United Public Workers for Action

6 days ago

Kaiser nurses protest use of AI that they say could put patient safety at risk
www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/kaiser-nurses-protest-use-ai-put-patient-safety-19412379.php
By Catherine Ho
April 22, 2024

Northern California nurses marched outside Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center on Monday to protest what they say is hospitals’ use of unproven AI technology that could put patients at risk.
Northern California nurses marched outside Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center on Monday to protest what they say is hospitals’ use of unproven AI technology that could put patients at risk.
Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
More than 100 Northern California nursesmarched outside Kaiser San Francisco Medical Center on Monday to protest what they say is hospitals’ use of unproven artificial intelligence that could put patients at risk.
Registered nurses represented by the California Nurses Association who work at Kaiser say Kaiser and other health care systems are rushing to implement AI technology but are not being transparent with nurses about what it’s being used for or how it benefits patients or staff.
The protest was held outside Kaiser because Kaiser is hosting an international conference for health care leaders this week. But the nurses’ concerns do not apply to Kaiser alone, said leaders of the union, which represents about 24,000 nurses across Kaiser facilities statewide.

Nurses marched along Geary Boulevard holding signs that read, “Trust Nurses, not AI” and “Patients are not algorithms” while chanting, “Hey Hey, Ho Ho, AI has got to go.”
One particular cause of concern among many nurses is hospitals’ use of a widely-used electronic health system called Epic. Nurses use the system to document what care they provide each patient during their shift, and the system uses that information to determine what level of care the patient needs from nurses the following shift.
Nurses say the system often generates a level of staffing for the next shift that is not sufficient to care for the patient because it does not seem to take into account some of the time-consuming and sensitive work that nurses do, such as preparing chemo treatments before a patient comes in, or spending time educating family members about their care. With the previous system, they say, nurses had more say in determining that level of care.
“We are the providers at the bedside, we know how to take care of patients best,” said Amy Grewal, a registered nurse at Kaiser in Fresno who works in the inpatient oncology department. “No algorithm can tell us. We want Kaiser to be more transparent about all the things AI is being used for, and how are my patients protected?”
CNA leaders say they want more input into how AI technology gets incorporated into patient care.

“Nurses are all for tech that enhances our skills and the patient care experience,” said Michelle Gutierrez Vo, a registered nurse at Kaiser in Fremont and president of the California Nurses Association. “But what we are witnessing in our hospitals is the degradation and devaluation of our nursing practice through the use of these untested technologies. We demand that workers and unions be involved at every step of the development of data-driven technologies and be empowered to decide whether and how AI is deployed in the workplace.”
In a statement, Kaiser said it is “empowering nurses with state-of-the-art tools and technologies that support our mission of providing high-quality affordable health care.”
“AI tools don’t make medical decisions,” Kaiser said. “Our physicians and care teams are always at the center of decision-making with our patients…AI does not replace human assessment.”
Reach Catherine Ho: cho@sfchronicle.com … See MoreSee Less

Kaiser nurses protest use of AI that they say could put patient safety at risk

www.sfchronicle.com

Northern California nurses marched outside Kaiser SF Medical Center to protest hospitals’ use of AI scheduling technology they say could put patients at risk.

United Public Workers for Action

7 days ago

Meth, death and abuse: Inside the private security forces patrolling California’s homeless

calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/04/homeless-shelter-private-security/
BY LAUREN HEPLER
APRIL 10, 2024

Illustration by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters; iStock

IN SUMMARY

Public agencies are funding private security guards in homeless shelters and on the street, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on oversight.
For more stories on inequality in California, sign up for Inequality Insights, a weekly must-read on one of California's most pressing issues.
Wendy Powitzky thought she’d finally found a way off the street in Orange County.

The former hairdresser had spent years sleeping in her car and parks around Anaheim, near the suburban salons where she used to work. One day a social worker told Powitzky about an old piano shop recently converted into a shelter.

She just had to clear security to reach her new twin bed.

That’s where guards at the taxpayer-funded shelter groped and strip-searched her and several of her neighbors, and left them in constant fear of eviction, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight former Orange County shelter residents.

“It was going to be my saving grace,” Powitzky said of the Anaheim shelter. “It was more unsafe.”

As California’s homeless population spiked nearly 40% in the past five years, the growth has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Governments, nonprofits and businesses are increasingly turning to hired guards to triage homelessness, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on accountability and state oversight.

Become a CalMatters member today to stay informed, bolster our nonpartisan news and expand knowledge across California.
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More than a dozen recent legal proceedings and public contract disputes reviewed by CalMatters suggest that, rather than ensuring safety, guards can compound already dangerous and chaotic situations.

Shelter residents in multiple Southern California cities have alleged in lawsuits that they were raped or sexually assaulted by shelter guards, including a Los Angeles case where a guard was sentenced to prison after a homeless woman complained of repeated abuse. In Sausalito, people living at a publicly funded tent city said in court that contract workers dealt drugs and harassed women. After a homeless woman in LA was stabbed to death by a fellow shelter resident, her family sued a guard for negligence in an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that he remained at an onsite office despite loud screams during a long attack.

No state agency publicly tracks how many guards work with homeless people, let alone what happens when things go wrong. The California agency that regulates guards — the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services — denied a CalMatters public records request for complaints and reports of violence involving guards and homeless people.

Several lawsuits, meanwhile, allege that security companies, shelter operators and government regulators have failed to properly train and oversee guards, who in some cases are paid just over minimum wage and struggling to stay housed themselves.

“Private security is a lot cheaper than cops,” said Paul Boden, executive director of activist group the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “And a lot less regulated.”

Meth, death and abuse: Inside the private security forces patrolling California’s homeless

Avatar photo
BY LAUREN HEPLER
APRIL 10, 2024

Illustration by Adriana Heldiz, CalMatters; iStock

IN SUMMARY

Public agencies are funding private security guards in homeless shelters and on the street, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on oversight.
For more stories on inequality in California, sign up for Inequality Insights, a weekly must-read on one of California's most pressing issues.
Wendy Powitzky thought she’d finally found a way off the street in Orange County.

The former hairdresser had spent years sleeping in her car and parks around Anaheim, near the suburban salons where she used to work. One day a social worker told Powitzky about an old piano shop recently converted into a shelter.

She just had to clear security to reach her new twin bed.

That’s where guards at the taxpayer-funded shelter groped and strip-searched her and several of her neighbors, and left them in constant fear of eviction, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of eight former Orange County shelter residents.

“It was going to be my saving grace,” Powitzky said of the Anaheim shelter. “It was more unsafe.”

As California’s homeless population spiked nearly 40% in the past five years, the growth has been accompanied by a boom in private security. Governments, nonprofits and businesses are increasingly turning to hired guards to triage homelessness, opening a new front in the state’s housing crisis — one ripe for violence and civil rights issues, but thin on accountability and state oversight.

Become a CalMatters member today to stay informed, bolster our nonpartisan news and expand knowledge across California.
Donate
More than a dozen recent legal proceedings and public contract disputes reviewed by CalMatters suggest that, rather than ensuring safety, guards can compound already dangerous and chaotic situations.

Shelter residents in multiple Southern California cities have alleged in lawsuits that they were raped or sexually assaulted by shelter guards, including a Los Angeles case where a guard was sentenced to prison after a homeless woman complained of repeated abuse. In Sausalito, people living at a publicly funded tent city said in court that contract workers dealt drugs and harassed women. After a homeless woman in LA was stabbed to death by a fellow shelter resident, her family sued a guard for negligence in an ongoing lawsuit, alleging that he remained at an onsite office despite loud screams during a long attack.

