodities. That closed down the government’s principal regulatory initiative against crypto promoters.

Blanche directed the DOJ’s Market Integrity and Major Frauds Unit to “cease cryptocurrency enforcement,” and disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, “effective immediately.”

There doesn’t seem to be any sign that Trump’s involvement with crypto will slow down even as he disembowels the government’s regulatory capacity over crypto ventures.

World Liberty Financial recently announced that Abu Dhabi would use its stablecoin to invest $2 billion in Binance, a multinational crypto firm that pleaded guilty and paid a $4.3-billion penalty in 2023 on charges of financial crimes including money laundering. Binance’s chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, also pleaded guilty and spent four months in U.S. prison.

Last month, the SEC put its civil case against Binance on hold for at least 60 days.

On its investor advice webpage, the SEC used to post a warning on its website about crypto. “Trendy investments are especially ripe for fraudsters so be aware there is a real risk of fraud,” it said. “Cryptocurrencies may be today’s shiny, new opportunity but there are serious risks involved.”

That page has been taken down.

Business

How Trump China Tariffs Hit One Shipment of T-Shirts

Published

17 hours ago

May 14, 2025

Press Room

How Trump China Tariffs Hit One Shipment of T-Shirts

This is a customs form that companies must file to import goods into the United States. In recent days, these forms have become living documents that show how President Trump’s tariffs are squeezing businesses.

In this example, Leslie Jordan Inc., a company that sells activewear for special events, imported a shipment of women’s T-shirts from China at the end of April. That was after Mr. Trump aggressively escalated levies on Chinese imports, but before officials from both countries agreed on a temporary reprieve — an example of how companies have struggled to plan for their purchases as tariff levels continually shift.

The shipment was valued at $18,639, but this company paid $34,389 in tariffs — almost twice the value of the goods themselves. The import tax on this one shipment added up to nearly 185 percent.

Often Mr. Trump’s new tariffs are layered on top of existing ones. In this case, the T-shirts were subject to a base tariff of 32 percent based on the value of the import. Many goods typically have a very low base tariff, but garments and other textile goods are subject to some of the highest tariffs.

A number of goods from China are also subject to special tariffs to combat alleged unfair trade practices. These tariffs — known as Section 301 duties — were introduced during Mr. Trump’s first term and later expanded by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. In this case, they resulted in a 7.5 percent additional charge.

One of Mr. Trump’s first trade actions when he started his second term in January was to impose a tariff on China for enabling the flow of fentanyl into the United States. The tariff started at 10 percent but was then raised to 20 percent.

In early April, the administration introduced “reciprocal” tariffs. China’s rate started at 34 percent, then escalated to 84 percent before rising to 125 percent. (This tariff, in addition to the 20 percent “fentanyl” tariff, amounts to a 145 percent tariff on most goods.)

To import one shipment of T-shirts, the company had to pay four different tariffs. “It is impossible to plan and run a business this way,” said Leslie Jordan, the company’s owner.

On Monday, the reciprocal portion of tariffs on Chinese imports was suspended for 90 days as the United States and China negotiate new trade terms.

That means if this same shipment were to arrive today, it would face a total tariff rate of 69.5 percent — a very high level, but a fraction of what the company was forced to pay just a couple of weeks ago. This lower rate means Ms. Jordan would have paid $21,000 less in tariffs on this one shipment than she did before.

Ms. Jordan, who founded her company nearly 40 years ago, said the administration’s tariff policy had been the hardest challenge she had faced running the business. While some of the tariffs have been lifted, at least temporarily, the time it takes to place orders, get products manufactured and then have them loaded onto ships and transported across the Pacific would probably exceed the 90-day reprieve.

And given the drastic changes in U.S. trade policy, Ms. Jordan said, she has little ability to predict how much she may need to pay when her next order lands at American ports. “If we base it on today’s tariff,” she said, “who knows what it will be when the goods are produced and arrive?”

Business

This Southland boat company wants to electrify the Port of Los Angeles

Published

19 hours ago

May 14, 2025

Press Room

This Southland boat company wants to electrify the Port of Los Angeles

An electric boat company with roots in Torrance is taking steps to bring battery-powered workboats and charging infrastructure to the Port of Los Angeles, where diesel-burning vessels emit tons of carbon dioxide.

Arc Boat Co., a Southern California startup that sells electric boats for recreational use, said it will open a research and development facility at the port in June.

The facility signals a move toward electrification at the nation’s busiest port and marks Arc’s expansion into the commercial sector.

Arc’s promise to deliver an electrified fleet of workboats comes five years ahead of a 2030 deadline set by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to transition to zero-emission equipment.

