Christopher Luxon, New Zealand’s prime minister, stepped up to the podium and addressed attendees: “Marine electrification is the new frontier,” he said. “We’re moving the world forward by doing this.” 

Luxon, other officials and executives were in San Francisco that morning to sign plans to transition the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry company’s fleet of three vessels to electric power. That deal put the ferry service on track to be the first in California to fully electrify, as part of a statewide push to satisfy green-energy mandates. The project, which involves a New Zealand company, will create jobs for Latino San Rafael residents who might otherwise struggle to break into similar work. 

“Latinos don’t have equal access to clean-energy jobs, and any electrification effort we make should be inclusive,” said Graham Balch, chief executive officer of ZeroMar, a San Rafael company that is overseeing the project. 

Maggie McDonogh, the fifth-generation owner of the ferry company, echoed the sentiment: “What’s the point of doing something like this without lifting everybody up?”

The freshly penned work agreement tasks New Zealand-based company EV Maritime with constructing a new plug-in hybrid catamaran that can run entirely on electricity for short trips. 

The company will also replace the hulls of two vessels, formerly powered by diesel engines, to make them lighter so that their new, weaker electric motors can propel them. The redesigns will reduce drag for the boats by raising them 25% out of the water. 

“To go all-electric you need maximum efficiency per pound,” Balch said.

EV Maritime aims to convert the two boats by the end of 2025, a company representative told the San Francisco Public Press, which is California’s zero-emissions deadline for ferries that travel fewer than three nautical miles in a single run. The new hybrid catamaran, which does not fall under the mandate, is scheduled to be built by 2027. The company’s ferries shuttle approximately 100,000 passengers each year, and once they shift to electric power they will spare the North Bay 150 tons of greenhouse gasses annually. 

Compared with other forms of transit, electrified ferries offer the greatest potential to reduce emissions, said Michael Eaglen, co-founder and chief executive officer of EV Maritime. 

“People assume ferries are efficient because they’re public transit, but they’re not. Ferry emissions are many times higher than buses,” Eaglen said. “It’s really important to decarbonize them.” 

Zero-emissions vessels spare the earth’s atmosphere not only greenhouse gasses, but also particulate matter, which pollutes the air people breathe, and nitrogen oxide, which contributes to smog, said Steven Cliff, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, which is funding the electrification project with a $24 million grant.

In addition to buying new charging and grid infrastructure on shore, the grant will fund a program to train and employ Latino San Rafael residents in marine electrification, work in the clean-energy field that is seeing growing demand. The two-year apprenticeship, which ZeroMar will manage with social services organization Canal Alliance, also based in San Rafael, aims to redress imbalanced hiring practices that have kept people of color out of green jobs. Nationally, 16.5% of the clean-energy workforce is Latino, compared with 18% of the workforce across all sectors, according to an analysis by Third Derivative, a climate technology company incubator. 

ZeroMar will select two apprentices later this month from graduates of another Canal Alliance workforce development course, which trains immigrants from Guatemala and other Latin American countries with limited resources who are new to the job landscape, said Fabiola Wilcox, who is overseeing the program as Canal Alliance’s workforce target supervisor. 

Apprentices will earn $35 per hour to learn on the job from experienced technicians and take supplemental coursework at Santa Rosa Junior College. After completing their training, which will include work on the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry vessels, they will get marine mechanic positions at ZeroMar with annual salaries of $100,000. 

If they were working in other fields, like construction, it would likely be harder for them to earn at that level so early in their careers, Wilcox noted.

The program’s applicants were excited to learn about this opportunity, she said.

“It empowered them because they felt a part of it. It’s big for the community,” Wilcox said.

The post Bay Area Ferry Electrification Will Also Be Jobs Program for Local Latinos appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

This charter amendment would adjust supplemental cost-of-living benefits for people in the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System who retired before Nov. 6, 1996. It would eliminate a requirement that the retirement system be fully funded based on the prior year’s market value of its assets. Also, the system would adjust those retirees’ base allowance to account for the five years when they didn’t receive supplemental payments because of the full-funding requirement. Those years were 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018 and 2019, and supporters say this change would affect approximately 4,400 retirees, in a system of 74,000 active and retired employees and their families.

This measure incorporates an exception: In years when the retirement system is not fully funded, supplemental payments for cost of living adjustments would be capped at $200 for eligible retirees whose pensions exceed $50,000 annually.

An Aug. 16 letter from the city’s controller to the Department of Elections indicated that if this measure is approved, it would likely cost the city $8 million annually for 10 years, of which $5 million each year would come from the city’s General Fund. The measure requires a simple majority to pass.

An add-on to Proposition A concerns hiring the system’s executive director, who is selected by the city’s Retirement Board, which oversees the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System. Currently, the board must follow San Francisco’s civil service hiring rules, which limit the salary and benefits the board can offer when hiring an executive director. Proposition A would change that and allow the board to enter into an individual employment contract with any executive director hired on or after Jan. 1, 2023, without regard to the city’s regular civil service pay limits.

