Labor Leaders Urge State to Expand Displaced Oil and Gas Workers’ Fund

Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, August 5, 2026

• California’s oil and gas industry is shrinking as the state transitions away from fossil fuels. A state fund is helping displaced workers land well-paying jobs in other industries,  but that lifeline could soon disappear. 
• A Los Angeles County jury has awarded a $47 million verdict to the family of a stoneworker who died of silicosis. 
• A new report has determined the cause of the deadly and destructive Eaton Fire in Los Angeles County. 
• A federal judge in Los Angeles is holding the Department of Homeland Security in contempt for denying an order to make digital copies of communications from personal cellphones used by immigration agents during operations in the Los Angeles area last year.

Joe Villarreal spent his second day at Northwest Metrology honing a new skill: calibrating torque wrenches. The company’s Bakersfield headquarters is packed with pressure gauges, weights, and other specialized tools — all designed to ensure that everything from defibrillators to scales for weighing aircraft work without fail. 

“We have an extensive client list,” said owner Wayne Moule, who has been serving hospitals, refineries and aerospace companies for decades.

Moule has a hard time finding employees who are a good fit for the painstaking work. “People come in, give us resumes that look great,” Moule said, “but they just don’t have the work ethic. They don’t care about the accuracy. They say they calibrate a piece of equipment, and they don’t. And then I find out about it from a customer.”

The work is highly technical, requiring up to three years of training and the ability to read and follow 2-inch-thick manuals with detailed instructions for using each piece of equipment. “Do you know how hard it is to get somebody to read a manual?” Moule said.

But the job was a good fit for Villarreal, a 55-year-old father of three who spent 30 years working in the oil and gas industry. In the early days of his career, he worked gritty, hands-on jobs in Bakersfield’s scorching hot oil fields, checking equipment for leaks. Later, he switched to the administrative side, working out of the sun. In his final job as an engineering technician, Villarreal applied for new drilling permits, kept records and filed reports. He was laid off last year.

Villarreal landed his new job at Northwest Metrology in May through a state program designed to mitigate the impact on oil and gas workers as California transitions away from fossil fuels. The program connected Villarreal with three case managers who invited him to weekly “job hubs” that featured presentations from employers looking to hire. With no experience in calibration, he was reluctant to apply for the job but decided, “I should at least go talk to them ’cause it don’t hurt.”

California’s goal to achieve net zero emissions by 2045 has accelerated the decline of the oil and gas industry, which employs an estimated 94,000 people in high-paying, often unionized jobs with benefits. Since 2020, the closure or conversion of six refineries has eliminated roughly 2,000 jobs, dislodging highly skilled workers from decades-long careers spent extracting and refining crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, asphalt and petrochemicals.

The Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund is California’s most tangible effort to help workers transition to comparable jobs in other industries. The $30 million fund, created through a state law in 2022, provides grants to local workforce development boards, unions, and other groups in the most affected areas of the state: Kern, Contra Costa and Los Angeles counties. State records indicate the fund has helped more than 630 workers transition to new careers. And that could be an undercount, as grant recipients say they’ve helped closer to a thousand workers like Villarreal get training and find new jobs.

Even with its successes, proponents of the program say it’s falling short. They are urging the state to extend it beyond the current end date in 2027 and provide new benefits, including wage replacement during transitions, college credits for on-the-job experience and at least two years of financial support during apprenticeships.

A Los Angeles County jury has awarded a $47 million dollar verdict to the family of a stoneworker who died of silicosis.

Hundreds of stonecutters are suing manufacturers and distributors of artificial stone, the countertop material linked to silicosis, an aggressive and incurable lung disease. Wilmer Ruben Martinez Paredes was only 41 when he died, leaving three kids and a wife. In 2023, she sued a host of companies, including artificial stone distributor Dal-Tiles, and major manufacturers like Cambria, Caesarstone and Cosentino.

Her attorney James Nevin says this is the third U.S. verdict so far in favor of workers. “A very young family was left without their husband, father, and there’s nothing that can make up for that. But you know this verdict gives them some measure of justice.”

This comes as a bill from California Republican Congressman Tom McClintock is advancing in Washington DC. It would prohibit these kinds of lawsuits.

The deadly and destructive Eaton Fire was caused by Southern California Edison equipment, according to two reports released Tuesday by the L.A. County Fire Department. The determination is in line with theories shared by the utility itself several months after the fire ignited in January last year.

The L.A. County Fire Department’s arson unit, with assistance from the state’s Cal Fire, was tasked with leading the investigation into the cause of the fire over the last 18 months. Investigators ultimately determined that arcing electrical lines near an Edison transmission tower in Eaton Canyon “ejected hot metal particles” that fell into dry vegetation at the tower’s base. Twelve seconds later, what became the Eaton Fire ignited.

An Edison spokesperson said the company is “currently reviewing” the report, but declined to share if it planned to dispute the findings. “ We have taken the potential role in the start of the fire very seriously from the beginning,” said spokesperson Scott Johnson. “ As we’ve previously said, Southern California Edison believes it is likely that its equipment was associated with the ignition of the Eaton Fire.”

At least 19 people died and close to 10,000 homes and businesses were destroyed in the fire that began Jan. 7, 2025, and wasn’t fully contained until Jan. 31.

A federal judge on Tuesday held the Department of Homeland Security in contempt for allegedly slow-rolling an order to create digital copies of communications from personal cell phones used by immigration agents during operations in the Los Angeles area last year. 

U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in the Central District of California previously ordered the federal government in January to expedite imaging the personal cell phones of more than 800 agents involved in controversial immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025. Judge Frimpong imposed a fine of $500 per day on the federal government until it complies with the order to turn over phones as part of discovery and reimburse plaintiffs’ attorneys for the legal costs of getting the records.

Attorneys for DHS admitted in court in June that the agency had not provided the records. They told the judge they were processing the government devices at a rate of three phones every two weeks, which plaintiffs noted would take nearly four years to complete. Attorneys representing immigrants caught up in Operation At Large — the name given to the Trump administration’s Los Angeles immigration crackdown last year — argue the phones may contain evidence of a pattern of racial profiling by federal agents.