Feature Archives

On June 1st, auto technicians and service advisors in Mountain View went on strike after their contract with Allison BMW expired. Allison BMW was recently purchased by the Florida based corporation, Autonation. The new owner demanded that workers accept a contract that would, "bring them into line with the rest of the nation." This meant cuts in hourly wages, no paid sick days, fewer paid holidays and higher health premiums and deductables. The issue of greatest concern was that of the flat rate. The company wants a system where the technician is given a time limit for each task. If the worker completes the job within that time frame they are paid the full amount. However, if they don't, for whatever reason, they must complete the work on their own time.

On June 6, a Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge voided a demolition permit for the historic Juana Briones home. Juana Briones de Miranda was a Latina businesswoman, humanitarian, and landowner who built a rare earthen-walled house in the 1840s in what later became Palo Alto.

On May 15th, contract talks for more than 6,000 janitors collapsed when the Bay Area’s largest cleaning companies refused modest pay and benefit improvements to janitors who currently make $347 a week ($23,000 a year). On May 17th, janitors voted to strike and on May 21st, over four hundred workers walked out of a dozen locations in the South Bay. On May 21st, striking janitors staged a morning protest at the annual Intel shareholders meeting for in Mountain View.

The Federal Communications Commission met at Stanford University on April 17 to hear discussion on the future of the Internet. Scores of local Internet users and activists spoke out for 90 seconds each on network neutrality and other concerns. After packing an east coast public hearing with hired seat-warmers, Comcast, AT&T and other industry heavyweights did not show up this time around.

The Federal Communications Commisision will hold a hearing about the future of the Internet on Thursday, April 17th on the campus of Stanford University. The 12pm hearing will be preceded by entertainment from the Raging Grannies. In 2007, several organizations confirmed that Comcast, which is a giant cable company, had been secretly blocking and degrading particular applications over several months, while denying its actions publicly. "Talk Back to the FCC" speaker practice sessions are planned for cities around the Bay Area this week: Monday at 6pm in Berkeley, Tuesday at 4:30 in San Francisco, and Wednesday at 6:30 in East Palo Alto.

A federal court in San Francisco has wiped whistleblower site Wikileaks.org offline, granting an injunction requested by lawyers for a Swiss bank, which is attempting to prevent the public from accessing allegations of illegal activity at the bank. On Feb. 18th, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered Wikileaks.org's San Mateo-based domain registrar to "disable the wikileaks.org domain name" and to "immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name."

On February 7th, more than 100 UNITE HERE Local 19 service sector employees and community activists protested across the street from Google Inc. headquarters in Mountain View to support workers' rights. The rally was held adjacent to the site of Google's future four-star hotel and conference center. Despite repeated requests, Google has refused to address concerns about whether future hotel workers will be able to freely choose to join a union.