In July 2021, the executive director position merged with the CIO position into a new combined position of chief executive officer and chief investment officer. That dual position has been held by Alison Romano since June 2022.

The person in this position is responsible for $34.5 billion in assets — as of June 30, 2021 — and charged with ensuring financial stability for a system that serves 74,000 San Francisco employees and retirees.

In recruiting for this job, the city competes with non-governmental investment and finance leaders paying sums far beyond San Francisco’s civil service salary grades — and often extended with additional compensation based on investment performance.

This measure requires more than 50% affirmative votes to pass.

The post Proposition A — Retiree Supplemental Cost of Living Adjustment; Retirement Board Contract with Executive Director appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In a previously unreported vote last month, the commission issued a decision requiring that all ride-hailing firms train drivers to avoid sexual assault and harassment, adopt procedures for investigating complaints and use uniform terminology in their annual reports to the agency so it can accurately monitor them.

But the commission softened its initial proposal by dropping a requirement that the companies inform victims they could “opt in” to speak with its investigators. Although the agency had said the measure would help it ensure firms properly respond to assault claims, it instead decided the cases would be better handled by company investigators once they receive appropriate training.

The commission hailed the new rules as “a necessary milestone” in its “ongoing commitment to ensuring the safety” of transportation network companies, as the firms are known, and a signal to assault victims that their claims will receive “the necessary consideration and sensitivity that respects their rights.”

In comments before the vote on June 23, 2022, commissioners said they sought to balance holding the industry accountable and protecting victim privacy.

“It’s important that we have sufficient information to understand what’s happening and how best to explore ways to prevent these incidents, protect victims, and also ensure their confidentiality,” Commissioner Darcie Houck said.

Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen said the decision addressed “an extraordinarily serious and sensitive set of issues involving assault. We really need to tread very, very carefully, and I think this decision does that.” 

Local officials said the move was a welcome improvement in how the agency addresses a longstanding risk on rides.

“The CPUC’s action to standardize how Uber and Lyft are supposed to protect passengers from sexual assault and harassment is way overdue,” Rafael Mandelman, a San Francisco supervisor and chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said in an email. “I hope this is a sign that the state is prepared to take these issues more seriously, sooner rather than later.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who sued Uber over what he alleged were its false safety claims in 2014 when he was San Francisco’s district attorney, said in an email: “This is a positive step. I hope that both the Commission and rideshare companies work collaboratively to improve public safety.”

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to questions about the decision. 

The commission is California’s primary regulator of ride-hailing firms and the state’s only agency that collects comprehensive safety data on the industry. Uber and Lyft represent 99.9 percent of the state’s ride-hailing business.

The agency legalized ride-hailing in California in 2013 and other states followed suit. Within months, there were media reports of alleged assaults around the country.

But the commission did not specifically require that firms include sexual assaults and harassment complaints in their mandatory annual reports to the agency before 2017, according to documents released to the San Francisco Public Press under the state public records act.

Moreover, it failed to require that they use consistent definitions of assaults and harassment, which resulted in unreliable data. The problem was revealed only in October 2021, after the Public Press obtained a partially redacted 2020 annual report. The agency has not released other annual reports.

Company representatives have said they submitted all required information and that safety is a top priority. They say less than 1% of their rides have any safety issues.

Numerous passengers have sued Uber and Lyft alleging the companies failed to prevent and investigate assaults. The firms routinely deny the claims, and settlements are usually confidential. Last week, eight women and two men sued Uber in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging they were attacked by Uber drivers within the last three years. Navideh Forghani, an Uber spokesperson, declined by email to comment on the two lawsuits.  

Meanwhile, the companies have released their own studies using definitions they developed with experts. Uber’s 2019 “U.S. Safety Report” listed 5,981 alleged incidents of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018 nationally. It did not break out incidents by state, but Uber later said 1,243 occurred in California.

Last month, Uber published a second study, reporting 3,824 alleged incidents in 2019 and 2020 nationally.

In its “Community Safety Report,” published in 2021, Lyft acknowledged 4,158 alleged sexual assaults nationally, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. It also did not include state tallies.

Both companies said in emails that they supported the commission’s requirement that they use a uniform system of definitions, or “taxonomy,” in reporting assaults to the agency.

Under the new rules, sexual assault is defined as the touching, or attempted touching, of sexual body parts of a driver or passenger against their will. This includes victims who are unconscious at the time. Several passengers have claimed in lawsuits that they were assaulted after passing out in the back seat.

Sexual harassment is defined as the “unwelcome visual, verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct” based on sex, directed at a passenger or driver, such as inappropriate personal questions, remarks about appearance and “flirting.”

