• Around 200 UCSF workers and 2,000 UC workers statewide voted this week to form a new union with United Auto Workers — the third group of UC employees to unionize in the past year. [Mission Local]
• With the average price of gas in California at $5.42 per gallon, San Jose Mayor and gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan is asking state leaders to temporarily suspend the state gas tax. [NBC Bay Area]

• The latest trend for gig workers involves wearing cameras on one’s hands and head while doing daily tasks to help the AI learn human movements. [LA Times]
• San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties have the highest rates of tuberculosis in the state and three times the national average due to the high frequency of international travelers entering the country through the Bay Area. [Bay Area News Group]
• Memes have taken over social media in China mocking a March 6 video of President Donald Trump praying with faith leaders inside the White House, with one satirical caption reportedly saying, “A Chinese boss leads his team to pray for huge sales.”

• The current allergy season is going to be especially long this year — and agonizing, as this year’s bloom came early due to California having the second warmest winter on record, along with the intermittent rain and dry spells drawing out the pollen and then scattering it through the air. [Chronicle]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

San Francisco public school educators made national headlines Tuesday as they announced plans to bring a human banner to Ocean Beach the following day, with talks between union and district representatives slowly progressing and other unions across the state considering similar action.

As SFist noted earlier, classes in the San Francisco Unified School District were cancelled for Wednesday as contract negotiations continued into Tuesday evening. SFist took part in Tuesday’s march, which began at Dolores Park and ended at City Hall by way of SFUSD’s headquarters on Franklin Street. Organizers estimated that 20,000 people were in attendance.

The United Educators of San Francisco announced on social media Tuesday that part of Wednesday’s strike would include a human banner facilitated by artists David Solnit and Andres Amador at Ocean Beach (1070 Great Highway), spelling out “Strike For Our Students.” Participants are asked to wear red and white.

Per UESF’s social media, union members were told to first picket in the morning at individual school sites. The latest info on the strike, including Wednesday’s banner, can be found on the union’s website.

Meanwhile, national outlets are covering the historic strike, including Politico, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. Both the New York Times and Politico have noted that numerous teachers' unions throughout the state are potentially moving toward strikes.

As EdSource reported last year, the California Teachers Association launched a platform supporting 32 California districts through its “We Can’t Wait” campaign to help local teachers’ unions negotiate their contracts and build momentum statewide with mass strikes. Per EdSource, Ken Jacobs, a senior policy adviser at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, likened the campaign to the “Unite Here” labor union, which successfully negotiated new contracts for SF hotel workers at Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott after 93 days of striking in 2024.

As Politico reports, San Diego has a one-day strike on the books for February 26, and Los Angeles teachers may strike after a recent walkout in January.

As SFGate reports, 95% of teachers at Dublin Unified School District, which reached an impasse in November, voted to authorize a strike last week if an agreement isn’t reached on a final contract. As the blog Abridged reports, teachers in Sacramento said they were prepared to strike last month, with the Twin Rivers Unified School District voting for a strike by 98% on February 2, per the Sacramento Bee.

As EdSource reported in January, many more school districts in the state have stalled negotiations, including Berkeley and Oakland.

“It’s unacceptable that in the ‘Golden State,’ with its vast wealth and resources, our communities struggle with fully staffing our neighborhood schools,” said David Goldberg, President of the California Teachers Association. “This is why educators are coordinating to take a stand statewide. Together with parents, students and our communities, we demand that districts prioritize resources for our students and ensure California leads the country in providing a quality public education for every student.”

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Previously: Striking SF Teachers Rally In Dolores Park as Tensions Mount Over Deal

In a surprising deal that was somewhat brokered by Gavin Newsom, Uber and Lyft are going to let their 800,000 California rideshare drivers unionize and get collective bargaining rights, though drivers can still refuse to join the union.

According to the union group SEIU California, there are now 800,000 rideshare drivers in the state, and that’s one out every 24 California workers who are at least sometimes gig drivers. And Uber and Lyft have traditionally been notoriously resistant to giving them minimum wage guarantees or any form of job benefits.