No state agency publicly tracks how many guards work with homeless people, let alone what happens when things go wrong. The California agency that regulates guards — the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services — denied a CalMatters public records request for complaints and reports of violence involving guards and homeless people.

Several lawsuits, meanwhile, allege that security companies, shelter operators and government regulators have failed to properly train and oversee guards, who in some cases are paid just over minimum wage and struggling to stay housed themselves.

“Private security is a lot cheaper than cops,” said Paul Boden, executive director of activist group the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “And a lot less regulated.”

Around the world, economic researchers have found that private security reliance tends to rise along with income inequality and fear of crime. The industry grew nearly 20% in California from 2010 to 2022, the most recent state data shows, to more than 301,000 licensed guards — a force that outnumbered sworn law enforcement officers roughly 4 to 1.

In recent decades, court rulings have put some limits on local governments’ and police’s ability to clear encampments and interact with homeless people. Private guards are bound by different rules.

The legal complaints against security guards underscore bigger flaws in the state’s approach to homelessness. Guards and other front-line workers often aren’t trained to handle complex social issues. And despite public officials who criticize homeless people for rejecting shelter, some unhoused people say shelters and city-run encampments can be worse than the street.

More political pressure is on the horizon. This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on whether clearing encampments when there is no shelter available violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a plan to “relocate” homeless people from cities, arresting those who refuse and sending others to large tent cities. In California, a bipartisan statewide bill would make it easier to sweep encampments and ticket or move people off the street.

As crackdowns loom, homeless advocates argue that pouring money into stopgaps such as private security and temporary shelters — rather than permanent housing — will breed more problems.

“You put people in power over incredibly vulnerable people who are dependent for their very place to live,” said Minouche Kandel, a staff attorney for American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s a setup for abuse of power.”

The O Lot Safe Sleeping site at Balboa Park in San Diego on March 22, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters
The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services said it has received 20,475 total private security complaints since 2019, but that it has no way to search for how many involved unhoused people.

“The Bureau looks into every complaint it receives, and when determining if a violation has occurred, the Bureau relies on facts and information obtained during the course of an investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

Former shelter residents like Powitzky are the first to note that there can be very real security concerns associated with homelessness. It isn’t easy, she said, for people who have struggled with trauma, constant stress and sometimes addiction or mental illness to live in close quarters with limited privacy.

That’s why she was initially reassured by the uniformed guards at the front door of Anaheim’s La Mesa shelter in 2019.

One night when Powitzky attempted to enter the shelter with her adult son, a guard approached after she cleared the metal detector and told her to put her arms up. The guard proceeded to “rub her hands all over” Powitzky’s breasts, she said in the lawsuit, making her son “uncomfortable watching his mother get touched in this manner.” Powitzky didn’t complain for fear of eviction.

Later that same month, Powitzky said another shelter guard forced her to expose her breasts in front of male guards and other residents. More invasive searches where guards “inappropriately rubbed” her body followed, she said in the lawsuit, even after she did complain.

“I honestly just felt like they wanted to get people out of there — ‘You’re going to do what we want, or you’re going to get out of here,’” Powitzky told CalMatters. “It’s a horrible way to run a situation for people that are already having problems with their life.”

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here.

The shelter was built by the city of Anaheim and run by the nonprofit Illumination Foundation, which then contracted with L.A.-based security company Protection America. The foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how much they paid the guards, or the allegations by residents. In response to the ongoing lawsuit, the foundation and the city of Anaheim said in court filings that security searches were a city requirement at the shelter, but that neither party “can be held vicariously liable for alleged sexual battery” by guards.

The La Mesa shelter was shuttered in 2022 as part of a plan to focus on and expand another city shelter, Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said in a statement. Protection America and Orange County declined to comment. The security company denied the allegations in a January court filing.

“We require high standards for our shelters and expect security to be done with compassion and respect,” Lyster said in the statement. “The issues raised here were taken seriously and investigated. We stand by our shelter operator’s work and procedures at La Mesa.”

In addition to the searches, Powitzky said in the lawsuit that it was impossible to work her way out of the shelter; she lost two jobs due to scheduling issues with a strict curfew. She left in early 2020 when COVID hit, not wanting to get stuck inside with shelter staff and guards who, the lawsuit alleged, appeared to lack appropriate training.

“I’m still in limbo. I sleep in my car at night,” Powitsky said in the interview. “I will never go to a shelter again.”

Encampment wars

On the first sunny morning after days of tent-thrashing rain on Skid Row, a downtown Los Angeles native and longtime activist known as General Dogon (given name Steve Richardson) is rallying the neighborhood. Between taking orders for new sleeping bags financed by an online fundraiser, the Los Angeles Community Action Network organizer points out the security guards that dot the streets around him.

Just around the corner was where, three decades earlier, Dogon saw the first of what he called “the red shirts” — uniformed, armed private guards hired by a local tax-funded business group charged with cleaning up downtown. He’s been fighting them ever since.

California’s private security industry has existed for more than a century, but in 1994 state lawmakers granted the business groups — formally known as Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs — a right to spend public money on private security. Dogon had just gotten back from serving a long prison sentence and was living in a nearby residential hotel when he started to hear stories that turned into class-action lawsuits.

“They was jacking up homeless people, taking their tents, pushing them down the street,” he recalled. “They were so bad, we was getting complaints from drug dealers that they was taking the drug dealers’ stuff.”

First: General Dogon stands behind caution tape and observes an encampment sweep along a block of Skid Row. Last: ​​An encampment sweep by the city of Los Angeles along a block of Skid Row. Los Angeles on Feb. 22, 2024. Photos by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Dogon had a front-row seat for court battles in the 1990s and 2000s that added some checks to prevent BIDs and their guards from harassing people and destroying belongings.

But with California now home to a record 181,000 homeless residents, tension on public streets is hitting another high. And when it comes to private security, BIDs were just the beginning.

Guards still patrol many property-tax-funded downtown districts. Cities are also directly entering into contracts with security companies and nonprofits to patrol encampments or other public areas. Some businesses and residents hire their own guards, frustrated by property crime and what they consider a lack of police responsiveness.

For security companies, it all adds up to surging demand from clients who increasingly expect them to replicate law enforcement, complete with guns, body cams and pricey liability insurance, said Robert Simpson, owner of Fresno County Private Security. It’s a far cry from earlier eras of “observe and report” security, he said, when guards were trained to call police for social issues or more heated conflicts.

“Now if we make that phone call, they may show up two, three days later,” said Simpson, whose company was sued after a guard shot a homeless man in what the guard described as self-defense. “We’re navigating what is being presented to us.”

Some security companies advertise “transient eviction” or other services to “control and manage any homeless activity.” In LA, security company DTLA Patrol and its armed, state-licensed guards were featured in a report on a local TV station on how “Private Security Helps LAPD in Homeless Crisis.”

“Essentially, we are a subscription-based law enforcement service,” the company’s founder told KNBC in 2020, emphasizing that his guards focus on private rather than public property.

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To sweep homeless camps, California cities say they offer shelter. What that really means is up for debate.jpeg
To sweep homeless camps, California cities say they offer shelter. What that really means is up for debate
by Jeanne Kuang
State-licensed security guards must undergo background checks and complete 40 hours of required training within their first six months on the job, compared to 664 hours for law enforcement basic training.

