Sacramento, Calif. – On May 18, 2023, Senator Lena Gonzalez’s (D-Long Beach) SB 556, The Oil and Gas Pollution Accountability Act, to hold oil and gas companies accountable for the health harms they cause in communities, was held in the Senate Appropriations Committee, meaning the bill will not be advancing through the legislative process this year. Under SB 556, oil and gas companies would have been presumptively liable for causing cancer, asthma, preterm and high-risk births for people living within 3,200 feet of an oil well. 

BY NALLELI COBO

I grew up 30 feet from an oil well. We couldn’t open the windows of our South L.A. home because of what was in the air. I couldn’t play outside for more than a few minutes without feeling sick.

At the age of 9, I started organizing to shut down the drilling that was making me, my mother, my sister and our community sick. I helped found a grassroots campaign called “People Not Pozos,” Spanish for “wells.” Over a decade later, it’s a campaign I and others are continuing across California as toxic drilling continues in our midst.

BY SUSAN CARPENTER

LONG BEACH, Calif. — For all COVID’s negatives, there was one major upside for California workers last year: supplemental paid sick leave that guaranteed employees ten days off if they fell ill. For many service workers, that was a vast improvement from the three days of paid sick leave employers are required to provide under California law.

Now that expanded compensated sick leave is over, a proposed bill in the state legislature is seeking to raise the required minimum. SB 616 would increase guaranteed paid sick leave to seven days and also allow employees to carry over seven sick days to the following year.

“We talk a lot about California being the fourth largest economy, but that is solely because of our hardworking California workforce that has been showing up every single day,” California Sen. and SB 616 author Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, said at a rally Wednesday. “California is a leader in a lot of ways, but paid sick leave is one where we’re actually trailing behind many other states.”