The twin ports, situated on more than 10,000 acres on San Pedro Bay, rely on heavy-duty cranes, tugboats and trucks to move cargo. Replacing the roughly 2,000 tugboats in the U.S. with electric alternatives could prevent more than 1.6 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions annually, according to Arc.

“Across the entire marine industry, going electric makes an incredible amount of sense,” Arc co-founder and Chief Executive Mitch Lee said in an interview. “These boats don’t have fumes, and you can cut your operating costs substantially.”

Electric boats require minimal maintenance and zero fuel, an appealing combination for commercial operators who want to save money and consumers looking to enjoy the water, Lee said. Arc’s boats are also quieter and easier to maneuver than traditional boats, he said.

Co-founders Ryan Cook, left, and Mitch Lee sit on an electric boat at Arc Boat Co. on May 12, 2025, in Torrance.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

The electrification of vehicles on the water could soon gain momentum, said Petros Ioannou, an engineering professor at USC who researches transportation technology.

“The main reason for going electric is really the environment,” Ioannou said. “The question is whether they are able to solve the technological and logistical problems” presented by electric boats, including power, range and charging limitations.

Despite the challenges of building a battery capable of propelling a boat, several companies including Navier and X Shore are producing and selling electric vessels. Arc’s business currently revolves around recreational boats for water sports, starting at $268,000.

In a partnership with Portland, Ore.-based shipyard Diversified Marine Inc., Arc plans to retrofit a 26-foot-long truckable tugboat with lithium-ion battery packs and a 600-horsepower drivetrain. The vessel will be the first zero-emission tug to support operations at the Port of Los Angeles, Arc said.

Tugboats are an essential tool at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, where they guide larger vessels and move equipment such as barges and cranes.

“Tugs run short, repetitive missions requiring high torque, and start and end at the same home base,” Arc said in a statement announcing its retrofitting project. “Not only does that make them well-suited to going electric, but doing so drastically reduces operating expenses.”

Teaming up with Diversified Marine allows Arc to launch its new workboat in collaboration with several entities that do business at the port, Lee said.

“Diversified already knows how to tap into the port operations and get this vessel to work,” he said. “We’re modernizing their tugboat and deploying it into the Port of L.A., and we’re able to provide charging infrastructure as well.”

A tugboat next to tires and equipment on land.

Switching from diesel-powered to electric workboats can save commercial operators roughly 50% on maintenance and fuel costs, Lee said, adding that Arc’s new research and development facility will provide the groundwork to make the switch possible.

The company did not disclose how much money it was putting into the research facility and accompanying charging network, but said it probably will require an investment of less than $10 million.

The facility will sit within a 35-acre research campus operated by the nonprofit AltaSea. It will support prototype development of electric workboats, on-water testing and fleet deployment, Arc said. The company builds its battery packs out of a separate facility in Los Angeles.

“Decarbonization at our ports is a critical step to achieving real, substantive climate progress,” AltaSea said in a statement. “Arc Boat’s new R&D facility and charging infrastructure will help make the Port of L.A. a global model for sustainable maritime operations.”

Launched in 2021 by former Boeing and SpaceX engineers, Arc has a mission to electrify everything on the water, Lee said. Before co-founding Arc with fellow Northwestern alum Ryan Cook, Lee grew up in the Bay Area and frequently boated with his family.

Arc has received more than $100 million in investment funds from California-based venture capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and Lower Carbon Capital, among others. The startup employs 170 people, including experts with backgrounds at electric vehicle companies Rivian and Tesla.

The company did not disclose its annual revenue, but said demand for its boats is high. Two models are available to be delivered nationwide, including the Arc Sport, designed for wake surfing and water skiing; and the Arc One, a luxury cruiser.

Arc is the only electric boat company to build its own battery packs in-house, Lee said.

Although assembly is done in Los Angeles, President Trump’s steep tariffs on U.S. trade partners — including a 145% tax on goods imported from China — have still presented a challenge. The tariff on China has since been reduced to 30%.

“We are definitely impacted by tariffs and the electric vehicle market has heavy ties to Chinese supply chains,” Lee said. “We’re also ahead of the curve and far more vertically integrated than most companies.”

With ambitions to build electric boats capable of hauling cargo and traveling long distances, Arc will need to stay at the forefront of battery development, Ioannou from USC said. Producing its batteries domestically may give Arc an advantage as tariffs disrupt global trade.

“Whether this space will progress in a rapid way will very much depend on the battery technology and availability,” Ioannou said.

“When you go from gasoline to electric, there are certain benefits that you get, but a lot of headaches too,” he said.