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Veteran’s Day Should Mean Something More

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By Jessica Bartholow/Labor’s Edge Blog

Next week, America will take a day to honor the commitment of men and women who have served our country.  In California, this day is significant because it is home to more returning veterans than any other state in the Nation.

But for too many veterans, the November 11th holiday is nothing more than a gateway to a stressful holiday season filled with cold months, high utility bills and empty plates.  I know this because my dad is a disabled Veteran who suffered for years with untreated and debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  We were never invited to a Veteran’s Day parade or a pancake breakfast, just left to find our own way, many times our basic needs going unmet.

While poverty among veterans is half that of the general public, there are 1.5 million young veterans, some with families, who live with incomes below the poverty line. Some of these veterans are disabled and have applied for help through the U.S. Department Veterans Administration (VA), where they will wait an average of 320 days for the VA to process their disability claims.   [Read more…]

Carl DeMaio Launches “Free to Be” (Poor) College Tour

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By Doug Porter

Failed mayoral candidate and wannabe Congressman Carl DeMaio is taking his message of “opportunity” to college students in the San Diego area this week, hoping that a smiling face and a pocketful of libertarian promises will woo the youth vote into the Republican fold.

Like the witch in Hansel and Gretel he’s hoping to lure young votes with the lure of sweet success: he’s the “new” Republican. Students are supposed to forget about all those nasty old white men waving their transvaginal wands to ward off people of color and other likely Democrats from voting booths around the country.

“I’m taking on the Republican Party and trying to get them off those divisive social issues — let individuals decide these kinds of issues for themselves,” the 39-year-old DeMaio told UT-San Diego. “The whole tone and tenor and culture has to change.”   [Read more…]

Why Blackface Isn’t Funny and Other Halloween Tales

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By Doug Porter

A couple of football coaches from San Diego’s Serra High School have been in the news this week after photographs of them wearing blackface as part of their “Jamaican Bobsled Team” halloween costumes surfaced.

San Diego Unified School District officials have acknowledged “inappropriate activities” and are investigating the incident, which seems to have involved a non-school related party.

To nobody’s surprise the UT-San Diego has a letter to the editor today decrying the ‘political correctness’ of the situation.  Reader Jack Cohen opines, “The absolutely priggish administrator who said that we cannot tolerate the slightest insensitivity should be exiled to the next universe.”   [Read more…]

Child Labor Shouldn’t Haunt Halloween

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Even if the kids in my neighborhood think my fair trade chocolate is a bit weird, at least I’m not handing out dental floss.

By  / OtherWords.org

I can’t bring myself to be the Grinch who stole Halloween. I just can’t, even though I write about healthy food. I even eat (mostly) healthy food.

Friends and colleagues expect me to have something to say about Halloween. But how can anyone condemn an innocent day of costumes and candy that brings joy to so many children?

As a kid, I was no health nut. I’ve always had a sweet tooth. My first word was “cookie.” But my parents did their best to restrict the sweets in our house. Halloween represented the one glorious day a year of unfettered access to gobs of candy.   [Read more…]

Barrio Logan Split Really About Business as Usual (Or Not)

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By Doug Porter

If you want to see a critical difference between Democrats Nathan Fletcher and David Alvarez, look beyond the article posted in today’s Voice of San Diego.

Reporter Liam Dillon does a good job of exploring the opposition to Alavrez’s mayoral ambitions from within his Barrio Logan, starting with Rachael Ortiz’s long standing opposition to the District 8 Councilman.

Her current issue with Alvarez is the contention that he sold out Barrio Logan’s interests by proposing a compromise solution with the maritime industry regarding the Community Plan approved by the City Council.

The headline on the VOSD article suggests this deal could come back to haunt him.   [Read more…]

Career Politician Teams Up With Enron Billionaire to Gut Californians’ Retirement

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By Steve Smith/California Labor Federation

It’s official. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, a career politician with backing from a Texas billionaire and former Enron trader, has filed a ballot measure to strip away retirement security from current teachers, firefighters, sanitation workers and other public servants.

According to the Sacramento Bee:

“The Pension Reform Act of 2014” would alter California’s constitution to allow state and local government employers to cut pensions for current workers.

Essentially, this means politicians would have the power to unilaterally slash the retirement of current workers, breaking a promise made to those workers when they were hired. Many of those public workers affected don’t receive Social Security. They have a modest pension that averages around $26,000 per year. They’re not responsible for the financial mess created by the Wall St. collapse, yet politicians like Reed are all too quick to scapegoat them — and out-of-state billionaires like former Enron executive John Arnold are all too happy to exploit them for profit.   [Read more…]

Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce; Add $7 Billion in Tax Dollars for Fast Food Workers’ Subsidies

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By Doug Porter

Lorena Gonzalez may have moved on to the State Assembly, but she’s still got time to bang the drum for low wage workers.  She’s headlining a press conference at the Mission Valley location of McDonalds corporate offices today to talk about a University of California Berkeley study detailing the cost to California taxpayers for fast food companies’ low wages and lack of benefits.

