worker

California’s statewide minimum wage is set to rise next year.

Starting on Jan. 1, 2027, the statewide minimum wage will rise to $17.40 an hour, an increase Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted about on Friday.

Newsom — who has been eyeing a 2028 presidential run — said in a statement that California’s fiscal policies helped turn the state into “one of the strongest economies in the world” while the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress fail to address “everyday cost pressures for working families.” The federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 per hour since 2009.

“For years, Donald Trump and Republicans have blocked efforts to raise the federal minimum wage while handing tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations,” Newsom said. “California has chosen a different path — one that rewards work, grows the economy, and puts working families first.”

Not everyone agreed. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton took to social media on Friday to decry the minimum wage increase as an “attack on workers” that will “crush small businesses.”

The current minimum wage in California for all employers is $16.90 an hour, though some workers must be paid more to comply with city and county rules and other state laws.

California’s minimum wage automatically increases each year to keep pace with inflation. The current system was established in 2016, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a first-in-the-nation plan to gradually boost the state’s hourly minimum wage to $15 an hour, then adjust the wage annually based on inflation starting in 2024.

“This is about economic justice, it’s about people,” Brown said during the bill signing.

The specific amount of the minimum wage increase is tied to inflation — as measured by the federal consumer price index — and capped at 3.5%, according to state law. The state director of finance is responsible for calculating the adjusted minimum wage on or before Aug. 1 each year.

California has the highest minimum wage out of all 50 states, according to the governor’s office. (Only Washington, D.C.’s, minimum wage ranks higher, at $18.40.)

The state in 2024 raised minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour. The fast-food wage requirement applies to chains with more than 60 locations nationwide.

Researchers have been split on the economic impacts of the pay increase for fast-food workers, which chains like Pizza Hut and Cinnabon have fought. (Earlier this year, a major Carl’s Jr. franchisee cited the $20 fast-food minimum wage when he applied for bankruptcy protection.)

California also has higher minimum wages for healthcare workers at large facilities as a result of a union-backed bill Newsom signed in 2023. Under the legislation, many healthcare workers’ minimum wages in July rose from $24 an hour to $25 an hour.

Some cities in California, including Emeryville and West Hollywood, have opted to impose even higher city minimum wages exceeding $20 per hour.

Most states have minimum wages above the federal minimum. Five Republican-led states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — do not have an independent state minimum wage and default to the federal minimum.

While a 2019 Pew Research Center poll found that two-thirds of Americans support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, a deep partisan split over the issue remains.

July 16 (Asia Today) — Divisions among Samsung Electronics labor unions are widening as unions representing different business units pursue separate compensation demands and bargaining strategies.

The Samsung Electronics Donghaeng Union, which primarily represents employees in the Device eXperience division, staged a rally Thursday demanding compensation equivalent to about 1,000 company shares per employee.

Meanwhile, the Samsung Electronics branch of the Samsung Group Super-Enterprise Union, whose membership is concentrated in the Device Solutions division, held its first policy committee meeting for the semiconductor business.

The divisions developed from a dispute over performance bonuses and have continued despite the conclusion of companywide wage negotiations.

The Donghaeng union held its rally near the main entrance of Samsung Electronics’ Suwon campus in Gyeonggi Province.

“We strongly condemn management for unilaterally excluding the DX division and reaching a closed-door agreement without transparency,” the union said.

More than 7,000 people were reported to have attended, more than twice the approximately 3,000 participants initially expected by organizers.

Participants wore black and carried signs reading “Same company, same rights,” “Rest in peace, DX” and “Discrimination off, fairness on.”

“Behind the company’s remarkable achievements are the dedication and hard work of DX employees,” the union said. “However, management created an extreme compensation gap between business divisions during the latest negotiations, leaving DX employees feeling excluded and relatively deprived.”

The union called on Samsung Electronics to immediately offer each DX employee compensation equivalent to about 1,000 company shares.

It also demanded that the company secure funding in advance for companywide employee compensation in 2027 and disclose the amount transparently.

The Donghaeng union said it would hold another rally in Seoul’s Seocho District unless the company takes additional action.

Lee Ho-seok, head of the Suwon branch of the National Samsung Electronics Union, attended Thursday’s rally and suggested his union could join forces with Donghaeng over what union leaders described as management’s exclusion of DX employees.

“To create one Samsung Electronics, rights, respect and compensation must be provided equally,” Lee said. “Management must answer our questions.”

The Super-Enterprise Union, meanwhile, held the kickoff meeting of its DS Division Policy Committee on Thursday.

The committee discussed its operating rules, plans for the 2027 wage and collective bargaining negotiations and its response to the company’s Mega Project initiative.

The union said the committee would meet monthly and hold regular consultations with management.