The agency said it based the definitions on state criminal and civil law and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The commission rejected definitions that Uber and Lyft developed after consulting with experts. The agency also rejected Uber’s suggestion that it only report incidents in which it had deactivated the driver, saying this would obscure a true tally of assault claims.

Uber and Lyft told the commission that as of at least 2019 they had begun training drivers on avoiding sexual assault with assistance from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), which describes itself as “the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.”

But now the commission is mandating that all ride-hailing firms develop a program in consultation with a recognized expert to annually train drivers using examples of proscribed acts. It must cover harassment based on gender identity and expression, as required under California law.

Firms are required to provide a copy of their policies for preventing sexual assaults and harassment to drivers and passengers. They must develop an investigation manual that requires a timely response to assault claims and documentation. And they must consult experts to establish investigator qualifications, training and procedures for “trauma informed” investigations.

The companies said they had added many safety features over the years, as well as sexual misconduct education for drivers. But neither responded to emailed questions about whether they should have acted earlier in requiring more rigorous training for drivers and investigators.

The agency emphasized that the new rules are “interim” and that firms must update their programs “as necessary” after an industry-wide evaluation by experts.

Genevieve Shiroma, the commissioner who wrote the decision, said before the vote, “This is crucial work and we will continue our work in this area.”

This article was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. See previous stories at sfpublicpress.org/series/ride-hailings-dark-data. Contact Seth Rosenfeld at srosenfeld@sfpublicpress.org.

The post Uber, Lyft Must Adopt Measures to Prevent Sexual Assaults, California Regulator Rules appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

On a chilly and still dark spring morning, just before 5 a.m., Recology recycling driver Gareth Willey was working up a sweat. He is a recycling driver for Recology Sunset Scavenger and was coming to the end of his Tuesday route in a residential neighborhood. “Civic” was hitching a ride to get a sense for the job and how it has changed during the pandemic. 

“It’s the cardboard that’s killing us,” Willey said. “It just makes this job so much more difficult.” 

Some customers had their boxes broken down and neatly bundled, which helps, he said. But on some of his runs, he would open a door to a basement and find boxes piled high and would have to figure out a way to get all the material out to the street and into the truck. 

On the flip side, so many people working from home meant traffic had reduced significantly. And crowded streets are a problem for the driver of a massive garbage truck. 

“That’s one of the quieter streets, the one I met you up on. There is some traffic, especially on the side streets, but it’s not unbearable. But pretty much the rest of my route is — it’s like a war zone,” Willey said, on the way to the freeway. His route complete, he now needed to get to the recycling facility where he would empty the truck. The predawn streets were already clogged with commuters. 

At the facility, truck after truck dumped collected material onto a tipping floor, where it was scooped into a machine that fed items into a system of conveyor belts three stories high. Human and machine sorters carefully picked through the material.   

In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting bales of material with more than 1% impurities. The sorting facility must work to a very high standard to prevent contaminants from being compressed into bales with recyclables.  

Plastic bags are a contaminant. And despite their short useful lifetimes, they are stubbornly persistent in the environment and in the sorting facility — bags and films can wrap themselves around sorting equipment. Currently, as workers pull them from the recycling stream, plastic bags are sent to landfill. Often, they are soiled with food or other liquids, or used to hold other kinds of recyclables. 

Nonetheless, the city asks that consumers place clean, dry and bundled plastic bags in blue bins. That’s because for a brief time, there was a buyer for them, and there could be a market for them again in the near future. If a buyer is found, residents should already be accustomed to placing their bags in the recycling, rather than in the trash where they have no chance of being diverted from landfill. 

Generally, the best approach is to avoid plastic bags and low-quality, single-use plastics altogether, said Robert Reed, public relations manager for Recology’s recycling and composting programs in San Francisco. Manufacturers are watching what choices consumers make. 

“The real answer is to decline them whenever possible to reduce our consumption of plastic bags,” he said. “Some people don’t think voting with your consumer dollars is powerful, but they’re wrong. Voting with your consumer dollars is extremely powerful.”

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post After You Unbox, Bin Your Recyclables the Right Way appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

While customers switching from ride-hailing apps to taxis does help drivers who need the business, Gruberg said, that doesn’t mean drivers aren’t struggling to make ends meet. Rates are set by the city, and drivers are responsible for many of their own costs whether they have their own cab or they lease a car from a company.

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Soaring Uber, Lyft Prices Send Passengers to Taxis, but Drivers Still Struggle appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post With California Set To Reopen, Backlogs Persist at Unemployment Agency appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Juan Hernandez, a janitor with decades of experience who works at a 42-story office building, joined “Civic” to give a sense of the day-to-day reality of this work during the pandemic.

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen daily at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on 102.5 FM in San Francisco, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Cleaning During COVID-19: How the Pandemic Affected Janitorial Work appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Frontline Dispatch: SF Paramedic Reflects on Pandemic appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Murphy began driving for Lyft in 2017.

