Monterey County Business, Economy & Jobs Digest

The California Faculty Association is seeking a 12 percent pay increase, while university officials counter with 5 percent in each of the next three years.

With nine months’ experience in the Assembly, Liz Ortega will lead the Labor committee after a strike-filled summer and several wins for low-wage workers.

A new study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found that approximately 3,400 kilotons of lithium are located below Imperial County in Southern California. This could produce more than $7 billion in lithium carbonate annually, helping power significant numbers of electric vehicles.

California’s minimum hourly wage will rise from $15.50 to $16 on Jan. 1. Ahead of this, retailers like Costco and Target have raised their minimum pay in recent years.

A graduate student workers union and the University of Southern California have agreed to a three-year labor contract that averts a looming strike. The deal calls for pay increases each of the three years.

About 475,000 people moved to the Golden State in 2022. That's the third-highest number of people moving to a state in the U.S., trailing only Texas and Florida.

A new study by Forbes shows that four cities in the Golden State—Los Angeles, Fresno, San Diego and Sacramento—are among the 21 worst cities in the United States for holiday travel. Forbes looked at a variety of factors including car accidents, hotel prices and air travel.

Fulcrum Bioenergy, a California-based firm that seeks to turn plastics into jet fuel, has defaulted on $289 million in bond funding and put a major project on hold. This comes as several U.S. Senators wrote to the IRS urging that similar companies not receive federal tax credits.

HERBL, one of California’s biggest cannabis companies, collapsed earlier this year. The company, which sold $700 million of cannabis last year, reportedly shorted the state $17 million in taxes.

Hundreds of OpenAI workers signed a letter threatening to quit if the company’s entire board didn’t resign and if two former executives weren’t brought back. This came after the board fired one of the execs, Sam Altman, who then joined the other exec, Greg Brockman, at Microsoft.

The 31-mile-long wine trail along River, Foothill, and Los Coches roads in the Salinas Valley is undergoing a name change and rebrand just as wineries along the route are reaping the fruits of an exceptional wine-growing season.

Residents of Planada and Pajaro want state aid to help alleviate debt incurred from rebuilding after January floods. Local officials want some money to go elsewhere.

The utility giant got the okay from the California Public Utilities Commission to hike rates next year. Average increases will range between about $10 and $33, depending on whether customers receive gas, electricity or both from PG&E.

More than 4,000 state scientists have worked under an expired contract for three years. Average wages in 2020 were $83,586, 27% less than state engineers’ pay. The state filed an unfair labor practice charge to stop the strike.

California has some of the highest gas prices in the United States. These prices might ease mildly in the months ahead.

The California Public Utilities Commission will vote on Nov. 16 about raising PG&E bills. The utility giant is lobbying the state about one of the proposals that’s been put forward.

More than half a million California health care workers are expected to see a pay increase in January thanks to a law raising the minimum wage for their industry. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law without a clear estimate about how much it would cost the state.

The faculty union of the California State University plans to hold one-day strikes at four campuses in early December, pushing the nation’s largest four-year public university to secure 12% raises and other key concessions.

Monterey Peninsula Unified School District has launched a new bus driver cadet training program with the hopes it will incentivize new drivers to join the district.

The Elmore Desert Ranch gets 22.5 billion gallons of water from the Colorado River, almost as much as is cleared for Scottsdale, Ariz. And that’s just a fraction of the 386.5 billion gallons from the river going to 19 other families in Imperial Valley.

About 150 students, staff and faculty had a chance to ask questions about California State University, Monterey Bay’s budget for the 2023/24 fiscal year at a Nov. 9 meeting.

Hartnell College Faculty Association members organized a rally at the Main Campus on Oct. 25 to protest against working conditions for part-time teachers and to ask administrators for improvements.

Richard Yarnold of the Fishwife Restaurant in Pacific Grove won the “Papa Vince Award” at the Monterey County Hospitality Association’s 34th annual Hospitality Recognition Luncheon.

NextDoor is among the latest California tech companies to lay off staff. As many as 200 company workers could be affected.

Some venues in the San Diego area rely on paying workers under the table in cash, for rates that work out below minimum wage, an investigation by Voice of San Diego has found.

Young people are stuck earning low wages, working long hours—often while going to school—and often without benefits or work protections. Their hardships may hamper the state’s economy for years to come, researchers say.

A new report by the UCLA Labor Center finds that young workers in California face a variety of challenges. These include pay barely above minimum wage, discrimination, and high rents.

The vodka—shaped like a water pipe and inspired in part by the movie “Up in Smoke”—is being made in partnership with Scotts Valley spirits house UBlendIt.

Redfin data shows that tens of thousands of more people look to leave California than buy homes in the Golden State. There’s an exception, however: the Sacramento region, which remains one of the hottest homebuying markets in the country.

Two theme park giants, Six Flags and Cedar Fair, announced they are merging. It could have potential impacts on California theme parks like Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.

California’s population of homeless veterans has plateaued despite billions of dollars in state spending to create housing for former service members. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to shift resources to focus on veterans with serious mental health conditions.

The USA is likely to see consistent job growth from the transition to net zero, but the gains will be unevenly distributed, shows a new analysis conducted by Imperial College London researchers and published in Nature Climate Change.