The union is also preparing to request separate bargaining units that would allow employees in the DS and DX divisions to negotiate independently with management.

Choi Seung-ho, chairman of the Super-Enterprise Union’s Samsung Electronics branch, said he intends to secure the change this year.

“The Super-Enterprise Union will responsibly lead the 2027 wage and collective bargaining negotiations rather than participate in joint negotiations,” Choi said. “With about four months remaining before negotiations begin in early December, we will use the policy committee to develop a thorough set of demands.”

The unions began moving separately after Samsung Electronics introduced a special performance bonus for the DS division in May.

As unions increasingly organized along business-unit lines, disputes among them intensified.

As of Thursday, the Super-Enterprise Union had 54,286 members, the Donghaeng union had 28,877 and the National Samsung Electronics Union had 22,826.

The Super-Enterprise Union previously represented a majority of Samsung Electronics’ unionized workforce. Its membership declined after large numbers of DX employees left, while membership in the Donghaeng union and the National Samsung Electronics Union increased.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260716010006332

Employers are bracing for what could be the highest rise in health insurance premiums in 16 years in 2027, driving up the average cost of family coverage in California to more than $30,000 — the price of a new compact car.

Health insurance companies expect the cost of medical services and prescription drugs to soar by 9% in 2027, according to a new survey by PwC, the highest rise the researchers have found since 2011. Insurers use those expected medical costs to calculate the price of premiums in the coming year. Many employers require workers to pay part of that cost.

Experts say the escalating costs of employers’ premiums are reducing workers’ wages and take-home pay, while raising the prices of goods and services in California and across the country.

“It’s going to erode the standard of living for lots of California families,” said Glenn Melnick, a USC professor of healthcare finance.

Melnick said when employers are forced to spend more on health insurance, there is less money available for wages. The skyrocketing premiums, he said, are like a hidden pay cut for working families.

The higher cost also has small-business owners wondering whether they can continue paying for their workers’ health insurance.

Co-owner Camden Avery makes a sale at the Booksmith in San Francisco.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

This year, premiums for staff at the Booksmith, an independent bookstore on Haight Street in San Francisco, leaped by 17%, said Christin Evans, the store’s owner. Next year could bring even more pain. The monthly premium for four employees is $3,250.

To try to cope, Evans said, she has reduced staff hours by closing the store earlier.

“We have to absorb it,” she said. “We’re not paying the wages we want to pay or delivering the customer service we’d like to deliver.”

Seventeen million Californians receive health benefits from an employer. Those premiums have been rising faster in California than the national average.

Between 2022 and 2025, the average family premium for employers in the state rose by 24% to $28,397, according to a survey by KFF and the California Healthcare Foundation. That was nearly double the 12.2% increase in consumer prices during those years.

Hospital, pharmaceutical and other medical costs escalated even faster after 2025.

PwC’s annual survey of insurers last year found an expected rise of 8.5% in 2026, which its researchers later revised to 9%.

A key driver of the rising medical costs, according to experts, is prices charged by hospitals. In recent years, some health systems, including UCLA and Cedars-Sinai, have grown larger by buying nearby hospitals and expanding their clinics, becoming more dominant in the community and reducing competition.

Melnick said the expansion of some health systems into giant organizations means that they can “tell insurance companies what the price will be.”

A Cedars-Sinai spokesperson pointed to a 2022 paper that found that for-profit health system prices had escalated faster than those at nonprofit systems like Cedars. The paper was partly funded by Cedars.

“Cedars-Sinai Health System’s growth in recent years has expanded access to the highest levels of patient care and medical innovation across the Los Angeles region,” the spokesperson said.

UCLA did not respond to requests for comment.

Another factor is the rising cost of prescription drugs. Spending on cancer drugs, the most costly category, reached $143 billion in 2025, an annual increase of 12%, the PwC survey found.

The nation’s spending on obesity medicines, including GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, soared by 81% last year, PwC said. A 30-day supply of the drugs lists for more than $1,000.

An Ozempic injection pen.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Gallup said this month that its survey found that 11% of U.S. adults are now taking the GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.

The obesity drug manufacturers say the medicines can reduce medical expenses by preventing other costly conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, but data don’t yet show such reductions, PwC said.

Researchers at the California Healthcare Foundation say a large part of the problem is that hospital operating costs, prescription drug prices and doctor fees have been allowed to grow unchecked for decades.

The foundation estimated in a report last year that 25 cents of every dollar spent in California — more than $73 billion each year — does nothing to help patients. Instead it goes to excessive profits for providers, administrative red tape and other waste, the foundation found.

California employer premiums are expected to rise next year for another reason: Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers agreed in June to raise taxes on the private plans to help pay for the cost of Medi-Cal, which covers the medical costs for the poor, and to help balance the state budget.

