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Sweet Tweets, Cold Cash and Barrio Logan on San Diego’s Mayoral Campaign Trail

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By Doug Porter

 Tuesday night’s vote by the San Diego Democratic Central Committee was a clear victory for backers of Councilman David Alvarez’s mayoral aspirations.  If for no other reason, the endorsement was important in raising the councilman’s name recognition, both for the headlines it produced and the cash that will now flow from Democratic Party coffers boosting his candidacy.

Others with skin in this game reacted in differing ways.

A much heralded spat between United Food and Commercial Workers President Mickey Kasparian (who supports Alvarez) and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (Nathan Fletcher’s booster), appears to have passed.  After all, the vote is over, and the party did vote to support whichever of those candidates wins the November 19th primary.   [Read more…]

The Sky Hasn’t Fallen: San Diego Tourism is UP

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By Doug Porter

One of the most frequently told tall tales during the Filner administration had to do with the consequences of San Diego Tourism Authority’s reduction in advertising and promotional expenditures.  Doom and gloom studded media accounts, like one just published in UT-San Diego on September 8th, warned that falling hotel occupancy would have widespread impacts on the local economy.

This most recent account had Tourism Authority CEO Joe Terzi ominously warning the number of room nights generated this fiscal year in San Diego will fall by as much as 350,000.

The latest reporting by industry analysts at Smith Travel Research indicates San Diego’s hotel occupancy rose by “only” 1% over July levels and is up year-to-date.

I have no doubt the local tourism tax dollar welfare recipients downtown will wail none-the-less by pointing out that tourism in other California coastal cities increased by a larger amount.   [Read more…]

Fletcher Versus Alvarez: The Battle for the Soul of San Diego’s Democratic Party

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by Jim Miller

This last week marked the two-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, a political happening that finally put the issue of economic inequality in the spotlight and started a national discussion about money, class, and political corruption. That movement was largely brought to us by young people, Millennials mostly, whose view of mainstream politics is justifiably jaded.

As Peter Beinart recently pointed out, “Compared to their Reagan-Clinton generation elders, Millennials are entering adulthood in an America where government provides much less economic security. And their economic experience in this newly deregulated America has been horrendous.”

And this experience has been made worse by bankrupt politics that pits what Beinart rightly characterizes as “a procapitalist, anti-bureaucratic Reaganized liberalism” that is “inclined toward market solutions” to everything against a radicalized “right wing populism”:   [Read more…]

Raise the Sub-Minimum Wage

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The rock-bottom pay mandated for tipped workers like servers in restaurants needs to rise from $2.13 an hour.

By Saru Jayaraman / Other Words

As the fast food workers’ minimum wage campaign gains momentum, another group of workers is expanding the fight to address one of the least-known economic outrages.

You may not realize it, but the measly $7.25 an hour McDonald’s and other fast-food giants pay their workers is three times higher than what many large sit-down restaurants pay their servers.   [Read more…]

Stagnation in San Diego – CPI Asks “What Economic Recovery?”

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By Doug Porter

The Center for Policy Initiatives (CPI) released its annual number crunching report for San Diego yesterday based on 2012 Census data, and picture painted within isn’t pretty.

Despite media reports about how “things are getting better”, CPI’s data point to the reality that the economic recovery has passed by most households and employees in the San Diego region.

“People have less money to spend, even those working full-time,” said CPI Research Director Peter Brownell in a press release. “The wealthiest saw their incomes increase in 2012, but when we hear talk of economic recovery, it hasn’t reached most people in our region.”   [Read more…]

California Legislature Passes Historic Minimum Wage Increase

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By Steve Smith/California Labor Federation

California made history last night. With the support of California’s unions, the Legislature voted to raise the state’s minimum wage to $10, the highest minimum wage in the country. The wage will be implemented in two steps: an increase to $9 per hour in July of next year, followed by another one-dollar increase to $10 in January of 2016. Gov. Brown has agreed to sign the bill, AB 10, authored by Assemblymember Luis Alejo.

The wage increase will affect more than 2.3 million California workers, according the Economic Policy Institute. It means that single moms will have a little extra to support their families. It means seniors who’ve been forced to re-enter the workforce will have a little more to help pay for prescription drugs. And it means that all low-wage workers have received validation that their work is worthy of dignity and respect.   [Read more…]

Uneven Progress: What the Economic Recovery Has Meant for California’s Workers

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California Budget Project Report finds disturbing trends for middle and lower wage workers.

By Steven Bliss/California Budget Project

Earlier this month, the California Budget Project released our annual Labor Day report, taking a look at the latest employment and wage trends, what they mean for workers and their families, and some key implications for public policy. This new report shows that even after more than three years of job gains, California’s recovery from the Great Recession thus far has left many workers behind.

