Business
Service providers in the East Bay have a message for the 611 workers laid off by HelloFresh in Richmond at the end of October: There are people and services available to help you find work. “You don’t have to navigate this by yourself,” said Carole “DC” Dorham-Kelly, CEO of Rubicon Programs, an anti-poverty nonprofit that is part of the Contra Costa Workforce Collaborative. Through service providers in the Collaborative, which includes nonprofits, adult education organizations, school sites, and community colleges,…
On Wednesday, HelloFresh will close the Richmond facility it opened in 2015, putting 611 people out of work. For Julio de Leon, a HelloFresh driver for the past three years, the closure means losing income his family needs and having to start over. “I depend on my HelloFresh check. And now, that check will no longer be on my table,” he said, in Spanish. “Starting over. Starting from zero, yet again, with new friends, with a new job. That’s the…
Ash Abbott, a 31-year-old single parent and math teacher at Kennedy High School in Richmond, was able to afford taking nine months of parental leave for the birth of their twins only by taking out private and student loans and buying necessities on credit. Now Abbott is in serious debt. “All of my credit cards are maxed out, which I’ve never experienced in my life,” says Abbott. “I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and I have more debt than I’ve ever…
Point Molate, a scenic stretch of San Francisco Bay shoreline, has faced one legal battle after another over its ownership and development potential. A new lawsuit, filed on May 27 in Contra Costa County Superior Court, seeks $20 million from the City of Richmond and threatens to tie up the 425-acre plot indefinitely. Winehaven Legacy LLC, a subsidiary of developer SunCal, has accused the city of breaching its contract and breaking the Brown Act, which governs public meetings in California. …
After a nearly 10-week strike, about 500 steelworkers will gradually return to Chevron’s Richmond Refinery in the next four weeks, replacing contract workers hired to fill the gap left when workers walked off the job in March. Their return comes after United Steelworkers Local 5 ratified a four-year contract with Chevron on Saturday, Jess Kamm Broomell, a union spokesperson, confirmed. Neither the union nor the refinery has released details of the agreement. Reuters reported that the new contract does not…
Steelworkers at Chevron’s Richmond refinery are on the third day of a strike reportedly over wages and hours. About 500 workers represented by United Steelworkers Local 5 went on strike Monday. A day before the strike, the company replaced those employees with non-union members. “The transition was handled with professionalism and respect on all sides, in response to the union’s plan to begin the strike at midnight,” Chevron spokesperson Tyler Kruzich said in an email. In a news release posted…
Amid the hum of the Bay Area’s cities, it is easy to forget that to live here is to live alongside a vast ecosystem. The biggest and most vital is the Pacific Ocean. And once a year, the ocean reveals its abundance to herring fishers. “‘The water will be white, that’s when you know,” said Keith Nguyen, a kayak fisher from San Jose. Nguyen is describing the herring spawn, an annual event from November to February, when adult herring migrate…
Bolo Quesada was 13 when his older brothers inspired him to get his first pair of gold grillz. “It used to be a specific type of person that had grillz,” Quesada, who is now in his early 30s, says. “It went from the dope boys to now the average kid getting them.” Grillz, the dental jewelry typically made of gold and encrusted with diamonds or other gems, has exploded in popularity. And grillz shops have popped up across the country,…
Twice this week, on Sunday and Wednesday, flaring events spewed smoke, fire and gases into the air around the Chevron Richmond refinery, concerning residents and closing three schools on Monday. Late in the week, the events were still under investigation by state, county and local agencies, and Chevron had not addressed the situation on its website. At 8:25 a.m. Sunday, according to a report filed with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, there was a problem at Chevron that created…