The California Assn. of Health Plans said insurers will add the tax to next year’s premiums. The trade group estimates the higher tax will cost each insured person $100 next year or $400 for a family of four.

The higher tax must still be approved by the Trump administration. Republicans in the state Assembly wrote a letter to the administration this month, asking officials to deny the request.

Researchers also expect a jump in premiums for families without employer insurance who purchase policies on state marketplaces such as Covered California. Some of those families faced double-digit increases this year because of rising medical costs and the end of enhanced federal subsidies that Congress had approved as a temporary measure during the pandemic. Almost 400,000 Californians dropped their Obamacare plans this year as prices soared.

To deal with the higher premiums, some employers are changing the design of their health plans to shift more of the cost to workers by raising deductibles and co-pays.

Those higher out-of-pocket costs are just the beginning of the fallout. Twenty-two percent of chief financial officers surveyed by Mercer in February said the high price of health benefits had forced them to stop hiring or led to layoffs. Thirty-six percent of those executives said the rising premium costs have harmed workers’ wages and raises.

Candice Elliott, a human resources consultant in Santa Cruz, said smaller businesses such as restaurants struggle to find ways to cover the higher costs.

Many restaurants, Elliott said, already have a slim margin between their revenues and expenses. When premiums rise, she said, some restaurants have added a fee to the customer bill to help cover workers’ health costs. Others have hiked menu prices.

“That impacts affordability for the consumer,” Elliott said. “It makes inflation greater.”

Some small businesses have moved from so-called silver plans to the lower-priced bronze plans, she said, which cover less of the employee’s monthly premium. “It’s effectively a decrease in pay for the employee,” she said.

Others are hiring employees overseas, Elliott said. “You can pay someone in the global south half of what you pay an American and still afford them a good standard of living and benefits that are unaffordable in the U.S.,” she said.

Melnick, the USC professor, said many workers don’t realize how much they are losing as their employers’ premiums rise. He tells people to look at their W-2 tax form from last year, where employers are required to report the cost of the employee’s premium in box 12, under “Code DD.”

He said USC’s premium for his family of four is $45,000.

“The base is so high that even a small increase has a big impact,” he said. The continuing annual increases, he said, are “bad news for everybody.”

July 10 (UPI) — Brazilian labor authorities rescued a 62-year-old woman from conditions they described as analogous to slavery after she spent more than five decades working as an unpaid domestic worker for the same family in the northeastern state of Ceará.

The rescue was carried out by Brazil’s Labor Inspection Office, part of the Ministry of Labor and Employment, after an anonymous complaint came through the government’s hotline for reporting labor abuses.

Labor officials told local media the woman, whose identity was not disclosed, performed household duties and cared for the family’s children. Her daily routine began around 4:30 a.m. as she prepared breakfast and got the children ready for school. She worked for 55 years without receiving a salary.

According to O Globo, the Labor Inspection Office found that the woman began working for the family at age 7 and remained employed continuously across three generations.

Throughout that period, she received no regular wages, had no financial independence and was denied the educational and economic opportunities available to members of the employing family.

Labor inspectors estimated the labor rights owed to the woman exceed 1.5 million Brazilian reais, or about $290,000. The calculation includes unpaid wages, vacation pay, annual bonuses, contributions to Brazil’s severance indemnity fund, overtime and other employment benefits, according to O Dia.

The employers signed a conduct adjustment agreement with the Labor Prosecutor’s Office in an effort to partially compensate the victim. Under the agreement, they committed to paying 50,000 reais, or about $10,000, in severance benefits, purchasing a home worth at least 150,000 reais, or about $29,000, for the worker and covering her social security contributions until retirement., according to Folha de S.Paulo.

The agreement does not fully settle the woman’s labor claims, and she may still seek additional compensation through the courts.

Under a joint decision by oversight agencies and a Brazilian human rights assistance center, the woman will temporarily remain at the family’s home but will no longer perform any work.

Authorities said an immediate separation could cause severe emotional distress because of her long-standing dependency and the abrupt loss of her only source of companionship after more than five decades.

The arrangement is temporary while social workers help her through a gradual process of gaining independence, learning to read and write, rebuilding ties with her biological family and preparing for an autonomous life.

The employers’ legal team challenged the findings authorities issued.

In a statement, the family’s attorneys said there had been no “rescue” and denied any criminal wrongdoing. They argued the decades-long relationship with the woman was based on shared living arrangements, care and mutual affection.

Although forced labor in Brazil has historically been concentrated in rural areas, cases of domestic servitude in urban households highlight what labor authorities describe as a serious structural problem. Labor inspectors reported a 400% increase in inspections involving domestic work in 2025.