The state also requires guards to take a series of classes offered by dozens of state-authorized private companies or colleges. Classes span citizen’s arrests, terrorism and de-escalation, plus a “public relations” course that covers diversity, mental illness and substance use. In recent years, state lawmakers moved to require new use-of-force training and reporting standards, after which incident reports more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, state reports show.

Now, the security boom is poised to collide with encampment backlash.

California Sen. Brian Jones, a San Diego Republican, is leading a bipartisan effort to strengthen encampment bans in cities across the state. Senate Bill 1011 is modeled on a San Diego camping ban designed to push people into large, outdoor tent cities with 24-hour security.

Any concerns about security or other civil rights issues, Jones said, should be weighed against dire street conditions.

“Those things are happening in the encampments, too — you know, sexual assault, drug abuse, drug overdoses, murder, attacks,” Jones said. “It’s easier to keep an eye on and enforce if the locality does decide to use a safe camping site.”

Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story.
Brian Jones
Republican, State Senate, District 40 (San Diego)
Homeless people and their advocates, meanwhile, say security guards are just one of several converging threats. Police shootings of homeless people have spurred other wrongful deathand excessive force lawsuits. Two serial killers recently targeted people in tents in LA and Stockton.

All told, death rates for homeless people more than tripled in the past decade, the University of Pennsylvania found. Advocates across the country increasingly worry about vigilante violence, as Kentucky weighs a measure that would decriminalize shooting people camping on private land.

“It’s a really scary time,” said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. “When we have governments giving permission to their own law enforcement to harass and punish people, it gives an implicit green light to others.”

The new guard

Small local security companies. Bigger regional firms winning contracts across the state. Global private security behemoths that dabble in homeless shelters.

In the sea of companies vying for publicly funded homeless security work in California, one newcomer stands out: a six-year-old San Francisco nonprofit called Urban Alchemy. It insists it’s not a security company at all, but it has received public funds earmarked for security and been called a “de facto” security provider in legal complaints filed by former shelter residents.

Urban Alchemy advertises street cleaning services and “complementary strategies to conventional policing and security.” Its revenue quickly multiplied — from $36,000 in 2019 to $51 million in 2022, tax records show — after winning a slew of contracts to manage city-funded shelters and sanctioned encampments.

With a motto of “No fuckery,” the marketing revolves around de-escalation, “calming public spaces” and employing workers who have experienced homelessness, poverty and incarceration.

Some who have lived in shelters managed by Urban Alchemy tell a different story.

“They come on very friendly and sympathetically and then use drugs to take advantage of us, many of whom are struggling to stay clean,” one former resident of a Sausalito site contracted to Urban Alchemy, said in a 2022 court filing in a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit against the city.

An Urban Alchemy worker patrols the outside of the Tenderloin Linkage Center in San Francisco on June 17, 2022. Photo by Camille Cohen, The San Francisco Standard
Urban Alchemy won a $463,000 city contract to manage the Sausalito tent city housed at a public tennis court during the pandemic. In the civil rights suit, which the city eventually paid $540,000 to settle, encampment residents alleged that Urban Alchemy workers sexually harassed women and “used and trafficked methamphetamine.”

The city did not respond to requests for comment, but said in a legal filing that two Urban Alchemy workers were removed from the site and one was fired, and that no police reports were filed. Urban Alchemy’s contract with the city was not renewed, and the organization denied the allegations in a statement to CalMatters. The nonprofit has larger ongoing government contracts in LA, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, where another former worker is awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder after shooting a person outside the shelter where he was working.

Urban Alchemy declined to make an executive available for an interview. The organization said in a statement that its workers complete “extensive training,” including two days of paid lessons and roleplaying on conflict resolution, complex trauma and inclusivity. Workers are not required to be state-licensed as guards, and people with criminal backgrounds could be ineligible under state law.

In an email, Urban Alchemy’s community and government affairs head Kirkpatrick Tyler said, “Urban Alchemy practitioners do life-saving work in our communities that is more difficult than most of us could imagine.” When it comes to security issues, he said workers are taught to use “emotional bank accounts” and follow a six-step process to de-escalate: “If at any point during this process, a person becomes violent or has a weapon, practitioners will call the authorities.”

Tyler said the nonprofit is “saddened by the news media’s repeated eagerness to regurgitate every one of these kinds of claims it hears about Urban Alchemy – an organization that happens to be composed of more than 90% Black formerly incarcerated long term offenders.”

Several of Urban Alchemy’s own workers have also sued the nonprofit over alleged labor and wage violations, discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe work environments. A San Francisco sexual harassment case – which Urban Alchemy has denied – is ongoing, and the organization has settled other labor lawsuits in San Francisco and LA.

Carmina Portillo heard about the job by chance. The 38-year-old LA resident and auto mechanic was homeless herself and evangelizing at a park when she got curious about a man in uniform sitting next to a Porta Potty.

“I asked the guy there how much he was getting paid, and it was $19 an hour,” Portillo said. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot for just sitting there.’”

Last year, she filed a lawsuit against Urban Alchemy over alleged unpaid wages, discrimination and wrongful termination after working for eight months at an LA “Safe Sleep” site — a temporary outdoor shelter lined with city-funded tents. It was always an unwieldy job, Portillo said, ranging from making sure no one was overdosing to cleaning bathrooms or serving food.

State records show Portillo wasn’t licensed for security work. Rather, she and colleagues were left to “take matters into our own hands,” she said in an interview, if problems arose. In one case, Portillo said in the lawsuit that a supervisor discouraged her from calling for medical help after a homeless resident told her in Spanish that he was in distress.

Urban Alchemy denied the claims in a legal response, arguing that Portillo did not complain and that its other employees “acted reasonably, in good faith, and in a manner consistent with the necessities of their business.”

Looking back today, Portillo pauses when she thinks about what to call Urban Alchemy.

“I would just say it’s a gang,” she said. “Literally that’s how I felt. There’s a lot of tension.”

Tyler of Urban Alchemy said, “Every large organization deals with some HR issues. When these issues arise, we take them seriously, and we do our best to handle them fairly.”

Portillo settled her lawsuit with Urban Alchemy; the terms are confidential.

A deadly response

Three hours inland in Fresno, a different type of reckoning over homelessness and private security is playing out — over what happens in extreme cases, when clashes with armed guards turn deadly.

In March 2021, a Fresno man with a history of mental illness named Joseph Gutierrez was shot to death after a struggle with a 21-year-old guard outside a vacant building. The guard in the case was not hired by a city or a shelter, but by nearby businesses to patrol the area.

Surveillance video shows that the guard employed by Fresno County Private Security lightly kicked a sleeping Gutierrez’s feet and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Once awakened, an unarmed Gutierrez got up and lunged for the guard’s neck. The guard shot four times at close range. A fifth shot hit a bystander in a parking lot, who survived.

No criminal charges were brought against the guard. Gutierrez’s widow recently agreed to an undisclosed settlement in a civil wrongful death lawsuit brought against the security company. The company didn’t admit responsibility in the settlement, and Simpson, the owner, emphasized that the shooting was in self-defense.

“You’re going to have the Monday quarterbacks — ‘Why didn’t he do this?’ ‘Why didn’t he do that?’” Simpson said. “Until you’re in the moment, you can’t quarterback that.”

A dentistry office off the main road of Shaw in central Fresno on Feb. 5, 2024. The business used to be a vacant building and the scene where Joseph Gutierrez was shot and killed by a security guard while seeking shelter in the entryway of the building. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local
It’s not the only recent guard controversy in Fresno. Last year, another private security contractor was removed from local homeless shelters after the Fresno Bee reported on guards’ pepper “spray first, ask questions later” policy.