“I felt that it was a godsend, because they offered this whole thing around flexibility,” she said. But that perception shifted quickly. “There’s nothing flexible about not having access to restrooms. There’s nothing flexible about having the looming threat of an accident with no coverage. There’s nothing flexible about me being in the middle of a pandemic, with not having access, particularly in the beginning, of safety equipment. And, you know, those things are really difficult.”

Uber and Lyft have both issued statements emphasizing that they are trying to support drivers throughout the pandemic. Lyft says it has provided tens of thousands of face masks, cleaning supplies and in-car partitions to drivers at no cost to them, and that Lyft does not profit off personal protective equipment it sells to drivers. Uber told Business Insider that it had allocated $50 million toward safety supplies for drivers and had provided 30 million masks and other cleaning supplies to drivers worldwide.

In March 2020, Murphy was completing a doctoral program at a graduate theological union and her primary source of income was driving for Lyft. She decided she would be able to get by without her earnings and chose to stop driving so as not to expose herself to the coronavirus. Others chose to keep working.

“There were quite a few workers that had their backs against the walls, and that were forced to work,” she said.

During that same pandemic, employment law in California changed with the passage of Proposition 22. The ballot measure categorized gig workers — people who work through apps like Lyft, Uber or Instacart or DoorDash — as independent contractors rather than as employees of those companies. Because they are not considered drivers’ and delivery workers’ employers, the companies are also exempt from providing benefits like unemployment protections, minimum wage and sick leave. Drivers and labor organizers have described that system as exploitative, because drivers lack full employee protections and earn less than they should. The Labor Center at the University of California, Berkeley, in an October 2019 analysis of Proposition 22, wrote that while the initiative guarantees drivers 120% of minimum wage, since it only applies when the drivers are actually en route to or transporting passengers, drivers may be paid for only 67% of their actual working time.

Murphy said that in the Bay Area, where the majority of gig workers are immigrants and people of color, the classification of gig workers as independent contractors deepens existing inequities.

“Not only are we in the middle of a pandemic, but we’re also in the middle of a movement that’s been really pivotal as relates to COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. And so our perspective is that we know that economic justice and racial justice are interrelated,” Murphy said. “At the end of the day, what you have is a law that continues to create a caste system, not designed to have people be economically sustainable, or work in safe working conditions.”

The post Gig Worker Classification Worsens Inequities During Pandemic, Organizer Says appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Willey ran from bin to bin, rolled them up to the lifter arms, and then worked the levers that tip the bins into the truck. Occasionally he picked a key from the rings that clanked in a compartment in the truck’s cabin, opened a gate, and hauled a bin up or down stairs from a patio or basement to empty it. Every so often a cloud of paper, cardboard and plastic flew out from an overfull bin and he had to pick up and toss the pieces back into the truck. That was one major change Willey saw when the coronavirus shut down the city: masses of cardboard from mail order boxes. 

“It’s the cardboard that’s killing us,” he said. “It just makes this job so much more difficult.”

Some customers had their boxes broken down and neatly bundled, which helps, Willey said. But too often on some of his runs, he would open a door to a basement and find the boxes piled high, and would have to figure out a way to get all the material out onto the street and into the truck.

“It’s still really rough out there right now, but the first three, four months were just brutal, it was overwhelming,” he said. “It was like, you know, a kick in the stomach every time you opened the door and looked down.”

On the flip side, so many people working from home meant traffic had reduced significantly. And crowded streets are a problem for the driver of a massive garbage truck. 

“That’s one of the quieter streets, the one I met you up on. There is some traffic, especially on the side streets, but it’s not unbearable. But pretty much the rest of my route is, it’s like a war zone,” Willey said, on the way to the freeway. His route complete, he now needed to get to the recycling facility where he would empty the truck. The predawn streets were already clogged with commuters.

That is the reason Willey’s shift begins so early. He normally finishes picking up bins by around 6 a.m. Any later and irritated drivers and cyclists start yelling at him as they pass, or passing him at unsafe speeds. 

“It’s terrifying. Even being out there with a truck,” he said. “I don’t wake up at 12:30 in the morning by choice. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to do it.”

Recology drivers are aware that residents aren’t happy with the early schedule either, he said. He does his utmost to be as quiet as possible by running the engine only at low speeds and carrying rather than dragging bins up and down stairs. 

That adds more physical effort to an already demanding and dangerous job, but Willey has tried other careers (including law enforcement, which he hated) and found himself in the sanitation business for more than 20 years.

“It’s not for everybody,” he said. “But I actually enjoy this part of work, the endorphin dump. You know, you feel good when you’re done. Assuming that things go well.”

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Yes, Mail-Order Boxes Are a Pain for Sanitation Workers appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.