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Who’s Funding the Competing Minimum Wage Initiative?

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By Doug Porter

Seriously. We need to know. UT-San Diego and KPBS have run stories about an initiative in the works proposing an increase in the minimum wage that’s less than the one currently under consideration by the City Council. In fact, the “increase” it purports to offer wouldn’t affect 93% of businesses small and large in the city via loopholes large enough to drive a truck through.

It takes serious money and/or a large grass roots organization to collect signatures for a ballot initiative. Essentially you’ve got to get 100,000 people to sign a petition in the hope that 68,000 or so will be recognized as valid. The shipbuilders association spent somewhere south of a half million dollars to get their measure killing the Barrio Logan Community Plan on upcoming the June ballot. The 2012 Proposition B Pension Reform backers spent over a million bucks.

Yet the person who is the “face” of this competing measure, Blanca Lopez-Brown only came up with 159 qualifying signatures on the nominating petition for her 2013 candidacy for a city council seat. She placed fifth in that special election (1,084 votes). And money? Doesn’t have any to speak of. So this begs the question, who’s really backing this initiative?   [Read more…]

Carl DeMaio’s Pity Party Plays Well With Fox News

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By Doug Porter

Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio has a real talent for manipulating the news media. Yesterday he teamed up with Fox News columnist (and former Bush Press secretary) Dana Perino to let the world know about the vast left wing conspiracy attacking him because he’s gay.

Using examples from his failed mayoral campaign of outliers who tried to make his orientation an issue with right wingers, the Perino story builds to a crescendo incorporating the LGBT community and the left in general marching lockstep into the current congressional contest, united to smear and defeat his “true campaign message of hope.” It’s a pity party writ large and the story is playing well with the ‘GOP is persecuted’ set.

As is usual with Carl, it’s a boatload of crap. There are actual facts in the Fox story, but they’re spun completely out of context. The people making noise about his sexual orientation in the current congressional race are his socially conservative GOP brethren.   [Read more…]

Raise Up San Diego – Do the Right Thing About the Minimum Wage

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By Jim Miller

These are still tough times for most working people in the United States. We are in the midst of a new Gilded Age of historic economic inequality. The rich are carving out a bigger slice of the pie at the expense of nearly everyone else in America. As I noted in my column last week, corporate profits are at their highest level in 85 years and employee compensation is at the lowest level it has been in 65 years.

And this is happening despite the fact that the average American worker is more educated and more productive than ever before. The result of all this is a declining middle class, economic instability, and the hijacking of our democracy by moneyed interests.

Here in San Diego, we have one of the highest costs of living in the United States, and the picture for workers at the bottom end of the economic spectrum is grim. More than 300,000 households in our city have incomes too low to meet basic expenses, and our tourism industry has the largest number of employees with incomes below the Self-Sufficiency Standard with more than half of those workers failing to make ends meet.
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Post Office Privatization Deal in the Works: Activists Take to the Streets

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The Postal Service plans to replace well-paid postal workers with low-wage Staples employees.

By Jodie Gummow / AlterNet

“U.S. mail is not for sale!” This was the hard-hitting message of hundreds of local activists who joined forces across the country in a national day of action protesting a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Services and Staples.

The USPS pilot program establishing unsecured postal counters in more than 80 Staples stores in four geographic areas began late last year.

In response, American Postal Workers Union (APWU) members and associates rallied outside Staples stores around the country demanding an end to the deal which they say is aimed at replacing good, living-wage postal jobs with low-wage, high-turnover jobs filled with untrained Staples employees. They say it may eventually lead to layoffs and the closing of post offices.   [Read more…]

Distract, Deny, Distort and Deceive: The Fight Against A Minimum Wage Hike for San Diego

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By Doug Porter

City Council President Todd Gloria appeared before the press yesterday to announce a proposed November ballot initiative increasing San Diego’s minimum wage, along with a path for workers to accumulate paid sick days.

Gloria’s role in pushing this measure dates back to his call for a “meaningful” increase in the minimum wage during the State of the City speech in January. The big unanswered question for local scribes was “how much” would constitute “meaningful.” We now know the magic number to be $13.09, achieved in three stages by July 2017, should voters approve. But it’s negotiable.

In keeping with Plato’s dictum, “those who tell the stories also hold the power,” UT-San Diego (owned by a hospitality industry magnate, whose business model depends on low wages and government subsidies) is all over this today with a front page story, an “explainer” and, (ta-da!) an editorial denouncing Gloria and blaming California Democrats for the leftovers of the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

San Diego City Works Press Celebrates Its 10-Year Anniversary!

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By Staff

Ten years ago, Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew co-founded City Works Press, a nonprofit publisher that they edit in concert with the San Diego Writers Collective. Both Jim and Kelly are well known to the San Diego Free Press community.