You may recall the 2019 political battles over the gig worker benefits bill AB5, which Lyft and Uber fought against tooth and nail. And they effectively got AB5 overturned, for their companies, at least, with that Prop 22 measure in 2020 that let the rideshare companies classify their drivers as independent contractors who are exempt from any requirements for employee benefits.

So it’s kind of a shock to see the Friday breaking news that both Lyft and Uber are allowing their California drivers to unionize, according to the Chronicle. While the idea comes from a state Assembly bill called AB1340 that Uber and Lyft both initially opposed, Governor Gavin Newsom managed to negotiate some concessions to get the two companies on board.

“This is a historic agreement between workers and business that only California could deliver,” Newsom said in a Friday morning statement. “Labor and industry sat down together, worked through their differences, and found common ground that will empower hundreds of thousands of drivers while making rideshare more affordable for millions of Californians.”

But notably, food delivery drivers for apps like Doordash and Instacart are not included in the new arrangement. And it appears one of Newsom’s concessions he offered Lyft and Uber was to lower the insurance requirements that rideshare drivers have to carry.

Uber’s California head of public policy Ramona Prieto said in the same statement that the deal is “a compromise that lowers costs for riders while creating stronger voices for drivers — demonstrating how industry, labor, and lawmakers can work together to deliver real solutions that reflect how people live, work, and move today.”

It is fair to be cynical when an Uber executive tells you that any move the company made is going to “lower costs.” On top of that, drivers are allowed to refuse joining the union. So it’s also fair to be cynical whether these unionized drivers would have much power, because Uber and Lyft could simply hand more gigs to the non-unionized drivers, and replace the drivers cheaply if faced with the threat of any kind of strike.

“Anything that effectively promotes the right to organize for ride share workers is good public policy,” Stanford Law professor and former National Labor Relations Board chair William Gould told the Chronicle. But he added, “The fact that they have fought tooth and nail against protection for their own workers and now support this makes me have more than a measure of skepticism.”

It’s also unclear how benefits would be applied across a gig driver workforce where some are in the union and others are not. And who knows what kinds of benefits these drivers would ask for in collective bargaining. This is a different kind of unionization than we are generally used to seeing.

But it’s still something of a win for drivers. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas chimed in on the press release, declaring “While Trump is stripping workers of bargaining rights and rolling-back protections, California is fighting for lower prices and empowering working families. What a way to celebrate Labor Day weekend.”

Related: Uber Actually Turned a Profit For the First Time Since Going Public Five Years Ago [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 27: A sign in favor of a union for rideshare drivers sits on a car's windshield during a protest outside of Uber headquarters on August 27, 2019 in San Francisco, California. Dozens of Uber and Lyft drivers staged a protest outside of Uber headquarters in support of California assembly bill 5 and to organize a union for rideshare drivers. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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Image: Luigi artwork by @lbryvxn; Leanne Maxwell/SFist

Around 1,500 local hotel workers began a strike on Sunday, hoping to extract concessions from three Union Square hotels.

Unite Here Local 2, the union chapter representing the workers, says they've been in contract negotiations with the Grand Hyatt San Francisco Union Square, Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Westin St. Francis hotels for months, to no avail. Today's events come after a larger Labor Day walkout, and the expiry of the workers's contracts in mid-August. Negotiations between the larger union and the major hotel chains are also still mostly unresolved, meaning over 10,000 hotel workers across the country could be primed to walk off the job at any moment.

At issue are things like healthcare, staffing cuts that have resulted in higher individual workloads, fair pay, irregular hours stemming from hotels rendering certain guest services optional, healthcare, and pensions. The union claims that many workers are forced to work second or third jobs to make ends meet, despite the hotel industry as a whole apparently making $100 billion in gross profits for fiscal year 2022.