The Labor Prosecutor’s Office has found that such cases predominantly involve Black women with limited education who are subjected from childhood to conditions of servitude disguised as “family affection.”

WASHINGTON — A former Olympic canoe racer pleaded not guilty on Thursday to deliberately damaging the recently renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a politically charged case that his defense attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided as an abuse of prosecutorial power.

David Hearn, who competed in three Summer Olympics, entered the plea through one of his attorneys during his initial appearance in Washington, D.C. Superior Court. Hearn, 67, of Bethesda, Md., was indicted last Thursday on a single felony count of property destruction.

In front of a packed courtroom, D.C. Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean did not require Hearn to be supervised by the court while he is free awaiting a trial. A status hearing was scheduled for Aug. 5.

Prosecutor Kevin Reddington said the government wasn’t seeking any court supervision for Hearn, but just a “ stay-away order” without specifying in court where it wanted to keep Hearn away from.

Mary Dohrmann, one of Hearn’s attorneys, urged the judge not to impose any conditions of court supervision, calling Hearn an “upstanding citizen and member of the community.”

“The government’s evidence is weak,” she added.

Dozens of supporters, many carrying homemade signs, gathered outside the courthouse and waited for Hearn to leave after the hearing.

President Trump ordered a multimillion-dollar renovation of the Reflecting Pool ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary this month, but the project has been plagued with problems. Workers have used chemicals to curtail an algae bloom. Trump has said the pool likely would need to be drained again for liner repairs after chunks of blue coating were seen floating at the surface.

Trump has claimed without substantiation that vandals dumped fertilizer into the pool and slashed the coating with a box cutter. U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, said last week that six other people were arrested on misdemeanor charges related to the $16 million pool project.

Hearn’s attorneys have said the charges against him are based on a “concocted narrative” and “should be alarming to every American.”

“This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures,” the lawyers said in a statement. “The justice system exists to determine facts, not to provide political cover.”

Hearn previously told the Associated Press that he was detained by National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police for five hours after stopping by the pool during a 64-mile bike ride on June 19. He said he reached in to examine newly peeled coating and briefly touched a chunk attached to the side of the pool, but obeyed a park worker who told him to let go of it.

Pirro accused Hearn of causing more than $1,000 in damage by ripping up recently installed sealant from the pool and acting belligerently toward an employee who told him to stop.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

In 2023, California regulators levied more than $100,000 in fines against the private operator of a federal immigration facility, kicking off a three-year battle over whether detainees who do work at the facilities should be considered employees.

The question went beyond semantics: If considered employees, the detainees would be subject to state worker protection laws.

A legal settlement announced this week now affirms that private immigrant detention facilities are subject to California’s workplace safety and health requirements.

“Every worker deserves a safe and healthy workplace and should be able to report workplace hazards without fear of retaliation,” said Denisse Gómez, spokesperson for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA.

“Individuals who perform work in these facilities are entitled to workplace safety protections, and this settlement reinforces Cal/OSHA’s commitment to enforcing those protections and safeguarding vulnerable workers,” she added.

Under the settlement between California and the GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison company, the company recently withdrew its legal challenges and agreed to pay more than $100,000 in the fines.

The GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.

Back in 2023, Cal/OSHA issued $104,510 in fines against the GEO Group. The agency had found six violations of state code by the company after detainees complained about a lack of protective equipment and proper training while cleaning the facility for $1 per day.

Detainees alleged they routinely wiped black mold off shower walls at the facility, saw black dust spew from air vents and used cleaning solutions that lacked instructions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The biggest fine levied against the GEO Group was for failure to establish and maintain “effective written procedures to reduce employee risk of exposure to aerosol transmissible disease.”

Advocates viewed Cal/OSHA’S recognition of the detainees as workers as a victory that could pave the way for future labor rights fights at other detention centers in the state.

But the GEO Group appealed, arguing that detainees participating in ICE’s voluntary work program make their own schedules and aren’t employees, so hazard exposure couldn’t be “as a result of assigned duties,” as California law states. Plus, the company argued, there wasn’t enough evidence that detainees were exposed to any hazard.

Early last year, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board rejected the GEO Group’s argument and found that detainees should be considered “affected employees.”

The GEO Group sued, but three days before a California Superior Court hearing in May, the company and Cal/OSHA reached the settlement.

Along with paying the fines, the GEO Group agreed to draft plans for avoiding aerosol transmissions at 12 secure and reentry facilities in California, including five detention centers that hold immigrants.

“GEO ensures detainees are afforded the necessary tools, equipment, and personal protective equipment … to safely and effectively perform any necessary tasks,” the settlement states.

Gómez said the settlement also leaves intact the appeals board’s ruling that civil immigration detainees who participate in work programs can participate in proceedings anonymously, “acknowledging the potential for retaliation when individuals raise workplace safety concerns.”