Jim has written a weekly article for his Under the Perfect Sun column since we launched the site in 2012 and prior to that he submitted articles to the OB Rag, our sister publication. Kelly wrote a series of articles about Golden Hill restaurants when SDFP provided a neighborhood focus on that community. Throughout the years this couple has hosted myriad events that benefit progressive organizations in San Diego. This Saturday, April 26, they will be hosting a celebration and fundraiser for City Works Press, the only press of its kind in San Diego.
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Review: Cesar Chavez Remembered, Warts and All

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Miriam Pawel offers the most comprehensive look at Chavez and his movement in her new book, The Crusades of Cesar Chavez.

By Mark R. Day / Labor Notes

“Cesar was not a humble man,” narrator Luis Valdez says at the conclusion of the new documentary “Cesar’s Last Fast,” about the late farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. “Nor was he a simple man.”

Indeed, Chavez was a controversial and complex figure. That’s the problem with Diego Luna’s feature film “Cesar Chavez,” whose release coincided with the charismatic leader’s March 31 birthday.

Chavez was, of course, a genius and a master organizer. His successes in the vineyards and lettuce fields of California came about as a result of enormous personal sacrifice and his ability to reach out to a wide audience: students, priests, nuns, ministers, labor leaders, and average housewives who made up their minds not to buy grapes.

He broke the back of the open shop in the fields and is credited as a founder of the Chicano movement. Just a decade after he began organizing grape pickers in Delano, California, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.   [Read more…]

Historic Win for Labor and A New Direction in the University of California System

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By Daniel Gutiérrez

La Jolla, California — On Tuesday, April 15th, UAW Local 2865, representing graduate student-workers across the University of California system, reached a tentative agreement with UC management regarding the procurement of all-gendered bathrooms and lactation stations. UC management succumbed to the necessities demanded by UAW Local 2865, acknowledging that both all-gendered bathrooms and lactation stations are a labor right to graduate student-workers. The historic achievement was reached after the union went on strike for two days early this month, in which nearly two dozen students were arrested and many others intimidated.   [Read more…]

Taxi Medallions: San Diego’s Licensing Program for Exploiting Immigrants

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By Doug Porter

While lots of local politicos are willing to give at least lip service towards increasing the minimum wage or creating affordable housing, the abject lack of interest in rectifying a government sponsored system of exploitation in the local taxi industry is staggering.

The medallion based system of licensing currently in place in San Diego, wherein drivers pay for the privilege of leasing a vehicle that may or may not be roadworthy, insures consumers of two things: scarcity of service and higher fares. This form of regulation might have made sense 80 years ago in New York city when it was started, but today a privileged few and the politicians they fund are the only beneficiaries.

Of all things revealed in a 2013 San Diego State University/Center for Policy Initiatives study–the unsafe working conditions, the dangerous vehicles, the exploitation of drivers–it would appear that Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s response will be limited to the vehicles themselves and, perhaps, record keeping issues.   [Read more…]

“We Are More Than Just Workers — We’re People.”

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By Lisa Maldonado Robinson/ Escondido Democratic Club

It takes an hourly wage of $13.09 and a full-time job to be able “to make ends meet” in San Diego County, according to Lisa Maldonado Robinson of the Interfaith Center for Worker Justice (ICWJ). Robinson spoke to Escondido Democrats at their April 12 meeting about the ICWJ’s ongoing program in San Diego County in which religious leaders strive “to lift workers out of poverty.” The program has a North County component and Robinson described efforts to organize workers at Casino Pauma and Northgate Markets.   [Read more…]

UFW Co-Founder Calls for Citizen Action; Struggle Goes On, Dolores Huerta Says

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By Lindajoy Fenley/chicoSol

Celebrating a legendary man can be as simple — and as necessary — as signing up for health insurance.

That’s the message delivered by Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, when she spoke Thursday [March 24] at Sonoma State University (SSU) to a crowd of more than 1,000 students and community members in commemoration of Cesar Chavez Day.

Chavez, Huerta reminded her audience, fought for decent working conditions for California’s farm workers, and coincidentally, the deadline to sign up for government health insurance falls on his birthday, March 31. Huerta said that buying insurance — particularly for the young Latino students — is a way to honor the man who fought for civil rights for people of color.   [Read more…]

We Are the 89%: San Diego Fast-Food Employees and Religious Leaders Take Action Against Wage Theft

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Outrage grows as new poll shows stealing from employees is rampant industry wide

By Crystal Page/CPI

San Diego – Fast-food employees and community and faith leaders took action Thursday against systemic and illegal wage theft in the industry—just days after the first-ever national poll of fast-food employees showed companies like McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s are stealing money from 89 percent of their employees.

The action comes as two former McDonald’s managers spoke out for the first time about how they were forced to steal from employees’ checks. In a video made public Tuesday, the managers talk about how they shaved time off of employees’ schedules, among other practices, so they wouldn’t “blow labor,” or spend more than they were supposed to, on employees.   [Read more…]

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