“Hotel workers aren’t giving up, because we’re fighting for our families,” said Gwen Mills, International President of Unite Here in a statement. “Hotels and hotel workers all suffered during the pandemic, but now the hotel industry is making record profits. These huge hotel corporations can afford to reverse COVID-era cuts and give us wages that are enough to live on, health care that’s affordable, and workloads that don’t break your body.”

The three hotels all told The San Francisco Chronicle that they plan on performing business as usual during the strike, and that they remain optimistic that negotiations will be fruitful for both sides.

This is the second strike in San Francisco to occur this week, after musicians for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus began a walkout that led to abrupt show cancellations.

The frequency and scale of strikes on the whole have seen a resurgence across the country since 2023, marking a stark reversal to previous trends in collective bargaining in the post-Ronald Reagan era, whose administration is now notorious for its intensely anti-labor, pro-business agenda. Researchers for New York City's university system, the City University of New York, attribute this rise in union activity to the combination of high inflation and growing income inequality since the 2020 pandemic, and believe that they ultimately lead to positive effects.

"Overall, we have such an imbalance of power and income right now, anything that shifts that balance in the direction of more equality is positive, both economically and socially for the country," said Joshua B. Freeman, an author and professor of history who has studied labor movements since the 1980s.

Image: Unite Here Local 2 via Instagram

Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s rambling Twitter Spaces interview Monday night is making more news, as the United Auto Workers union has now filed federal labor charges against both of them for saying striking workers should be fired.

The biggest news to come out of Monday night’s livestreamed Twitter/X Spaces interview between Elon Musk and Donald Trump was that it started 40 minutes late because of technical screw-ups. But it did start eventually, and the two of them ended up yammering for about two hours, mostly just agreeing with each other about everything. And they both agreed that they do not care for labor unions or workers’ rights.

Yet a brief exchange on that topic prompted the United Auto Workers union (UAW) to file federal labor charges against both Trump and Musk with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday, according to CNN. The union argues that Trump's and Musk's remarks were a violation of federal law when Trump said that workers who threaten to go on strike should be fired.

To whatever degree Trump’s words make any narrative sense, the offending words from Trump are as follows:

“I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone.”

Trump is likely referring to Musk laying people off at Twitter, and Musk laughed at Trump’s words and agreed by saying “Yeah.” But regardless, it is illegal under federal law to fire workers for threatening to strike.

“Donald Trump will always side against workers standing up for themselves, and he will always side with billionaires like Elon Musk, who is contributing $45 million a month to a Super PAC to get him elected,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in a press release announcing they’d filed charges. “Both Trump and Musk want working class people to sit down and shut up, and they laugh about it openly. It’s disgusting, illegal, and totally predictable from these two clowns.”

As CNN points out, Musk’s car company Tesla is the largest non-union auto manufacturer in the US. And the UAW has already endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

But CNBC reminds us that the nation’s other major union, the Teamsters, has not made an endorsement yet. Teamsters president Sean O’Brien was even given a speaking slot at last month’s Republican National Convention, though he did not endorse Trump, and these remarks seem to make it less likely that he will.

“Firing workers for organizing, striking, and exercising their rights as Americans is economic terrorism,” O’Brien said in a Tuesday statement to CNBC.

CNN notes that probably nothing will come of these federal labor charges, which are more of a complaint, and not an actual lawsuit. The National Labor Relations Board might open an investigation, but there would be no financial or legal penalties. Trump and Musk could theoretically be ordered by a judge to simply stop saying things like this, and order them to rehire any employees fired for threatening to unionize. Since no employees actually lost their jobs over this exchange, that would seem irrelevant.  

But if these remarks end up costing Trump the endorsement of the Teamsters, well, that would be at least a political consequence of this for Trump.

Related: Elon Musk’s Twitter/X Sues Advertisers for Not Advertising on Elon Musk’s Twitter/X [SFist]

Image: (Left) WhiteHouse.gov, (Right) U.S. Air Force / Trevor Cokley, both via Wikimedia Commons

The villains in both the writers' and actors' strikes going on in Hollywood are studio big-wigs who insist they're too poor to pay artists what they used to pay them, by way of longer network season schedules and residuals. And while Meghan Markle may not need her union anymore or her residuals from the streaming of Suits, it maybe wasn't a great look for her to be seated next to Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos at the Beyonce show Monday in Los Angeles.