But the question of whether detainees are employees and deserve certain protections isn’t entirely resolved — at least not for the federal government.

Last month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new standards for detention facilities across the country. The revised guidelines “emphasize that detainee volunteers participating in the voluntary work program are not considered facility and/or government employees” and thus not entitled to labor regulations.

Attorney Mariel Villarreal said the timing of the new detention standards made her question whether the GEO Group had asked ICE to specify in its standards that detainees are not workers in response to its battle with Cal/OSHA.

“To me, it’s a reaction to this very settlement,” she said. Villarreal works for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, which filed the original complaint on behalf of detainees who said they worked in unsafe conditions.

Villarreal pointed to a Washington Post report that GEO Group executives privately asked ICE to specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work. Two top Trump administration officials, border czar Tom Homan and acting ICE director David Venturella, previously worked for the GEO Group.

New versions of ICE detention standards take effect as contracts are established or modified, so this year’s rules won’t immediately apply to every facility.

An ICE spokesperson did not comment about the settlement. The spokesperson, who did not provide their name in an emailed statement Wednesday, said the agency has begun transitioning detention facilities to meet the 2026 standards, “building on its longstanding commitment to safe, secure, and professional detention operations.”

“ICE has consistently implemented many of these best practices independently, reinforcing its role as the leader in detention operations,” the spokesperson added.

The GEO Group and other immigrant detention center operators have faced other legal battles over workers’ rights, including lawsuits in Washington, Colorado and California over the $1-per-day payment.

Villarreal said she’s confident that the Cal/OSHA settlement would continue to hold even if California facilities incorporated the new standards. But she said she believes the statements are an attempt by the GEO Group to “sidestep responsibility” and avoid the possibility of being fined under similar circumstances in other states.

“These statements in the new standards are a way for them to try and preserve profits as much as possible,” she said. “GEO and ICE are so intertwined at this point that they have the same motives.”

New Jersey is launching a new fee on companies whose workers have Medicaid health coverage instead of being covered by their employers. Other states are considering it, too.

Democratic lawmakers and governors see it as a way to help pay for the joint federal and state insurance program that covers low-income residents as federal policy changes are expected to make the program more expensive for states and may lead to a reduction in the number of people with coverage.

Proponents also say it’s about fairness because employers benefit from having some lower-income workers with taxpayer-funded health coverage.

Business groups object. So do some liberal policy organizations.

New Jersey is putting the fee in place

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed a measure Tuesday night to charge employers that have at least 50 workers covered by Medicaid, and the state budget she approved earlier in the week counts on raising $145 million this year from the program.

Under the plan, companies will be billed for each employee and employees’ dependent receiving Medicaid, the joint state-federal insurance program.

The fees per person would start at $325 a year for companies with 50 to 249 Medicaid beneficiaries and top out at $725 annually for employers with at least 500 recipients.

A bill passed this week in California doesn’t impose a charge now, but it does direct the state administration to present lawmakers options for doing so next year.

Finishing the job would fall to the successor of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who is leaving office in January. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra has made an employer charge part of his election platform.

State Sen. John Laird, a Democrat who sponsored the California proposal, said the big tax and policy law President Trump signed a year ago was a major factor in the need for action because it could prompt the state to spend more on Medicaid to plug holes left by federal changes.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office expects more than 10 million people will be uninsured because of the law by 2034. It requires some beneficiaries to work, be in school or volunteer — and requires even more to document whether they meet the requirements.

Most employees at the bigger companies would not be at risk of losing Medicaid coverage as long as they’re working at least 20 hours a week.

Laird also said there’s an equity issue involved.

“If you’re a small business person in California, you are quite likely paying for health insurance for your employees. And through your taxes, you’re paying for health insurance for some of the biggest employers in California,” he said. “And that’s not fair.”

Legislation with similar intents passed one legislative chamber in both Colorado and Oregon this year, but neither made it to law. A measure was also introduced in Washington.

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, a Democrat who is seeking a third term in November’s election, has called for the same move there with the idea of making it a part of the state budget that would kick in two years from now.

Opposition comes from business and some liberal groups

It’s no surprise that business organizations have criticized the approach, which would add to their expenses.

“The fact remains that many job-creators are still going to be penalized for something they have no control over,” Christopher Emigholz, the chief government affairs officer at the New Jersey Business and Industry Assn., said in a statement. “If an employee declines an employer-provided health plan because they’d rather be on Medicaid, it is unfair to penalize the employer for that employee’s decision.”

Some left-leaning policy organizations also oppose the charges.

Gideon Lukens, who analyzes health policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that while the idea may be well-intentioned, it could lead companies to employ fewer people from low-income household or single parents. He said companies could also consider the policy in decisions about whom to hire or lay off — and also on where to locate or how many workers to employ.