Fast food is a $200 billion a year industry, with many workers earning minimum wage or just above it forced to rely on public assistance programs to provide for their families and afford healthcare for their children. Nationally, the median wage for cooks, cashiers and crew at fast-food restaurants is just $8.94 an hour.

Contrary to the claims of companies like McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s, fast food jobs are not a stepping-stone to better opportunities or held mostly by young people.  The National Employment Law Project reports that managerial positions make up just 2.2% of fast food jobs. The median age in the industry is 28, according to the group, and more than a quarter of workers are raising at least one child.

INSIDE: Filner admits to guilt on 3 charges in plea bargain deal   [Read more…]

Another View of Robert Reich’s Inequality for All

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By John Lawrence

This is Robert Reich’s latest venture in an attempt to inform the American public about what’s really going on with the economy in this society. He’s tried everything else: Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley in which he teaches a course on Wealth and Poverty, a blog, where he had as many as 300 comments after each post until he shut down the comments due to a persistent vile and threatening commenter who stooped to anti-semitic comments, 13 books, the latest being “Beyond Outrage,” Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, radio and TV appearances, lectures.

He also worked in the Ford and Carter administrations. Reich has always been concerned about those who are struggling to keep their heads above water, and in today’s world that includes almost all of the former members of the middle class.

The major metaphor in the film is a suspension bridge which fits perfectly over a graph of the concentration of wealth that occurred at two points in American history, the first being in 1928 and the second being in 2008. These are the two high points of the suspension bridge and correspond to the two points of peak inequality in American society after which there was a crash: the Great Depression and the Great Recession.   [Read more…]

Gap, Old Navy, and the Living Hell of a Bangladeshi Sweatshop

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Report exposes firing and overwork of pregnant workers, routine beatings and deep poverty wages in sweatshop backed by US mega-retailers.

By Sarah Lazare / Common Dreams

Twenty-year-old Bangladeshi worker Morium Begum lost her baby in her seventh month of pregnancy after being forced to work 100-plus hours a week despite sickness and exhaustion while sewing garments for Gap and Old Navy in exchange for poverty wages.

According to a 68-page report released Thursday by the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, stories like Begum’s are commonplace in the 3,750-worker Next Collections factory in Ashulia, Bangladesh, on the outskirts of Dhaka, where physical punishments—including slapping and beating—are routine, pregnant workers are subject to illegal firings or forced to toil without maternity leave, and wages are dismally low at 20 to 24 cents an hour.   [Read more…]

Teahadists’ Budget Bomb Ticking Down

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Local leaders fly to DC to watch truly dysfunctional government at work

By Doug Porter

There’s only one story that counts today: the confrontation on Capitol Hill over passing a continuing budget resolution allowing the government to function for another 45 days.

Mini-Mayor Todd Gloria, along with members of the City Council and a Chamber of Commerce delegation headed by former Mayor Jerry Sanders are on the Hill this week “to advocate for policies vital to the region.”  This trip has been on the books for some time—in fact it’s the same outing that former Mayor Bob Filner was uninvited from by Sanders back when reports of bad behavior surfaced.   [Read more…]

Finally, Respect: Calif. Domestic Workers Win OT Pay

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By Bradley Wong /Equal Voice News

Domestic workers in California — and groups and people who support better employment conditions for them nationwide — are hailing a new bill of rights signed into law Thursday in Sacramento.

The signing of AB 241 ensures that domestic workers in private homes are paid overtime for the hours they work.

The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, a year before similar but federal regulations announced this month begin, California state Assemblymember Tom Ammiano said in a statement. He is the main author of the bill.

“This is a big step for respecting and recognizing domestic work as real work, and the fight doesn’t stop here,” Marcela Escamilla, a San Francisco domestic worker, said in a statement released by Mujeres Unidas y Activas.   [Read more…]

The War on Pensions: Workers Lose, Wall Street Wins

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By Doug Porter

Three recent news stories and one older account tell the tale of what’s really going on behind the current public sector pension “crisis” in the United States.

To make a long story short: there are good pension systems and bad pension systems.  Some are broke and need to be fixed. Some aren’t. But all public sector pension plans are under attack as part of the conservative goal of reducing government and the greed of Wall Street hedge fund managers seeking to get their hands on a huge pot of money.

Frying Pan News published an account this week about a group of pension policy advocates here in California working on a until now secret ballot initiative that would cut State and local government employees off at the knees, retirement wise.

At Salon.com we learn about the for Enron executive whose been working hard to craft the argument that defined pension benefit programs need to be scrapped no matter what shape they’re in.

At Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi takes a sharp tongued look at the profits being made by corporate ‘management’ of pension plans.

Inside: Pigs Fly Over Ocean Beach

  [Read more…]

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