Meghan and Harry's Archewell Productions continues to have a $100 million development deal with Netflix, inked three years ago, even though nothing has come of it yet besides that 2022 documentary about them. And as Bay Area News Group notes, this sort of makes Meghan part of "management" now, and no longer one of SAG-AFTRA's rank and file.

Netflix's Los Gatos headquarters has been the scene of picket lines at least twice since the strikes began, and Sarandos was quickly singled out by striking writers in particular, as the New York Times reported. When asked during a recent Writers' Guild summit which studio had been the worst to writers, two panelists answered "Netflix" in unison, and the room of 1,800 laughed and applauded.

Writers' picket signs have said things like "Please Cancel Netflix Until a Fair Deal Is Reached," and "I shared my Netflix password. It’s 'PAY ME'!"

As one experienced writer, Peter Hume, who has worked on shows like Charmed, explains to the Times, "I have 26 years of continuous service, and I haven’t worked in the last four because I’m too expensive. And that’s mostly because Netflix broke the model. I think they put all the money into production in the streaming wars, and they took it away from writers."

Meanwhile, Markle, who was seen in a VIP box Monday seated with A-listers including Sarandos and Jeff Bezos watching Beyonce at SoFi Stadium, previously expressed her love of her former union in her widely-seen Oprah interview. She told Oprah that she had gone to the royal family's HR department and said, "I just really need help. Because in my old job, there was a union, and they would protect me."

SAG-AFTRA quickly tweeted their support at the time, saying, "We are still here for you, Meghan. Everyone deserves the protection of a union."

Markle, who had only modest success as an actress, most notably appeared on the USA drama Suits, which aired from 2011 to 2019 before gaining fresh life in streaming, on Netflix.

Complaints from SAG-AFTRA members include the fact that their residual payments — which typically came from traditional TV shows in traditional syndication — have dropped significantly since the streaming age began. And actors don't know how to renegotiate the formulas of how residuals get paid, in part, because streamers and the big studios aren't being transparent about viewership and other metrics — and the world of TV has become far more diverse in terms of platforms.

"It’s impossible to figure out what’s fair if you don’t know what’s real," says director Steven Soderbergh, speaking to Rolling Stone. "They will not open the books, so how do you figure out what’s fair if you don’t know what’s going on?"

Now that Markle has Harry money — and Netflix contract money — to depend on, she is no longer as worried as her former acting cohort about how big her residual checks may be. And this leads to some further sour grapes in seeing her at the Beyonce show with old Ted.

It is also be true that Archewell Productions is among the firms producing unscripted content that will help tide over Netflix until the strikes end and they can start shooting new shows. Archewell has an unscripted-content division, out of which that Harry & Meghan documentary was made, and its latest offering is Heart of Invictus, a doc about the Invictus Games for injured military service members that landed on Netflix last week.

Top image: INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 04: (L-R) Kerry Washington, Kelly Rowland and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attend the "RENAISSANCE WORLD TOUR" at SoFi Stadium on September 04, 2023 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Parkwood)

After the striking writers and actors picketed Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos last week, now they’re coming to San Francisco City Hall for a 5 p.m. Wednesday rally where all are welcome to come raise heck.

As the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike goes into its second week, while the Writers Guild of America strike heads toward its third month, the unionized actors have been holding rallies outside Hollywood. Both writers and actors picketed Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos last week, and held a huge star-studded rally in Times Square on Tuesday.

And now they’re coming for San Francisco. KRON4 reports that SAG-AFTRA members will rally at City Hall Wednesday at 5 p.m. According to the SAG-AFTRA rally announcement, “No advance RSVP [is] necessary,” and the rally is “Open to members, pre-members, labor activists, industry partners and strike supporters.”

