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California Passes Landmark $20 Minimum Wage Hourly For Fast Food Workers

(CTN News) – In a significant move aimed at improving the livelihoods of fast food workers and their families, California has passed a new law raising the minimum wage for fast food employees to $20 per hour, scheduled to take effect on April 1 next year.

This wage hike, signed into law by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, is a clear acknowledgment of the vital role that these often-underappreciated workers play as primary earners in low-income households.

Fast Food Workers: The Backbone of Low-Income Households

When this law becomes effective, California will boast the highest guaranteed base salary for fast food workers in the entire industry. Notably, the state already maintains one of the highest minimum wages for all other workers at $15.50 per hour in the United States.

Governor Newsom’s decision to sign this legislation was accompanied by a jubilant gathering of workers and labor leaders in Los Angeles.

In doing so, he dispelled the outdated notion that fast food jobs are solely intended for teenagers seeking their first foray into the workforce.

Newsom stressed the importance of recognizing the contributions and sacrifices made by fast food workers and of creating a more stable industry for them.

This development highlights the significant influence of labor unions in California, the nation’s most populous state, which have worked diligently to organize fast food workers and advocate for improved wages and working conditions.

Crucially, this legislation represents a temporary resolution to a contentious dispute between labor and business groups regarding industry regulation.

California Labor Unions and Fast Food Industry Reach Compromise on Wages and Liability

In exchange for higher pay, labor unions have agreed not to pursue making fast food corporations liable for the actions of their independent franchise operators in California, a move that could have disrupted the industry’s established business model.

Simultaneously, the industry has withdrawn a referendum related to worker wages from the 2024 ballot.

Governor Newsom aptly described these negotiations as moving a “tectonic plate,” underscoring the tremendous effort required to reach a consensus during the final weeks of the state legislative session.

Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union International, described this law as the culmination of ten years of labor advocacy, including 450 strikes held across the state in the past two years.

The significance of this moment was deeply felt by Anneisha Williams, a mother of six, who works at a Jack in the Box restaurant in Inglewood.

Williams, holding back tears during a news conference, spoke about her children, who have stood alongside her during strikes and protests. She emphasized that this wage increase is for their future.

Governor Newsom’s decision to sign this law may help rebuild his relationship with organized labor, following criticism for vetoing a separate bill designed to protect truck drivers’ jobs amid the rise of self-driving technology.

Unions have been a pivotal source of campaign funding for Newsom’s political career.

This landmark wage increase will apply to fast-food restaurants with at least 60 locations nationwide, with the exception of establishments that produce and sell their own bread, such as Panera Bread.

Fast Food Workers in California Earn an Average of $16.60 per Hour Currently

Currently, fast food workers in California earn an average of $16.60 per hour, equating to just over $34,000 annually, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This falls below the California Poverty Measure for a family of four, which accounts for housing costs and publicly-funded benefits.

However, the $20 minimum wage is just a starting point.

The legislation establishes a Fast Food Council with the authority to annually increase this wage until 2029, either by 3.5% or by the change in averages for the U.S. Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, whichever is lower.

This change marks an important step towards economic justice for fast food workers in California. However, the focus now shifts to another group of low-wage workers in the state awaiting their own minimum wage increase.

Wage Increase for Non-Physician Healthcare Workers in California

Lawmakers have recently passed a separate bill aimed at gradually raising the minimum wage for healthcare workers to $25 per hour over the next decade.

While this raise wouldn’t apply to doctors and nurses, it would benefit the majority of other healthcare workers at hospitals, dialysis clinics, and other healthcare facilities.

Governor Newsom has not yet indicated whether he will sign this healthcare wage increase into law. The issue is complicated by the state’s Medicaid program, which constitutes the primary source of revenue for many hospitals.

The Newsom administration has estimated that this wage increase could cost the state billions of dollars in increased payments to healthcare providers.

Supporters of the wage increase argue that the state’s expenses would be offset by a reduction in the number of individuals relying on publicly funded assistance programs, as suggested by a study from the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center.

In conclusion, California’s decision to raise the minimum wage for fast food workers to $20 per hour is a momentous step towards recognizing the contributions and needs of low-income workers in the state.

It reflects the power of organized labor and underscores the ongoing struggle for economic justice and fairness for all workers, setting a positive example for other states to follow in pursuit of a more equitable society.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

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Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

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Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

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