“I’m not surprised that this is a mounting problem with the growing number of homeless folks out there,” said Butch Wagner, the attorney who represented Gutierrez’s widow and children. “These security people have no idea what the hell they’re doing.”

The guard in the Gutierrez case took additional courses at a local community college, and work logs filed in the case show that he came into contact with homeless people often: asking “three vagrants” to leave a Family Dollar store, removing a man from the Little Caesar’s Pizza dumpster, moving along people sleeping in bushes and alleys all along his route — “no use of force required,” he often wrote in the logs.

Wagner, who has also filed suit against police officers accused of shooting homeless people, is most concerned about rules governing when guards are armed.

State law requires that private guards who want to carry a gun apply for a permit and pass a test with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services demonstrating that they are “capable of exercising appropriate judgment, restraint, and self-control.”

Simpson said it’s up to his guards whether they want to be armed, and also whether a client requests it. He estimates less than 5% of his Fresno County Private Security guards are armed.

“It is your choice. You want to be armed, you can be armed,” Simpson said of his policy. “But you will use a company firearm.”

Had he lived to tell about it, Gutierrez, 35, would have been more qualified than most to weigh in on the debate about where his home state should go from here on homelessness and security.

Before he was killed outside an empty building with 19 cents in his pocket, he’d been a guard, too.

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here.

This coverage was made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.

Around the world, economic researchers have found that private security reliance tends to rise along with income inequality and fear of crime. The industry grew nearly 20% in California from 2010 to 2022, the most recent state data shows, to more than 301,000 licensed guards — a force that outnumbered sworn law enforcement officers roughly 4 to 1.

In recent decades, court rulings have put some limits on local governments’ and police’s ability to clear encampments and interact with homeless people. Private guards are bound by different rules.

The legal complaints against security guards underscore bigger flaws in the state’s approach to homelessness. Guards and other front-line workers often aren’t trained to handle complex social issues. And despite public officials who criticize homeless people for rejecting shelter, some unhoused people say shelters and city-run encampments can be worse than the street.

More political pressure is on the horizon. This spring, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on whether clearing encampments when there is no shelter available violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Donald Trump’s presidential campaign includes a plan to “relocate” homeless people from cities, arresting those who refuse and sending others to large tent cities. In California, a bipartisan statewide bill would make it easier to sweep encampments and ticket or move people off the street.

As crackdowns loom, homeless advocates argue that pouring money into stopgaps such as private security and temporary shelters — rather than permanent housing — will breed more problems.

“You put people in power over incredibly vulnerable people who are dependent for their very place to live,” said Minouche Kandel, a staff attorney for American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s a setup for abuse of power.”

The O Lot Safe Sleeping site at Balboa Park in San Diego on March 22, 2024. Photo by Kristian Carreon for CalMatters
The Bureau of Security and Investigative Services said it has received 20,475 total private security complaints since 2019, but that it has no way to search for how many involved unhoused people.

“The Bureau looks into every complaint it receives, and when determining if a violation has occurred, the Bureau relies on facts and information obtained during the course of an investigation,” the agency said in a statement.

Former shelter residents like Powitzky are the first to note that there can be very real security concerns associated with homelessness. It isn’t easy, she said, for people who have struggled with trauma, constant stress and sometimes addiction or mental illness to live in close quarters with limited privacy.

That’s why she was initially reassured by the uniformed guards at the front door of Anaheim’s La Mesa shelter in 2019.

One night when Powitzky attempted to enter the shelter with her adult son, a guard approached after she cleared the metal detector and told her to put her arms up. The guard proceeded to “rub her hands all over” Powitzky’s breasts, she said in the lawsuit, making her son “uncomfortable watching his mother get touched in this manner.” Powitzky didn’t complain for fear of eviction.

Later that same month, Powitzky said another shelter guard forced her to expose her breasts in front of male guards and other residents. More invasive searches where guards “inappropriately rubbed” her body followed, she said in the lawsuit, even after she did complain.

“I honestly just felt like they wanted to get people out of there — ‘You’re going to do what we want, or you’re going to get out of here,’” Powitzky told CalMatters. “It’s a horrible way to run a situation for people that are already having problems with their life.”

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here.

The shelter was built by the city of Anaheim and run by the nonprofit Illumination Foundation, which then contracted with L.A.-based security company Protection America. The foundation did not respond to multiple requests for comment about how much they paid the guards, or the allegations by residents. In response to the ongoing lawsuit, the foundation and the city of Anaheim said in court filings that security searches were a city requirement at the shelter, but that neither party “can be held vicariously liable for alleged sexual battery” by guards.

The La Mesa shelter was shuttered in 2022 as part of a plan to focus on and expand another city shelter, Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster said in a statement. Protection America and Orange County declined to comment. The security company denied the allegations in a January court filing.

“We require high standards for our shelters and expect security to be done with compassion and respect,” Lyster said in the statement. “The issues raised here were taken seriously and investigated. We stand by our shelter operator’s work and procedures at La Mesa.”

In addition to the searches, Powitzky said in the lawsuit that it was impossible to work her way out of the shelter; she lost two jobs due to scheduling issues with a strict curfew. She left in early 2020 when COVID hit, not wanting to get stuck inside with shelter staff and guards who, the lawsuit alleged, appeared to lack appropriate training.

“I’m still in limbo. I sleep in my car at night,” Powitsky said in the interview. “I will never go to a shelter again.”

Encampment wars

On the first sunny morning after days of tent-thrashing rain on Skid Row, a downtown Los Angeles native and longtime activist known as General Dogon (given name Steve Richardson) is rallying the neighborhood. Between taking orders for new sleeping bags financed by an online fundraiser, the Los Angeles Community Action Network organizer points out the security guards that dot the streets around him.

Just around the corner was where, three decades earlier, Dogon saw the first of what he called “the red shirts” — uniformed, armed private guards hired by a local tax-funded business group charged with cleaning up downtown. He’s been fighting them ever since.

California’s private security industry has existed for more than a century, but in 1994 state lawmakers granted the business groups — formally known as Business Improvement Districts, or BIDs — a right to spend public money on private security. Dogon had just gotten back from serving a long prison sentence and was living in a nearby residential hotel when he started to hear stories that turned into class-action lawsuits.

“They was jacking up homeless people, taking their tents, pushing them down the street,” he recalled. “They were so bad, we was getting complaints from drug dealers that they was taking the drug dealers’ stuff.”

First: General Dogon stands behind caution tape and observes an encampment sweep along a block of Skid Row. Last: ​​An encampment sweep by the city of Los Angeles along a block of Skid Row. Los Angeles on Feb. 22, 2024. Photos by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Dogon had a front-row seat for court battles in the 1990s and 2000s that added some checks to prevent BIDs and their guards from harassing people and destroying belongings.

But with California now home to a record 181,000 homeless residents, tension on public streets is hitting another high. And when it comes to private security, BIDs were just the beginning.

Guards still patrol many property-tax-funded downtown districts. Cities are also directly entering into contracts with security companies and nonprofits to patrol encampments or other public areas. Some businesses and residents hire their own guards, frustrated by property crime and what they consider a lack of police responsiveness.

For security companies, it all adds up to surging demand from clients who increasingly expect them to replicate law enforcement, complete with guns, body cams and pricey liability insurance, said Robert Simpson, owner of Fresno County Private Security. It’s a far cry from earlier eras of “observe and report” security, he said, when guards were trained to call police for social issues or more heated conflicts.