Will there be celebrities? Probably not on the level of Tuesday’s Times Square rally, which drew Bryan Cranston, Steve Buscemi, Jessica Chastain, and others. KRON4 reports that “Elected officials and the San Francisco Labor Council will be joining alongside the union members,” so you’re more likely to get local politicians who are running for some office in 2024. But in terms of star power, it would not be a surprise to see Bay Area-based actors like Danny Glover, Peter Coyote, and Delroy Lindo.

The actors are striking for better residuals for shows on streaming platforms, improved healthcare and pension packages, and most notably, protections against their voices and likenesses being used by artificial intelligence.

And per the latest news seen above, the two sides are not even negotiating at the moment. This marks the first time in 63 years that both actors guild and the writers guild have been on strike at the same time.

Related: Hollywood's Strike Reaches Silicon Valley: Writers, Actors, and Activists Picket Netflix HQ in Los Gatos [SFist]

Image: @sagaftra via Twitter

The artisan chocolatier’s unionization vote passed in a 20-19 squeaker, but does it matter, since half of the ‘Yes’ voters have since been shown the door?

When SFist broke the June news of layoffs at Dandelion Chocolate, the Dandelion Chocolate Union said in a statement to us that “All 9 of these [dismissed] employees were outspoken supporters of the Dandelion Chocolate Union. All 9 of these employees were part of Dandelion Union’s Organizing Committee.”

But the Dandelion Chocolate Union was not, at that point, an actual union. Their April unionization vote had been challenged by both the chocolate retailer and the would-be unionizers, leaving the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to sort out which ballots would count, and which would not. Mission Local reported at the time this was a “process that could take months,” which it did.

But the NLRB has handed down their verdict, and as the Chronicle reports, the union won the vote narrowly — that is, by literally one vote. While April’s vote was 18-16 in favor of the union, nine ballots were challenged by both parties combined. The NLRB ruled that five of those votes should be counted, but four others would not, and as seen in the screenshot below, the final vote was 20-19 to unionize.

Though if it’s true, as the union claims, that nine of those ‘yes’ votes are now no longer employees, what does it mean for the union that most of the remaining staff are against unionizing?

“The work environment there is not one that’s super conducive to union building or the union bargaining process,” Ryan Dowling, organizing director of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6 (ILWU) that the Dandelion employees had aspired to join, told the Chron. “What we’re trying to do right now is assess how the workers are doing, what their priorities are and then make a plan that’s best for them.”

Dandelion Chocolate ownership did not respond to requests for comment from the Chronicle or Mission Local.  

So where does this end? Probably in court! Dandelion does have five days to object to the ruling, and the union says they’re meeting tomorrow to discuss next steps. Per the Chronicle, those next steps are to “start requesting detailed information from Dandelion in advance of contract negotiations, including raises and benefits from the last 12 to 18 months, health insurance and how the company used federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds. They also plan to reach out to all current employees — both established union supporters and ones who voted against it — to seek input.”

Related: Dandelion Chocolate Lays Off Staff, Union Effort Vows Legal Challenge [SFist]

Image: Elizabeth L. via Yelp

Elon Musk and his electric car company were in the wrong when they fired a worker involved with labor organizing at Tesla's Fremont plant, and Musk broke the law with a tweet about the effort, according to an administrative law judge in California.

In a Friday ruling, Judge Amita Baman Tracy ruled that Tesla acted illegally in several ways with regard to a union organizing campaign that took place in 2017. For one, Tesla security guards should not have been questioning workers who were leafletting for the union effort in the plant parking lot or ordering those workers to leave the property. Also, the judge ruled that the company should not have fired a worker who lied under questioning about how he gained access to internal information about a fellow worker who was opposing the union effort.

