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School Board Okays Controversial Sale of Prime Mission Beach School Property – Despite Mayor Filner’s Plea

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By Frank Gormlie/ OB Rag

On Tuesday, May 14th, the San Diego Unified School District board authorized the sale of the former Mission Beach Elementary School property to private developers – despite objections by Mayor Filner, residents and community activists.

The 4 to 1 vote by the Board was the culmination of the process to cement the controversial sale of 2.23 acres of prime public school land, a half block from the Pacific Ocean and mere yards from Mission Bay. Mayor Filner, community planners and civic activists, as well as residents pleaded with the Board to keep the land in the public arena, and work with either the City or developers on alternatives.

The site was sold for $18.5 million to a duo of developers, doing business as McKellar-Ashbrook LLC, registered in La Jolla.   [Read more…]

Community and Customers Rally for Ian Rey, Disabled Former Employee of Sprouts Point Loma

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By Annie Lane

Dozens protested Friday evening to show continued support for Ian Rey, a longtime Sprouts Farmers Market employee who said he was fired after 14 years for mistakenly taking a coworker’s jacket.

Rey was terminated from Sprouts on Monday, and has experienced an outpouring of support from the community and customers alike – many of whom say they won’t shop at the local grocery store anymore.

For some, Rey was simply a friendly face they’d come to expect to see over the years. For others, he was someone they would stand in a longer line just to say high to while he bagged their items.

“I’ve never met Ian on a bad day … I’ve never seen him not happy,” said Crystal Trignano, a special education teacher at Dewey Elementary who organized the evening rally. “It was always ‘What can I help you find?’ or ‘Is there anything you need today?’ It’s just not normal for people to care that much.”   [Read more…]

Stop AB 1309: Professional Athletes Deserve Workers Comp Too

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By Rachel Hooper

There is no question that the game of football is dangerous. NFL players get injured on the job – so many that an “injury report” section is ubiquitous in our sports page. In fact, a study run by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) found that the risk of death associated with neurodegenerative disorders is about three times higher among NFL players than the rest of the population.

NFL athletes are not merely players, they are also employees.

Their employers are now trying to take away their collectively bargained right to Workers Compensation Benefits in California. It is not right, and it sets a dangerous precedent.   [Read more…]

Math Should Trump Politics in California Pension Debate

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by Lou Paulson, President, California Professional Firefighters/Fox and Hounds Daily

If there’s one thing the debate over public employees’ pensions has taught us, it’s that California needs to invest more in mathematics instruction in its public schools.

When Stanford professors who receive special interest funding for their work and self-proclaimed ”taxpayer” organizations bankrolled by anti-union groups wag their finger at an an investment system that yields 8 percent annual returns, it’s clear there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the numbers.

No wonder the state budget is never balanced.

But let’s back up for a moment. When governments hire teachers, first responders, parks maintenance workers, garbage truck drivers, et cetera, they make certain promises regarding those employees’ retirements. Then, they often have decades to pay for those promises. It’s the same as when a family buys a house — they finance the large amount, and pay it off over 30 years.

In California, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) pays for most of those government workers’ retirements, and it does that by making investments, earning interest, and growing the bank account from which it cuts retirement checks.   [Read more…]

New Report: Taxpayers on the Hook When Corporate Giants Dump Workers onto Medi-Cal

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Proposed legislation would close “Walmart Loophole”

By Steve Smith/Labor’s Edge

For years, we’ve known big companies like Walmart have been shifting their health care costs onto taxpayers. Now a new report from the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research shows just how widespread the problem is, projecting that as many as 380,000 workers for big companies will end up on the state’s Medi-Cal program by 2019.

For taxpayers, that’s a pretty tough pill to swallow. In 2011, Walmart made $447 billion in revenue. The company’s CEO raked in nearly $21 million last year. And yet, Walmart and other large companies don’t think twice about cutting workers’ hours and wages to such a low level that workers have to get health care through taxpayer-funded Medi-Cal. Even more infuriating, Walmart and companies like Darden restaurants (owner of Oliver Garden, Red Lobster and other chains) have openly flouted the Affordable Health Care Act’s (ACA) requirement — which mandates that companies either provide affordable health care to their workers or pay a penalty — by paying so little that workers end up on public assistance.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Hell Froze Over: UT-San Diego Endorsed Labor Leader Lorena Gonzalez

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By Doug Porter 

I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools Day this morning after reading an editorial in UT-San Diego endorsing Lorena Gonzalez in the race for the 80th District Assembly seat.

There are, after all, only two Democrats, officially in the race and I fully expected the paper would pass up the opportunity to say anything encouraging about either of them. (There is, I’m told, also a write-in campaign by a Republican.)

Their endorsement was apparently triggered by Gonzalez’s positions on ‘job creation’.  Rather than play into the conservative meme that ‘jobs’ and ‘the environment’ are mutually exclusive propositions, she told them during an extensive interview that policies  respecting both are possible.

As much as I hate to do this, I’m going to agree with the UT-San Diego’s choice of candidates in this race, although for different reasons.  Lorena Gonzalez has done a terrific job of actually ‘leading’ labor in this town into areas way outside their traditional comfort zone.

I don’t know how the UT-SD missed this, but her efforts to get out the vote and involvement with grassroots organizing outside the walls of the Labor Council offices are a major reason why Democrats are an ascendant force in this town.