“Now if we make that phone call, they may show up two, three days later,” said Simpson, whose company was sued after a guard shot a homeless man in what the guard described as self-defense. “We’re navigating what is being presented to us.”

Some security companies advertise “transient eviction” or other services to “control and manage any homeless activity.” In LA, security company DTLA Patrol and its armed, state-licensed guards were featured in a report on a local TV station on how “Private Security Helps LAPD in Homeless Crisis.”

“Essentially, we are a subscription-based law enforcement service,” the company’s founder told KNBC in 2020, emphasizing that his guards focus on private rather than public property.

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To sweep homeless camps, California cities say they offer shelter. What that really means is up for debate.jpeg
To sweep homeless camps, California cities say they offer shelter. What that really means is up for debate
by Jeanne Kuang
State-licensed security guards must undergo background checks and complete 40 hours of required training within their first six months on the job, compared to 664 hours for law enforcement basic training.

The state also requires guards to take a series of classes offered by dozens of state-authorized private companies or colleges. Classes span citizen’s arrests, terrorism and de-escalation, plus a “public relations” course that covers diversity, mental illness and substance use. In recent years, state lawmakers moved to require new use-of-force training and reporting standards, after which incident reports more than doubled from 2019 to 2023, state reports show.

Now, the security boom is poised to collide with encampment backlash.

California Sen. Brian Jones, a San Diego Republican, is leading a bipartisan effort to strengthen encampment bans in cities across the state. Senate Bill 1011 is modeled on a San Diego camping ban designed to push people into large, outdoor tent cities with 24-hour security.

Any concerns about security or other civil rights issues, Jones said, should be weighed against dire street conditions.

“Those things are happening in the encampments, too — you know, sexual assault, drug abuse, drug overdoses, murder, attacks,” Jones said. “It’s easier to keep an eye on and enforce if the locality does decide to use a safe camping site.”

Learn more about legislators mentioned in this story.
Brian Jones
Republican, State Senate, District 40 (San Diego)
Homeless people and their advocates, meanwhile, say security guards are just one of several converging threats. Police shootings of homeless people have spurred other wrongful deathand excessive force lawsuits. Two serial killers recently targeted people in tents in LA and Stockton.

All told, death rates for homeless people more than tripled in the past decade, the University of Pennsylvania found. Advocates across the country increasingly worry about vigilante violence, as Kentucky weighs a measure that would decriminalize shooting people camping on private land.

“It’s a really scary time,” said Eric Tars, legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. “When we have governments giving permission to their own law enforcement to harass and punish people, it gives an implicit green light to others.”

The new guard

Small local security companies. Bigger regional firms winning contracts across the state. Global private security behemoths that dabble in homeless shelters.

In the sea of companies vying for publicly funded homeless security work in California, one newcomer stands out: a six-year-old San Francisco nonprofit called Urban Alchemy. It insists it’s not a security company at all, but it has received public funds earmarked for security and been called a “de facto” security provider in legal complaints filed by former shelter residents.

Urban Alchemy advertises street cleaning services and “complementary strategies to conventional policing and security.” Its revenue quickly multiplied — from $36,000 in 2019 to $51 million in 2022, tax records show — after winning a slew of contracts to manage city-funded shelters and sanctioned encampments.

With a motto of “No fuckery,” the marketing revolves around de-escalation, “calming public spaces” and employing workers who have experienced homelessness, poverty and incarceration.

Some who have lived in shelters managed by Urban Alchemy tell a different story.

“They come on very friendly and sympathetically and then use drugs to take advantage of us, many of whom are struggling to stay clean,” one former resident of a Sausalito site contracted to Urban Alchemy, said in a 2022 court filing in a wide-ranging civil rights lawsuit against the city.

An Urban Alchemy worker patrols the outside of the Tenderloin Linkage Center in San Francisco on June 17, 2022. Photo by Camille Cohen, The San Francisco Standard
Urban Alchemy won a $463,000 city contract to manage the Sausalito tent city housed at a public tennis court during the pandemic. In the civil rights suit, which the city eventually paid $540,000 to settle, encampment residents alleged that Urban Alchemy workers sexually harassed women and “used and trafficked methamphetamine.”

The city did not respond to requests for comment, but said in a legal filing that two Urban Alchemy workers were removed from the site and one was fired, and that no police reports were filed. Urban Alchemy’s contract with the city was not renewed, and the organization denied the allegations in a statement to CalMatters. The nonprofit has larger ongoing government contracts in LA, Portland, Oregon and San Francisco, where another former worker is awaiting trial on charges of attempted murder after shooting a person outside the shelter where he was working.

Urban Alchemy declined to make an executive available for an interview. The organization said in a statement that its workers complete “extensive training,” including two days of paid lessons and roleplaying on conflict resolution, complex trauma and inclusivity. Workers are not required to be state-licensed as guards, and people with criminal backgrounds could be ineligible under state law.

In an email, Urban Alchemy’s community and government affairs head Kirkpatrick Tyler said, “Urban Alchemy practitioners do life-saving work in our communities that is more difficult than most of us could imagine.” When it comes to security issues, he said workers are taught to use “emotional bank accounts” and follow a six-step process to de-escalate: “If at any point during this process, a person becomes violent or has a weapon, practitioners will call the authorities.”

Tyler said the nonprofit is “saddened by the news media’s repeated eagerness to regurgitate every one of these kinds of claims it hears about Urban Alchemy – an organization that happens to be composed of more than 90% Black formerly incarcerated long term offenders.”

Several of Urban Alchemy’s own workers have also sued the nonprofit over alleged labor and wage violations, discrimination, sexual harassment and unsafe work environments. A San Francisco sexual harassment case – which Urban Alchemy has denied – is ongoing, and the organization has settled other labor lawsuits in San Francisco and LA.

Carmina Portillo heard about the job by chance. The 38-year-old LA resident and auto mechanic was homeless herself and evangelizing at a park when she got curious about a man in uniform sitting next to a Porta Potty.

“I asked the guy there how much he was getting paid, and it was $19 an hour,” Portillo said. “I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot for just sitting there.’”

Last year, she filed a lawsuit against Urban Alchemy over alleged unpaid wages, discrimination and wrongful termination after working for eight months at an LA “Safe Sleep” site — a temporary outdoor shelter lined with city-funded tents. It was always an unwieldy job, Portillo said, ranging from making sure no one was overdosing to cleaning bathrooms or serving food.

State records show Portillo wasn’t licensed for security work. Rather, she and colleagues were left to “take matters into our own hands,” she said in an interview, if problems arose. In one case, Portillo said in the lawsuit that a supervisor discouraged her from calling for medical help after a homeless resident told her in Spanish that he was in distress.

Urban Alchemy denied the claims in a legal response, arguing that Portillo did not complain and that its other employees “acted reasonably, in good faith, and in a manner consistent with the necessities of their business.”

Looking back today, Portillo pauses when she thinks about what to call Urban Alchemy.

“I would just say it’s a gang,” she said. “Literally that’s how I felt. There’s a lot of tension.”

Tyler of Urban Alchemy said, “Every large organization deals with some HR issues. When these issues arise, we take them seriously, and we do our best to handle them fairly.”

Portillo settled her lawsuit with Urban Alchemy; the terms are confidential.

A deadly response

Three hours inland in Fresno, a different type of reckoning over homelessness and private security is playing out — over what happens in extreme cases, when clashes with armed guards turn deadly.