As Ars Technica reports, the firing occurred in October 2017, and the company terminated one Richard Ortiz. A union-affiliated employee, Jose Moran, had accessed the company's HR system and sent Ortiz a screenshot of information about the anti-union employee. When the company questioned Ortiz about how he accessed the information, he apparently lied, and the company subsequently fired Ortiz and disciplined Moran. The judge ruled that Ortiz should be reinstated at his job with back pay, and wrote, "An employer may not terminate an employee for lying in response to questions regarding [union organizing]."

Further, the judge found that Musk's tweet on May 20, 2018, in which he subtly discouraged employees from voting for the union by suggesting that they would be sacrificing stock options if they joined a union.

Judge Tracy ruled that Musk was illegally trying to sway workers to reject the union by suggesting they would lose a benefit, in this case stock options, if they unionized.

The judge has ruled that, among other remedies, Tesla must post a notice informing workers of their right to organize.

This isn't the first time a tweet has gotten Musk into legal trouble in recent years. An August 2018 tweet in which Musk suggested he could take the company private resulted in a $40 million fine from the SEC and in Musk having to step down as company chairman. Then in February of this year, Musk tweeted something about a vehicle production estimate that the SEC also said was illegal, and Musk was found in contempt of court from the earlier settlement.

A decision by about 500 cafeteria workers at Facebook's Menlo Park campus to unionize led the Guardian to do this piece profiling a husband and wife who work in the cafeteria and are currently living in a garage with no running water with their three children. Nicole and Victor, who do not give their last names, live in a two-car garage that belongs to Victor's parents, and they've lived their with their kids for the past three years.

They are technically employees of Facebook's food service contractor, Flagship Facility Services, and they say they make decent hourly wages — Nicole makes $19.85 per hour as a shift lead, and Victor makes $17.85 per hour.

Says Victor to the Guardian, "Back in the day, [that hourly wage] would have been a great number. But because of Facebook moving in [to Menlo Park], everything is so expensive. I have to get payday loans sometimes. We barely make it."

Nicole says she feels uncomfortable at Facebook and like she's looked down upon. "They look at us like we’re lower, like we don’t matter," she tells the Guardian. "We don’t live the dream. The techies are living the dream. It's for them."

Nicole also notes that the company recently held a bring-your-kids-to-work day, but cafeteria workers' children weren't invited.

A spokesperson for Facebook responded to this in the Guardian saying that none of the company's contractors participate in bring-your-kids-to-work days or have access to other company amenities like gyms, or the company medical clinic. The statement further said, "We are committed to providing a safe, fair, work environment to everyone who helps Facebook bring the world closer together, including contractors."

The couple hopes that by unionizing, which neither Facebook nor their employer Flagship opposed, they may get higher wages and get to share in the company's wealth a bit more. "Our motivation is not to bash either company,” Nicole tells the Guardian. "It’s for our families. Why do we have to live like this, when the company we work for has the resources to make it better?"

As Business Insider reports, the union's business manager Enrique Fernandez is looking to negotiate some higher wages for the cafeteria staff, who by Facebook's own rules must all make a $15/hour minimum wage. "We are pleased that Facebook and Flagship have been cooperative partners in this organizing process," Fernandez said in a press release. "We look forward to sitting down to negotiate a contract that addresses some of the challenges workers are going through.”

Previously: Facebook Now Officially Used Monthly By More Than One Quarter Of Earth's Population

Tesla engineer AJ Vandermeyden says she's paid a lower salary than her male counterparts for her work at the luxury electric car company where she claims she's subjected to workplace harassment in an environment dominated by men. “Until somebody stands up, nothing is going to change,” Vandermeyden tells the Guardian, though she fears retaliation or recrimination for speaking out against the company where she's worked since 2013 and for filing a discrimination lawsuit against the automaker last year.

“I’m an advocate of Tesla," Vandermeyden, 33, told the Guardian in her first interview since filing the suit. "I really do believe they are doing great things. That said, I can’t turn a blind eye if there’s something fundamentally wrong going on.” Vandermeyden's complaint alleges that women, “equally or more qualified” than men, were denied promotions given to those men and that, generally speaking, men were better compensated by the company. “Equal pay is something that is essentially in the back of your mind every single day,” she said. “You have all these data points showing how you’ve exceeded some of the predecessors and improved on the system. It wears on you.”