If she was smart enough to fool them, just think how good she’ll be with those dumbasses up in Sacramento.

INSIDE: Fighting Test to the Test, Junior Seau’s Brain, and the GOP’s Rube Goldberg Immigration plan.   [Read more…]

Labor Bashing and Lincoln Club Love in San Diego Elections

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The Last Refuge for Losers and Scoundrels in Local Democratic Politics in Assembly District 80 and Council District 4

By Jim Miller

In the race to replace Ben Hueso in the 80th it shouldn’t be shocking that Lorena Gonzalez’s opponent has attacked her for being a “union boss” except for the fact that that charge was hurled at her not from a Republican but from fellow Democrat, Steve Castaneda.  Indeed, Mr. Castaneda, who would surely have taken labor’s endorsement if offered, was far too quick to turn to cartoon like right-wing anti-union stereotypes.  This should tell us all we need to know about this variety of Democrat.

Sadly, he is one of a growing number of Democrats who can blithely turn on labor when it is convenient for their own political ambitions or pocket books.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Evading Taxes as a ‘Human Right’ (?!)

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By Doug Porter

Say what? Will these people ever stop with the twisting of words?

Does it say that in the Bible? Is it in the UN Charter? Did the founders include it in the Constitution on orders from Jesus?

Cut me a break, already.

Bloomberg news has a story up detailing how tough things are becoming for gazillionaires who want to hide their money in overseas accounts.  It seems as though many of the world’s safe havens are becoming more transparent in the face of international pressure from countries tired of seeing cashed stashed in places where they can’t tax it. So now, somehow, evading taxes is becoming a human right.

INSIDE: International Workers Memorial Day, Brown Gets Down on Prison Court Orders, Basketball Player Comes Out, Guns and Votes   [Read more…]

Chicano Park Mural Recognizes the Father of the Immigration Movement: Bert Corona

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By David Avalos / La Prensa San Diego / April 19, 2013

This week the bipartisan group of Senators known as the “Gang of Eight” put their plan for “comprehensive immigration reform” before the USAmerican public, and once again served the Chicana/o community a Mexican Combo Platter steaming with piles of beefed-up border security smothered in drones, refried Bracero guest worker programs, and microwaved workplace enforcement.

Citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country without legally adjusted status, (“amnesty” to conservatives) went sour when gang member Marco Rubio told Fox News “it will be cheaper, faster and easier for people to go back home and wait 10 years than it will be to go through this process that I’ve outlined.”

Herman Baca of the Committee on Chicano Rights (CCR) feels the Chicana/o community has no voice in the debate because it has forgotten the lessons of Bert Corona who introduced the foundational ideas and approaches to establishing immigrant labor rights in this country.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Unregulated, Unsafe, Unfair – the GOP Vision for California

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By Doug Porter

One of the favored propaganda ploys of conservative pundits over the past year or so has been the ‘everybody’s leaving California for Texas’ meme. This all started with an article in the ultra conserve National Review by former assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who left the Golden State for the Lone Star State after finishing third in the 2010 GOP primary race for US Senate.

“California may be dreaming, but Texas is working” said DeVore, who went on to tell a tale of woe including high taxes, burdensome regulations and a bloated bureaucracy that stood in sharp contrast to the lean, mean Texas machine.

And so it began. Thousands of businesses were fleeing “Taxifornia” for the freedom offered by Rick Perry’s Republican mecca, so we were told. By early in 2013, media accounts of a minor ad buy urging businesses to consider relocation to Texas painted a picture of a grand exodus underway.

Today’s report on National Public Radio by Wade Goodwin on the construction industry in Texas paints a sad portrait of the real costs of the GOP’s prosperity paradise.   [Read more…]

5 Things You Need to Know About the Immigration Agreement

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by Jackie Tortora, AFL-CIO/Originally published at Labor’s Edge

It was announced over the weekend the bipartisan Senate “Gang of Eight” came to an agreement in principle on a major aspect of creating a commonsense immigration process that benefits all workers.

This agreement includes a new kind of worker visa program called the W-Visa, which will work for everyone, not just employers.

Here are five things you need to know about this new employer-based visa:   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Anti Gay Editorial Shakes Up City Council Race

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The stench of hate rolled over South San Diego this week as the Voice and Viewpoint, a newspaper that has traditionally represented the opinions of the old school Black community, made their endorsements for the District 4 City Council special election, slated for March 26th. (See more SDFP coverage on this contest here.)

Read it for yourself:

Dwayne Crenshaw, who lists himself as a Community Nonprofit Director/Educator looks and sounds like a great candidate, however, Mr. Crenshaw has a tremendous amount of baggage from the issues surrounding his days with the Coalition of Neighborhood Councils (CNC). His openly confessed gay lifestyle is at odds with a great deal of the District’s African American residents in spite of his family’s history in the community. His positions in leadership and advocacy in the Gay community does not lead itself to the building of the kinds of coalitions between the religious and civic community that the Fourth District has enjoyed in the past and needs to build on during this critical period of restructuring. Mr. Crenshaw is not our choice at any time for this position.

Crenshaw responded forcefully over at SDGLN.com, pointing out the history of anti-gay bigotry directed at his campaigns. In the 2004 campaign, the V&V went so far as to say he ‘had bad judgment because God’s judgment was against gays’.   [Read more…]

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