And, he said, it could make employees — or potential employees — less likely to enroll in Medicaid knowing it would make them less attractive to employers.

“Usually, when I see a tax on something it’s going to discourage whatever being taxed,” he said in an interview.

New Jersey’s legislation tries to address some of the concerns. It would exempt temporary, seasonal and part-time employees. It would also bar employment decisions based on a workers’ Medicaid status.

Charging companies whose workers are covered by Medicaid isn’t a new idea. At least two states have previously enacted it, and it’s been proposed in Congress.

Massachusetts lawmakers in 2017 adopted a charge on employers up to $750 per nondisabled worker who was covered through Medicaid or a state-subsidized health exchange plan. The program began in 2018 was not renewed when it expired the next year.

An even earlier policy in Maryland, in 2006, immediately affected only Walmart. An industry group challenged it in court and won, stopping the fees.

The latest generation of proposals may avoid that legal pitfall by not referencing those health plans in the legislation.

Mulvihill writes for the Associated Press.

MACUNGIE, Pa. — President Trump visited a Mack Trucks facility in battleground Pennsylvania on Tuesday, attempting to shift attention to the U.S. economy in his first major public event outside the nation’s capital since he signed an interim agreement to end the Iran war.

The trip to Macungie, in the Allentown suburbs, came as Trump works to put the conflict — and the higher gasoline prices it caused — in the rearview mirror as the November midterm elections draw closer.

Trump had a private tour of the facility, but his speech often felt more like a reelection rally from two years ago than an effort to promote his second-term accomplishments.

The president listed longstanding political grievances, and made only passing mentions of promoting Republicans ahead of Election Day — while spending more time bragging about the UFC fight he staged on the White House lawn in honor of his own 80th birthday than he did the economy.

At one point, Trump even called UFC fighters Bo Nickal and Anthony Cassar to the stage and mused about whether he could beat either one of them in a wrestling match if he were to “work out for the next couple of months.”

It was Trump’s fifth second-term visit to Pennsylvania, a state whose support in 2016 and 2024 helped him to win the White House. The truck factory is in a district where incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie faces Democratic challenger Bob Brooks in November.

“For more than 100 years, this legendary company has been making trucks right here in eastern Pennsylvania,” Trump said, “building the heavy duty machinery that keeps our economy rolling, our factories moving, and our industries roaring all across the nation.”

His visit coincided with rising prices that could color the verdict voters render on Trump’s stewardship in the fall. About one-third of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s approach to the economy, according to a June Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll. That’s in line with last month for Trump on the issue.

The Iran war, which began Feb. 28, has also been a politically difficult issue for the president. Most Americans continued to disapprove of his handling of Iran, according to the June AP-NORC poll, which was being fielded as Trump announced a tentative deal with Iran and concluded just before the interim agreement was signed last week. It found that 65% of U.S. adults disapprove of how the president is handling issues with Iran, unchanged from May.

Still, while most Democrats and independents view Trump’s actions negatively, only about 3 in 10 Republicans are unhappy.

This is the kind of district that matters in November elections

Trump addressed a cheering crowd from a stage erected on the factory floor, flanked by two red, white and blue trucks and rows of workers in fluorescent safety vests under a large “American Workers First” banner.

It’s the kind of district that may prove pivotal to Republicans holding narrow control of the House, where a loss could hobble the president’s final two years in office.

Mackenzie, a freshman lawmaker, is looking to hold on to a district Democrats have targeted to flip. Brooks, president of the state firefighters’ union, has support from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who’s also seeking reelection this year.

Trump urged the crowd to support Mackenzie, saying of his trip, “I’m not doing this for my health.” But he devoted more energy to issues such as the U.S.-Mexico border, opposing transgender rights and decrying “Marxist” judges, while also referencing his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices.

“We gotta win the midterms,” Trump said, in one of the few references he made to the midterms. Later, however, he suggested it wasn’t actually a “political season,” perhaps because he himself won’t be on the ballot in November.

On Iran, Trump suggested that the country would be smart and keep negotiating during the ceasefire. “Otherwise we’ll have to finish the job, which will take about, maybe less than a week,” he said.

An odd moment came when the president offered, “The ideology of the Muslims is slightly different than the ideology of the Catholics. We have the Catholics and the Muslims slightly different.” He didn’t elaborate.

Biden came to the same plant previously

Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, visited the same Mack Trucks facility in 2021 to highlight regulations aimed at promoting manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs. It trended downward after the 2001 recession and the 2007-9 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.6 million as of May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2025, the truck facility got hit by market uncertainty, including sweeping tariffs that Trump’s administration imposed, and about 170 people were laid off, according to Mack spokesperson Kimberly Pupillo. She added that by the end of last year, almost 150 people were recalled to work and anyone laid off last year was given the chance to return.