The complaint also describes a culture of “unwelcome and pervasive harassment by men on the factory floor including but not limited to inappropriate language, whistling, and catcalls.” In one 2015 instance, male employees "started hooting and hollering and whistling" at her and another female employee. That can’t happen without somebody noticing … It’s disturbing.” Vandermeyden said, adding that she's even transferred out of her former post in general assembly to the purchasing department to avoid the alleged harassment.

Vandermeyden's allegations against Tesla precede those made by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler in a blog post, into which the ride-hailing company has launched an investigation with former attorney general Eric Holder involved. But at Tesla, by contrast, Vandermeyden's formal allegations have been dismissed or denied: A Tesla spokesperson told the guardian that a "neutral third party" review found her “claims of gender discrimination, harassment, and retaliation have not been substantiated."

Tesla executives took a similar approach earlier last month when one factory worker, Jose Moran, called attention to what he described as dangerous and unfair labor conditions at the company's Fremont plant in a Medium post detailing work-relating injuries and decrying low pay, Moran proposed unionization, writing that he and others had discussed the matter and reached out to the United Auto Workers union for support.

But Tesla CEO Elon Musk disputed Moran's claims in an email to employees obtained by BuzzFeed that called the United Auto Worker's union's reasons for promoting unionization “disingenuous or outright false.” Musk also denied Moran's safety claim. “After looking into this claim, not only was it untrue for this individual’s team, it was untrue for any of the hundreds of teams in the factory,” the CEO wrote.

To rally the troops, Musk described Tesla's need to work together to succeed on the difficult road ahead. "The forces arrayed against us are many and incredibly powerful," he wrote, "This is David vs Goliath if David were six inches tall! Only by being smarter, faster and working well as a tightly integrated team do we have any chance of success."

So, as if in lieu of a union, Musk proposed perks and amenities that were just around the corner. These, which would appear with more frequency as the company became more profitable, would be "little things that come along like free frozen yogurt stands scattered around the factory and my personal favorite: a Tesla electric pod car roller coaster (with an optional loop the loop route, of course!) that will allow fast and fun travel throughout our Fremont campus, dipping in and out of the factory and connecting all the parking lots."

Who needs a union when you've got a roller coaster? Wheeeeeeeee!

Related: Instagram Account For Tesla Factory Parking Lot Shows Tesla Workers Probably Shouldn't Drive

Wild cheers as SEIU-USWW janitors hear contract has $15 an hour starting May 1 to $16.50 by 2019. pic.twitter.com/0GPHhloMgO

— Beth Willon (@bethwillon) May 2, 2016

The union representing thousands of service workers who clean the offices, halls, and bathrooms of companies like Facebook and Google is scheduled to vote today on whether or not to authorize a strike. The Business Times reports that SEIU United Service Workers West is currently in the process of negotiating a new contract for its 8,000 Bay Area members, and will likely strike if a contract has not been agreed upon by Saturday. The vote today, if passed, would allow for that strike to go forward should no agreement be reached.

SFist has reached out directly to a union representative for vote results and comments, but has not heard back as of press time.

It is important to note that negotiations are taking place between the union and various cleaning companies — not Facebook or Google directly. However, as the tech companies contract with the cleaning companies that employee the union janitors, any strike would directly impact the cleanliness of 1 Hacker Way's toilets.

As of the end of April, union workers have officially been working without a contract, and a press release sent out by SEIU made clear that negotiations have been taking place in a tense atmosphere. "Throughout bargaining, janitorial contractors have intimidated, threatened and retaliated against janitors for standing together to uphold their rights," reads the statement. "Janitors will also decide whether or not to strike in protest of unlawful practices. [...] In addition to demands for a living wage, bargaining negotiations have focused on raising standards in a broken industry riddled with harassment, wage theft, and exploitation of janitors."