In March 2021, a Fresno man with a history of mental illness named Joseph Gutierrez was shot to death after a struggle with a 21-year-old guard outside a vacant building. The guard in the case was not hired by a city or a shelter, but by nearby businesses to patrol the area.

Surveillance video shows that the guard employed by Fresno County Private Security lightly kicked a sleeping Gutierrez’s feet and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Once awakened, an unarmed Gutierrez got up and lunged for the guard’s neck. The guard shot four times at close range. A fifth shot hit a bystander in a parking lot, who survived.

No criminal charges were brought against the guard. Gutierrez’s widow recently agreed to an undisclosed settlement in a civil wrongful death lawsuit brought against the security company. The company didn’t admit responsibility in the settlement, and Simpson, the owner, emphasized that the shooting was in self-defense.

“You’re going to have the Monday quarterbacks — ‘Why didn’t he do this?’ ‘Why didn’t he do that?’” Simpson said. “Until you’re in the moment, you can’t quarterback that.”

A dentistry office off the main road of Shaw in central Fresno on Feb. 5, 2024. The business used to be a vacant building and the scene where Joseph Gutierrez was shot and killed by a security guard while seeking shelter in the entryway of the building. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local
It’s not the only recent guard controversy in Fresno. Last year, another private security contractor was removed from local homeless shelters after the Fresno Bee reported on guards’ pepper “spray first, ask questions later” policy.

“I’m not surprised that this is a mounting problem with the growing number of homeless folks out there,” said Butch Wagner, the attorney who represented Gutierrez’s widow and children. “These security people have no idea what the hell they’re doing.”

The guard in the Gutierrez case took additional courses at a local community college, and work logs filed in the case show that he came into contact with homeless people often: asking “three vagrants” to leave a Family Dollar store, removing a man from the Little Caesar’s Pizza dumpster, moving along people sleeping in bushes and alleys all along his route — “no use of force required,” he often wrote in the logs.

Wagner, who has also filed suit against police officers accused of shooting homeless people, is most concerned about rules governing when guards are armed.

State law requires that private guards who want to carry a gun apply for a permit and pass a test with the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services demonstrating that they are “capable of exercising appropriate judgment, restraint, and self-control.”

Simpson said it’s up to his guards whether they want to be armed, and also whether a client requests it. He estimates less than 5% of his Fresno County Private Security guards are armed.

“It is your choice. You want to be armed, you can be armed,” Simpson said of his policy. “But you will use a company firearm.”

Had he lived to tell about it, Gutierrez, 35, would have been more qualified than most to weigh in on the debate about where his home state should go from here on homelessness and security.

Before he was killed outside an empty building with 19 cents in his pocket, he’d been a guard, too.

Have you stayed at a California homeless shelter? Tell us about your experience here.

This coverage was made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation. … See MoreSee Less

Meth, death and abuse: Inside the private security forces patrolling California’s homeless

calmatters.org

California’s homeless shelter security industry is opening a new front in the housing crisis that’s ripe for abuse but thin on oversight.

United Public Workers for Action

7 days ago

‘Huge news’: National Labor Relations Board is ‘seeking injunction’ that could end Pittsburgh news workers strike

www.unionprogress.com/2024/04/19/its-great-national-labor-relations-board-is-seeking-injunction-i…

by Bob Batz Jr.
April 19, 2024

Zack Tanner, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, leads a Zoom and in-person meeting on the union's 10(j) injunction at strike headquarters in the United Steelworkers Building on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Listening are, from left, guild members Ed Blazina, Steve Karlinchak, Emily Matthews and Randy Stoernell. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
Exactly 18 months and 1½ hours into their unfair labor practices strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a small and tired but still-hanging-in-there group of unionized newsroom workers gathered Thursday afternoon, in person and on Zoom, for a hastily called meeting to hear what had been described in urgent messages as a “strike announcement.”

Zack Tanner, president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, stood in the union’s temporary offices at the United Steelworkers Building, Downtown, and adjusted his computer’s camera so members online could see. In the room with him were about 10 of the journalists, who began their strike at noon on Oct. 18, 2022. Once everything was set, Tanner announced he had some “pretty major news. I’ll just cut to the chase on it.”

Then he said words for which some strikers desperately had been waiting: “The 10(j) is officially moved!”

The strikers knew he was referring to a 10(j) injunction. The National Labor Relations Board had authorized the regional NLRB office to seek an injunction in the guild’s and sister unions’ case against the Post-Gazette for dozens of ongoing unfair labor practice violations of federal law.

“OK, this is huge … huge news!” said international NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss, who noted that neither the NewsGuild nor its parent union, Communications Workers of America, ever had gotten such an injunction. They’re rare in any case, with this one being only the second one the NLRB authorized this year.

Possibly at stake, Tanner said, “We’re talking millions of dollars” that a federal judge could compel the company to pay, including to “make whole” workers for at least some of their losses, while also ending the strike and sending the strikers back to work and back to the bargaining table.

Strike leaders had realized during that morning’s regular check-in meeting that the case’s status had changed on the NLRB’s page that describes and tracks 10(j) injunctions.

As the site explains, “Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act authorizes the National Labor Relations Board to seek temporary injunctions against employers and unions in federal district courts to stop unfair labor practices while the case is being litigated before administrative law judges and the Board. These temporary injunctions are needed to protect the process of collective bargaining and employee rights under the Act, and to ensure that Board decisions will be meaningful.”

Especially on this dubious year-and-a-half anniversary of going on strike and joining strikers from four other unions that lost their health care coverage, the striking journalists were well aware of how an NLRB administrative law judge had, in January 2023, ruled resoundingly in their favor that the company broke federal law by imposing conditions (in 2020) and not bargaining in good faith; the judge ordered them to do so and, in the meantime, to return to the terms of their last contract (that expired in 2017).

But in March 2023, the company appealed. The case seemed to just sit there. The strike, the longest strike ever in Pittsburgh and the longest continuous current strike in the country, dragged on through March 2024. And now April. Spring was losing its color.

This tidbit that the Region 06 Pittsburgh NLRB is “Seeking Injunction” is a break in the case that Tanner said means that the regional NLRB office would be gathering additional facts and materials from the guild and other unions and their attorney Joe Pass, and then will file for the injunction in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, probably next week.

Alexandra Wimley, a striking member of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, listens to comments about a 10(j) injunction during a Zoom and in-person meeting at the union’s offices in the United Steelworkers Building in Pittsburgh on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
Until that filing is made, Tanner told the group, he couldn’t know the scope of it or other specifics, but an NLRB attorney would be arguing for the guild and three other production unions still on strike: the pressmen, typos and mailers. (The Teamsters recently struck a secret deal with the company to get severance payments in exchange for ending their strike and dissolving their local.)

“This is great news for us,” Tanner said, not something he’s had occasion to say for some time. “It means we have an actual timeline and we have actual things to do” — over the next days and weeks.

This also gives the union a big boost in leverage.

In a Friday news release from the CWA, the Newspaper Guild notes, “The NLRB encourages parties to resolve cases by settlement rather than litigation whenever possible, and more than 90% of meritorious unfair labor practice cases are settled by agreement at some point in the process, according to the NLRB.

“Post-Gazette representatives, however, have repeatedly rejected basic settlements. They have also refused to bargain in good faith, a violation of federal law.”

The release recounts how the PG’s “imposed terms included a health care plan with costs that increased for families by as much as $13,000 per year, loss of a week of vacation, loss of protection from layoffs, and degraded work jurisdiction — essentially undermining union workers’ right to their job duties.”