There are about 2,800 workers at Mack, Pupillo said.

At a pizzeria down the road from the truck facility, workers and diners said they’d heard about the president’s visit and recalled Biden’s trip to the plant.

George Carver, a retired elementary school principal, said he wasn’t a fan of Trump’s. “I’m looking for a president who’ll clean up this mess,” he said, meaning improve the economy and better handle the war in Iran and immigration.

“I’m looking for someone who’s gonna tell the truth — that could be a Democrat or Republican,” Carver said.

Trump’s visit underscores Pennsylvania’s status as a crucial swing state.

Trump made a trip to Mount Pocono in December 2025 to road test messages that he’s addressing affordability; in July 2025, he was in Pittsburgh to tout tens of billions of dollars of recent energy and technology investments in the state; in June 2025, he was in West Mifflin to tell steelworkers he was doubling the tariff on steel imports to protect the industry; and in March 2025, he attended the NCAA wrestling championship in Philadelphia.

Denise Green, a retired software trainer, was among a handful of people protesting the visit outside a McDonald’s across the street from the plant.

Green said she was a former Republican who became a Democrat in 2007 because her original party backed policies where “all the money” was going to the rich.

Green said her key issue was Social Security funding, which she said she’ll need but is worried could run out.

“It’s outrageous,” she said.

Catalini and Kim write for the Associated Press.

Meta has paused a new company-wide program of tracking its employees’ computer usage which has been plagued by internal frustration.

The program was started only two months ago as part of an effort by Meta to gather data on how people used computers, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, that could be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

It was met immediately with upset from employees who were to have their every online action at work tracked and recorded, but also concerned about where the data was going and how it would be protected.

Meta halted the program on Monday after realising some of the collected data had been left potentially accessible to anyone inside the company.

A Meta spokesman confirmed to the BBC that the program, named internally the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), was “on pause for now” as the company investigates the issue.

“We have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees,” the spokesman added.

The pause follows weeks of blow-back from workers at the company, led by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, to being tracked at work.

In an initial response to worker frustration – which was displayed in part through a petition signed by nearly 2,000 Meta workers demanding that the MCI program be cancelled – Meta said it would allow workers to not be tracked for up to 30 minutes at a time.

“That was just an attempt at damage control,” one current employee told the BBC. The person asked not to be identified.

Another Meta employee, who also asked not to be identified, said that while a lot of technical workers inside the company are open to the idea of improving its AI models and being more competitive in a field dominated by Anthropic and OpenAI, the fact that tracking “was forced on us, there was no consent” left people angry.

“I’ve never seen morale here so bad,” the employee said.

In addition to the tracking program, frustration inside Meta has grown as it has done extensive layoffs, and reorganised many employees and their work around AI initiatives, on which the company is spending up to $145bn (£109bn) this year alone.

Employees have even openly insulted management, external in an internal meeting on the AI-driven changes, according to a report in Wired.

While Meta has long had a reputation in the technology industry as a company that frequently reorganises internal teams around new projects, the changes and spending in an effort to catch up on AI feels like “chasing your tail”, a person who recently left Meta after several years said.

“The direction this company is going in is depressing”, the former employee said. “Exhausting and depressing.”

The looming impact of federal Medicaid cuts has reignited a long-simmering, costly battle between California’s medical industry and one of its largest health worker unions.

SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, with about 120,000 members, has put forward two ballot initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require community clinics to spend the bulk of their revenues on patient care.

The California Hospital Assn. has responded with its own ballot proposal that would make it tougher for unions to spend money on political initiatives in the future. It would require approval by a union’s rank-and-file membership for any spending of $1 million or more on statewide measures, or $100,000 or more on local ones.

The competing measures, which have drawn enough verified signatures to qualify for the November ballot, come at a time when the rising cost of healthcare is emerging as a top voter concern.

The Service Employees International Union affiliate has seized upon affordability angst to resurrect a proposal for a cap on healthcare executive compensation, which it has failed to achieve multiple times before. The proposed measure garnered more than 1 million petition signatures.

“This initiative reflects the serious crisis we face and that affordability is a real thing,” said Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts-based healthcare think tank. “I think it also reflects grassroots anger and a desire to do something.”

Mikey Vaughn, a certified nursing assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the hospital often lacks supplies and staffing levels that he and his colleagues need in order to do their jobs effectively and without undue stress, despite its reputation as the go-to place for the rich and famous.

“The executive pay initiative would, I hope, be used to hire staff and to actually provide better resources for our patients,” he said. Vaughn is also a member of SEIU-UHW’s executive board and political committee.