For an industry known for catering to its employees' every need — think free food, laundry, and rides to work — that it soon may no longer be able to guarantee clean bathrooms for its workers is a bit of an unexpected turn. Hmm, maybe they should look into hiring HomeJoy? Oh, wait.

Related: Airbnb Reportedly In Talks With Labor Union, Will Endorse 'Fight For $15'

In what is merely the latest bit of unfortunate news for the students of City College of San Francisco, The Examiner reports that Interim Chancellor Susan Lamb will shut down all eleven campuses tomorrow. Lamb announced the decision in a statement post online, and wrote that it was necessary in light of the forthcoming one-day teachers union strike planned for Wednesday.

"[Closing] the school and its eleven locations on Wednesday is the safest and most prudent course of action,” Lamb wrote. “Due to the strike, we do not anticipate having the necessary personnel onsite to maintain and operate the buildings.”

American Federation of Teachers Local 2121 President Tim Killikelly explained that the strike was called because the union believes negotiations over faculty pay were not progressing. “The reason is they have not been negotiating in good faith with us," she told the paper. "The bad faith doesn’t go away because they decide to close the college down for a day.”

Lamb, for her part, showed frustration about the entire situation. "I deeply regret that the union has chosen to strike," she wrote, "and hope that this one-day action passes quickly so we can return our focus to our students and their education."

Classes are set to resume on Thursday.

Related: City College Administration Can't Fully Explain Extravagant Travel, Meal Expenditures

Airbnb's ongoing bid for respectability appears to be taking another step forward, with The Washington Post reporting today that the home-renting company has approached a major international union with the hopes of forming a partnership, and, in the process, pave the way for future union support — something that Airbnb has decidedly lacked in the past.

The Post reports on documents it obtained that lay out Airbnb's plan, although apparently not in much detail. Airbnb reached out to the Services Employees International Union, and has offered to endorse the union's "Fight for $15" — an effort to guarantee a minimum $15 hourly wage for its members. In addition, the paper notes, Airbnb will "encourage vendors who provide services to homeowners on the Airbnb platform to pay their staff at least $15 per hour" while simultaneously "[directing] Airbnb hosts to cleaners that have been given a seal of approval from SEIU."

SFist reached out to Airbnb spokesperson Christopher Nulty in an attempt to clarify what form, exactly, the "endorsement" will take and how the company intends to "encourage" its vendors. For example, will there be financial incentives (or penalties)? Unfortunately, Nulty declined to comment on the specifics, and instead issued a standard company statement.

"As our community continues to grow, we want to find ways to further extend the economic benefits of home sharing to as many people as possible," he wrote in an email. "To that end, we have been engaged in conversations with organizations and community leaders about how to best help working families find solutions to economic inequality, including creating specific ways we could leverage the Airbnb platform to help create quality union jobs that pay a livable wage."

Airbnb ran into union opposition last year while fighting Proposition F, a law that would have imposed new restrictions on short-term rentals in Airbnb's hometown of San Francisco. At the time, SF Weekly noted that the local hotel workers' union Unite Here Local 2 was one of the main supporters of Prop F (the proposition lost, in no small part thanks to the $8 million Airbnb spent to defeat it). With SEIU on their side going forward, Airbnb would have a powerful ally in labor.

SEIU spokesperson Sahar Wali confirmed to the Post that the union is in talks with Airbnb, although she stressed that at this time nothing is confirmed. "SEIU has and always will support all finding new ways to build power for working people to help them improve their lives," she explained. "As part of this commitment, we actively and regularly engage in conversations with companies who are committed to doing right by their workforce by paying better wages and giving them a voice at work through their union. Airbnb is one such company, however, there is no formal relationship or agreement between SEIU and Airbnb."

As Airbnb is known for having trouble respecting formal relationships, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of these talks long term. Regardless, the new strategy of working with labor appears to mark a shift for the company, and this likely won't be the last time we hear about it.

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