One striking journalist, education reporter and Post-Gazette unit chair of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh Andrew Goldstein, says in the release, “I’ve had my life and safety directly threatened by the PG’s hired ‘security’ on numerous occasions during the strike. … I look forward to labor law actually being enforced, both for my safety, and the work I want to get back to doing with a hell of a lot more dignity at the paper I’ve read as long as I could read.”

“It’s great that the NLRB is seeking an injunction against Post-Gazette management for repeatedly breaking federal law,” Schleuss is quoted as saying. “Employers cannot be allowed to actively harm workers. The Post-Gazette could settle this and limit their liability at any time.”

Mike Davis, Vice President of CWA District 2-13, agreed, saying in the release, “The Post-Gazette has had the ability to settle the strike at any time, simply by complying with the law, as ordered by the courts and through NLRB decisions. It is unfortunate that the Post-Gazette’s continued unlawful violation of workers’ rights has undermined the rule of law and forced the government to seek an injunction to achieve justice.”

Andrew Goldstein, center, unit chair of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, listens to comments during the Zoom and in-person meeting on the union’s 10(j) injunction. Also listening are NewsGuild staff member Jacob Klinger, left, and strikers Ed Blazina and Emily Matthews. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
Tanner is quoted as saying, “As striking workers, we’ve stood strong against Post-Gazette management and the Block family for the last 18 months as they’ve violated labor law and tried to ignore and break our unions. Today’s signal that the NLRB will finally be seeking injunctive relief through the courts is validation that our fight is just and will be won in short order.”

Of course, no one knows how a district judge will rule.

So, especially after a disheartening morning that included an update on tax debts and a disagreement over some strike communications, the journalists were reserved in their initial reactions. Some remembered being elated at the initial news of the NLRB administrative judge’s ruling way back in January 2023. Texted one, “I’ll get excited when something actually happens.”

Some asked questions and made requests, listened to more specifics and scenarios and strategy, and some pondered and appreciated where they were at this point, which Tanner and other leaders enthusiastically reiterated is “historic.” Maybe even a little hopeful?

Striker Ed Blazina said, “I just want to say, I can’t be more proud of the folks still here.”

“This honestly is a monumental moment in labor history,” Tanner said. “… I hope everybody takes a minute to think about that.”

And then, for one day longer, they continued to strike … See MoreSee Less

'Huge news': National Labor Relations Board is 'seeking injunction' that could end Pittsburgh news workers strike – Pittsburgh Union Progress

www.unionprogress.com

Exactly 18 months and 1½ hours into their unfair labor practices strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a small and tired but still-hanging-in-there group of unionized newsroom workers gathered Thurs…

United Public Workers for Action

1 week ago

Labor For Palestine Rally In Front Of 2024 Labor Notes Conference In Chicago Attacked By Police
youtu.be/MiAnMqi8ZNw
Labor For Palestine held a rally on April 19, 2024 in front of the 2024 Chicago Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. It spilled into the street and police attacked and arrested labor Palestine activists. Trade unionists surrounded the police vehicle holding those arrested and forced the release of two of those arrested. After a standoff and a PSC CUNY professor Carol Tarlen interrupted the presentation of Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson inside the Labor Notes conference. Mayor Johnson's deputy told the police to release those who had been arrested. People chanted union power in the victory.
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youtu.be/JTD4QWlxW1U
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youtu.be/ZT7SOvcyjHQ
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UPS outlines plans to close at least 200 facilities www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/03/28/wfxk-m28.html Jacob Crosse 11 hours ago Join the UPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee to fight against th…

United Public Workers for Action

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Fighting Privatization, Capitalism & Imperialist War With French CGT Rail Worker Axel Persson youtu.be/JTD4QWlxW1UThe French government and capitalists are pushing privatization of the French national
rail system and they are preparing strike action. WorkWeek interviews Axel Persson, the general secretary of the Trappes branch and a rail locomotive engineer about this struggle
and also the growing imperialist war drive by the US and the Palestinian genocide supported by the United States. He also discusses the role of the AFL-CIO International Affairs Department and the CIA in France and internationally.
Axel Persson was attending the Railroad Workers United conference in Chicago along with Labor Notes. This interview took place on 4/18/24
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fbclid=IwAR3eg7pjKvsKMmbjyW9r5GBwOqendIDe6eeeaRAgyB8aI4S0xV52lpmX2UY "Dare To Struggle, Dare To Win" "Oser lutter, oser vainer" Workers, 68' & French General Strike
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United Public Workers for Action

1 week ago

Vultures circle Royal Mail after bosses run down service
Billionaire asset-stripper Daniel Kretinsky made an offer to buy up Royal Mail’s parent company

socialistworker.co.uk/news/vultures-circle-royal-mail-after-bosses-run-down-service/

On the Royal Mail strike picket line in Whitechapel, east London.jpeg
Royal Mail workers on the picket line in Whitechapel, east London, during strikes in 2022 (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The owners of Royal Mail have run down the service to such a level that equity firms are now circling, hoping to pick it up for a knock-down price.
Despairing postal workers have for months been talking about how their job has become impossible.
They’ve described areas that for weeks received no letter deliveries because managers told them to prioritise parcels.
And they’ve told of the dilapidated state of Royal Mail buildings and its fleet of vehicles, and how bosses have culled the most experienced workers.
Marxism-2024-advert-for-website-800-x-240px-1.jpeg
Now, with the service on its knees and public dissatisfaction rising, the vultures have arrived.
Billionaire asset-stripper Daniel Kretinsky this week made an offer to buy up Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distributions Services (IDS). The bid was so low that IDS had to reject it, but that’s unlikely to put off Kretinsky.
The owner of West Ham football club already has a 27 percent stake in the business, which includes both Royal Mail and a US-European delivery firm called GLS.
Kretinsky’s plan is obvious. Break up IDS and sell the profitable GLS to one of its rivals, and then set about Royal Mail.
He believes that Ofcom, the postal regulator, will reduce the universal service obligation, so that Royal Mail will no longer have to deliver to all areas of the country, six days a week.
Once that happens, Kretinsky will be able to carry out what bosses euphemistically call a “restructuring”. It will mean cutting thousands more jobs, closing offices and depots, and reducing the service to the legal minimum.
The letter delivery side of the operation will be decimated, but the profitable parcels business will remain.
And for Kretinsky’s plan to reap the kind of profits he demands, he will attempt to smash the CWU union.
He wants to drive Royal Mail workers’ conditions down to the levels of its gig economy rivals. That will likely mean zero hours contracts and an end to all union agreements.
We can know the features of Kretinsky’s plan because they are precisely those of every set of Royal Mail bosses for more than a decade since privatisation.
Socialist Worker, in November 2022, outlined a similar scheme being proposed by then Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson.
We wrote of the bosses, “Their solution to Royal Mail’s problems begins with 10,000 redundancies—the union says it will eventually be 20,000—and axing Saturday deliveries.
“Most importantly it means ‘Uberisation’, driving down the conditions of postal workers to those imposed in the gig economy and competitor parcel firms,” we said.
“If you’re a profit-hungry boss or a vulture financier, you don’t start from worrying about Royal Mail as a public service. You think about asset-stripping and dividing up the company to unlock super-profits.”
Now, instead of that project being driven by Royal Mail’s current bosses, Kretinsky wants to ram through the changes himself.
The CWU can of course see the dangers. It sent out a message opposing Kretinsky’s bid as soon as news of it went public. But there are real dangers in the union’s approach.
During last year’s dispute the union prioritised “saving” Royal Mail from financial collapse. In its agreement with the bosses, it signed away hard won terms and conditions in the belief that it would make the company more “stable”.
Yet, instead of making Royal Mail financially viable, the deal made the union appear weak.
And that in turn has made the firm more attractive to asset-stripping investors.
The union also says, “handing over the ownership of one of the UK’s most prestigious institutions to a foreign equity investor cannot be right.”
This kind of flag-waving will get the CWU nowhere. Neither the government nor IDS bosses care about who or where they sell Royal Mail to, and a buyer’s nationality will make no difference to workers either.
We all know that private equity firms the world over work on the same principle—break up the business, sell what’s profitable, and gut the rest.
It makes no difference whether the axe man is from Britain or the Czech Republic like Kretinsky, the effect is the same.
The CWU can do so much better than this. The union’s strength was built by militant reps, unofficial walkouts, and shopfloor confidence. If Royal Mail is to be saved, it’s those traditions that must be revived. … See MoreSee Less