Thomas Priselac, then-president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, made $8.8 million in fiscal year 2024, according to the organization’s most recent available federal tax filing. Kaiser Permanente’s CEO, Gregory Adams, made nearly $13 million in 2024. Warner Thomas, head of Sutter Health, made just under $12 million.

Cedars-Sinai spokesperson Duke Helfand said the hospital would be unable to recruit and retain physicians, nurses, and specialists if the measure passed, dramatically impairing its ability to provide healthcare.

“Such a scenario would be disastrous not only for Cedars-Sinai but for hospitals across Los Angeles and California,” Helfand said.

The union wants to cap compensation at $450,000 a year for senior hospital and medical group executives, as well as other administrative and managerial staff. However, the initiative does not stipulate how dollars diverted from payroll must be spent.

The union has dubbed the latest proposal the Health Care Executive Compensation Act of 2026. A coalition of medical industry heavyweights opposing it — hospitals, physicians, and clinics, among others — has rebranded it the Health Care Endangerment Act.

Carmela Coyle, CEO of the hospital association, called the measure a cynical political ploy.

“It’s bad policy and it’s going to have bad consequences across California,” she said.

Glenn Melnick, a healthcare economist at the University of Southern California, said even if the initiative were fully implemented and pay cuts enacted, he doubts it would reduce the cost of healthcare for patients.

SEIU-UHW does not have an estimated total amount the initiative would claw back from pay packages that exceed the limit.

Opponents of the initiative note that it doesn’t just target executive pay; it would affect medical practitioners who are also managers. That could include chief medical officers and chief nursing officers, as well as heads of surgery, emergency rooms, oncology, obstetrics, cardiology and other specialties, they say.

It would be up to each hospital, health system and physician group to report which staff members exceed the cap and by how much.

Ultimately, who is subject to the pay cap “probably will have to be battled out in court,” Coyle said . “That’s why we are throwing everything we can at it.”

The second SEIU-UHW ballot initiative, on community clinics, is already in court. The California Primary Care Assn., which represents clinics, filed a federal lawsuit in April seeking to invalidate it before it reaches the November ballot.

The proposed measure would require federally designated community clinics to spend at least 90% of their revenues on activities directly related to their mission of providing care for low-income populations. If it were to pass, more than 90% of those clinic organizations would be on the hook for penalties totaling $1.7 billion in the first year alone and “would face similarly crippling penalties every year,” according to a report commissioned by the primary care association and conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, an international consulting company.

Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Assn. of Los Angeles County, said many pivotal services the clinics provide — such as translation and transportation — would likely not be counted toward the spending requirement.

“They are targeting a group of what they see as employers and we see as the safety net,” she said.

The lawsuit cites the harm to clinics and claims the proposed spending requirement would interfere with federal authority.

Renée Saldaña, a spokesperson for SEIU-UHW, characterized the lawsuit against the initiative as “a really desperate attempt by the clinic industry to try and avoid accountability.”

SEIU-UHW, proud of its political activism, is also behind a controversial billionaire tax proposal that would impose a one-time 5% levy on California residents with fortunes over $1 billion to backfill the funding gap created by federal cuts coming down the pike under Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law, passed last July and signed by President Trump, is projected to squeeze nearly $1 trillion from the Medicaid health coverage program for low-income people by 2034, including as much as $30 billion annually in California.

The hospital association, the community clinic group and the California Medical Assn., which represents physicians, are neutral on the wealth tax proposal thus far. But Saldaña said all three of the union’s ballot proposals tie into an overarching strategy to counter the widening healthcare disparities caused by the federal law.

“We believe the primary concern of healthcare providers, including executives, should be to serve the community, heal patients, and not be in healthcare just to enrich themselves,” she said on the proposed pay cap.

Over the years, the union has submitted dozens of local and statewide ballot initiatives, including ones to cap the pay of hospital executives, regulate dialysis clinics, and raise the minimum wage of healthcare workers.

The hospital association calculates that SEIU-UHW has spent nearly $125 million on local and statewide initiatives since 2012. But healthcare industry groups have spent far more opposing them. The hospital association data shows that the union spent nearly $36 million on three ballot proposals to regulate the dialysis industry, but dialysis companies poured in $302 million to defeat them, according to state campaign finance records.

The union’s ongoing political efforts “threaten patient access to quality health care,” according to the hospital association’s ballot initiative, which could limit how much unions spend on future ballot measures.

Saldaña hinted at a possible lawsuit should that measure pass, saying “we don’t see the legal viability” of it. The proposal, she said, is an attempt “to silence the front-line healthcare workers.”

Ultimately, a ballot initiative won’t cure the ills that plague healthcare in the United States, said the Lown Institute’s Saini. What’s needed, he said, is “an evaluation and reimagination of healthcare.”

Wolfson writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.