Uneven Progress: What the Economic Recovery Has Meant for California’s Workers finds that Californians continue to face a deeply challenging job market, with long-term unemployment down only slightly from a record high, much of the state still stuck in double-digit unemployment, and wages among low- and mid-wage workers still below where they were prior to the recession, after adjusting for inflation.   [Read more…]

The Labor Council’s Choice: David Alvarez

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By Jim Miller

Last Friday evening, after five grueling hours of candidate interviews and spirited debate, the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council overwhelmingly endorsed David Alvarez for mayor.

This decision came after weeks of intense lobbying on the part of former labor leader Lorena Gonzalez, who, along with other powerful Democratic power brokers and money people were seeking to clear the field of genuinely progressive candidates in order to anoint Nathan Fletcher as the “only choice.”   [Read more…]

Slash and Burn: The War Against California Pensions

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By Gary Cohn/Frying Pan News

Benjamin Gamboa doesn’t know John Arnold, but they are linked by a shared concern over the fate of public-employee pensions in California.

“I’m proud to have a pension,” the 30-year-old Gamboa says. “I believe every American should have a pension.”

The two men live in very different worlds. Gamboa is a research analyst at Crafton Hills College in Yucaipa, California. Arnold is a hedge-fund billionaire from Houston, Texas.

There’s another difference between them: Arnold recently had a representative present at a secret “pension summit” held at a Sacramento hotel, where strategies to limit public employee retirement benefits were discussed; Gamboa, a union member, did not – representatives of labor were specifically not invited.

“Pension reform” has become the latest battle cry in a seemingly endless war that has ostensibly been declared against tax-dollar waste, but whose single-minded purpose has been to slash the job protections and benefits enjoyed by California’s working middle class. Pension-cutting advocates have filled airwaves, websites and op-ed pages with stories about employees retiring in early middle age on six-figure pensions. The reality is that the average state and municipal worker retires on about $26,000 a year.   [Read more…]

History is Being Made! Modern Day People and Actions Worth Honoring on Labor Day

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By Doug Porter

While the image of Labor Day as one of rest, recreation and charred meats has been drilled into our collective consciousness by the mavens of Madison Avenue, I want to interrupt this program to point out that history is being made this year.

Today we’ll be taking a look at some the people locally and nationally on the front lines of the fight for decent wages and working conditions.

Courtesy of the Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (ICWJ) you’ll meet George, Marisol, Valaria and Daniela as they tell about their struggles to get by here in San Diego.

Writer Bob Dorn met fast food workers Debra Flores and Diego Rios at our city’s first Fight for Fifteen demonstration last Thursday and serves up a big serving of what their lives are like.

Jim Miller writes about the history of Labor Day, how it’s meaning has been lost and what’s being done to get the ‘move’ back into the labor movement these days.

And I’ve come up with a list of things going on that you might not have heard about in between the latest breaking news on singer Justin Bieber and Kourtney Kardashian’s latest sideboob shot.   [Read more…]

Wendy McDonald Can Barely Afford a Burger King

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By Bob Dorn

Debby, or Debra, Flores is 20 and has a 2-year-old daughter. She works at Wendy’s downtown, First and Broadway from 11 am to 3 p.m. only four days a week, which means she’s part-time and enjoys no company benefits. She makes $8 per hour from the Wendy’s she’s part of. So, during the week at Wendy’s she’s making $32 a day, taking home $128.00 per week, less taxes.

She pays taxes because she has ANOTHER job at a hookah lounge delivering food and tobacco starting at 7 pm and continuing through the night to 6 am.

Think of it. This slight, lean young girl human on a typical day of the week puts in 15 hours of work a day, commutes to her mother’s home and spends just about 3 hours a day with her child, starting at 3 pm. Sometimes, on a good day, she grabs maybe five hours of sleep, if she can sleep.   [Read more…]

Happy Labor Day, Now More than Ever

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By Jim Miller

Today is Labor Day, but how many of us have any idea where the holiday came from or what it celebrates?

The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5th, 1882 in New York City and was proposed by the Central Labor Union (CLU) at a time when American workers were struggling for basic rights such as the eight-hour day. The CLU moved the “workingman’s holiday” to the first Monday in September in 1883 and urged other unions to celebrate the date as well.

The movement grew throughout the 1880s, along with the American labor movement itself with 23 states passing legislation recognizing Labor Day as a holiday. By 1894 Congress followed suit and Labor Day became a national holiday.

On that date, in 1894, most American workers still did not have an eight-hour day, the right to organize, social security, health care, or even a living wage. Child labor was common and there were no health and safety laws. Indeed, just being a unionist could get you fired or even killed in some quarters.   [Read more…]

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