Vultures circle Royal Mail after bosses run down service

socialistworker.co.uk

Billionaire asset-stripper Daniel Kretinsky made an offer to buy up Royal Mail’s parent company

United Public Workers for Action

2 weeks ago

A Thing Of The Future And A Thing Of The Past, Robotaxis And Land-lines?

countercurrents.org/2024/04/a-thing-of-the-future-and-a-thing-of-the-past-robotaxis-and-land-line…

Ahead of the 118th annual San Francisco 1906 Earthquake Commemoration on April 18, a speak-out/press conference was held across from historic Portsmouth Square in the City’s Chinatown to express grievous concerns regarding the state of preparation for the next earthquake when considering the issues of robotaxis and the possible loss of landline telephones. Portsmouth Square is historically important, too, for the event as it is where in the aftermath of the1906 earthquake, having been unscathed, it was used as a refugee camp for displaced victims of the disaster.

Earthquake preparedness, along with robotaxis and a proposal by AT&T now before the CPUC (California Public Utility Commission) calling for the company’s release from providing landline phone service to four million customers across the state, were the interrelated topics of discussion in calling for “people before profits.” As per its application before the CPUC, AT&T describes the need for terminating landline service as a “plain old telephone service” and in its seeking “…tailored relief from its outdated COLR its (Carrier of Last Resort) obligation, which effectively mandates that AT&T California maintain a copper-based network throughout its service territory. In effect, this obligation requires AT&T California, but not its major competitors, to wastefully operate and maintain duplicative networks: one, an antiquated, narrowband network with an ever-dwindling base of subscribers, and the other, a forward-looking fiber and wireless broadband network.”

Overlooked is the fact that many people cannot afford cell phone service or are able to use a cell phone while many others who live in rural locations are beyond the limits of cell phone coverage and thus be unable to connect to summons help in an emergency. As any cell phone user can attest, even under the best of condition, coverage can be intermittent at times.

The presenters voiced their concerns for all these reasons and more in a modern era that sees cell phones as the way of the future. They noted, too, that discontinuing landlines in an earthquake-prone city whose streets are flooded with robotaxis which are dependent on cell phone tower coverage that is easily overwhelmed during normal times and especially so during a disaster is sheer madness.

Robotaxis have adequately proven over and again how they can interfere with and block emergency vehicles and traffic during normal operations, and when losing coverage and unable to connect, they stop functioning wherever they happen to be. As wireless demand increases during an emergency, cell phone systems become overloaded, can lose power and or simply shutdown. Without hard-wired copper landline phones, in the absence of cellular coverage, people are unable to communicate or call for help making an already dangerous situation even more so at the peril to the loss of life and property.

Steve Zeltzer of the United Front Committee for a Labor Party (UFCLP) and of the Safe Streets Coalition questioned what would happen in earthquake-prone San Francisco “when you have robotaxis on streets without drivers?” He related that they would “shutdown” when cell phone service was interrupted or for other reasons. “A week before Chinese New Year when fireworks were going off up the street, a robotaxi shutdown in the middle of the street. And as a result, some people broke the windows and set it on fire because they were angry that it was blocking the road.” He went on to say that robotaxis do not have the ability to back up, “and yet a requirement to get a driver’s license in California is that you have to demonstrate that you can back up. The people of San Francisco need to be protected from robotaxis along with workers whose jobs would be eliminated due to AI and this autonomous transport automation.”

Eduardo Escobar, founder of the Alliance for Independent Workers, spoke about robotaxis by illustrating a situation last year during the Outside Lands music festival when heavy cell phone usage caused ten robotaxis to shut down in a group next to each other in the North Beach area of the city that resulted in a massive traffic jam. The cars were unable to move due to high cell phone demand related to service connection issues that in turn froze the robotaxis in place blocking streets and intersections.

He said that as a result Google, Waymo and Amazon Zoox “Have suggested that they want us to pay for infrastructure to provide their own cell towers for the companies.” That’s big companies calling upon us to pay for their infrastructure so that they can drive us out of work, drive us out of a living. This is the privatization of the public trust. They put profits before people 24/7.”

AT&T’s COLR obligation for providing landline telephone service is part of a 1982 decree that allowed the company to purchase the Pacific Telephone Company in the breakup of the nationwide “Ma Bell” monopoly. Its purpose as explained in the CPUC document was to ensure “…that everyone in California has access to safe, reliable, and affordable telephone service. AT&T is the largest COLR in California in many parts of the state. Where AT&T is the default landline telephone service provider, it must provide traditional landline telephone service to any potential customer in that service territory. AT&T’s proposal calls for its withdrawal as the COLR in certain areas without a new carrier being designated as a COLR.”

“If the proposal is approved as set forth in its application, then no COLR would be required to provide Basic Service in the areas in which AT&T is the COLR. This does not necessarily mean that no carriers would provide service in the areas—only that they would not be required to do so. Other outcomes are possible, such as a carrier other than AT&T volunteering to become the COLR, or the CPUC denying AT&T’s proposal.”

It seems highly unlikely that another company would take over the COLR obligation for a “plain old telephone service” in a high-tech cellular era if AT&T is allowed to drop its obligation based on its desire to do so in what looks more like a profitable move for the company than one ensuring public safety. The net effect was pointed out by the activists saying that “A major earthquake would also disrupt cell phones meaning that landlines would be the only means of communication. We must protect workers and the public.”

Ironically, at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia where the Masters Tournament was played, cellphones were not allowed and AT&T, a sponsor, provided guests of the tournament access to landline phone banks to make free calls worldwide. Evidently, “plain old telephone service” is good enough to advertise the high-tech cell phone company through accommodating the guest’s telephonic needs regardless of cost. But in their way of thinking, landlines need to be removed in areas susceptible to natural disasters because of the cost of operating an expensive “plain old telephone service” is not profitable enough. This beckons the question of why public safety is viewed actuarily and not as an a lifeline to society. “Profit over People” is how the activists described the entire matter on both issues.

If the proposal to terminate landline service is granted, this backup line of defense during a cell phone shutdown in an emergency would not only imperil Californians, but as California goes, so eventually goes the nation.

Report and photo by Phil Pasquini

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A Thing of the Future and a Thing of the Past, Robotaxis and Land Lines

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Share:Share on WhatsAppShare on FacebookShare on X (Twitter)Share on TelegramShare on RedditShare on EmailAhead of the 118th annual San Francisco 1906 Earthquake Commemoration on April 18, a speak-out…