San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Business / Labor

Part Two: President Obama & the Gang of Eight’s ‘Comprehensive Immigration Reform’

by

A Chicano Historical Analysis: Immigration or Labor?

By Herman Baca, President, Committee on Chicano Rights

Employer Sanctions 

Sanctions against employers historically have always been a farce for the simple reason that, U.S. employers unlike Mexican undocumented workers have massive amounts of money and political power!

Proof of the above is documented with the 1951 President’s Commission on Migratory Labor that first recommended reducing the number of “wetbacks” with employer sanctions, and fines on employers who knowingly hired illegal workers.

However, in 1952 when the Immigration and Nationality Act was enacted making the harboring of illegal aliens a felony, punishable by a $2,000 fine and a prison term of five years; the law also included the Texas proviso, which asserted that employing an illegal alien, was not harboring!

Thus, there were no penalties on US employers.   [Read more…]

Tourism Marketing District Could Be Made Subject to Living Wage Ordinance

by

Obstinance of San Diego City Council and big hotel interests stymieing TMD deal, tourism ad campaigns.

The Bob Filner era in San Diego is only in its infancy stages, but it has certainly not disappointed in the fireworks department. The sometimes brash yet affable new mayor has left no doubt that there’s a new sheriff in town, and the old wink-wink nudge-nudge ways of doing business Downtown have come to an end. Filner made his disdain for the “downtown special interests” a major focal point in his campaign, and thus far he’s held true to his word.

The most recent big controversy at City Hall—until yesterday, that is—was Filner’s refusal sign, and thus finalize, a contract drafted during the Sanders administration to provide the Tourism Marketing District $30 million per year for the next 39 years, ostensibly for the purpose of promoting San Diego as a major tourism destination in various media markets around the country. The agreement calls for levying an additional assessment on hotel guests on top of the transient occupancy tax that even San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith calls legally dubious (he says it’s in a “legal gray area”).   [Read more…]

Reflections from a Rally at the Hilton Mission Valley

by

Much has been made of Bob Filner crashing the City Attorney’s news conference a little while ago but we shouldn’t forget that in that flurry of feistiness he pointed out that there are people among us, fellow citizens, family, friends, you name them, who are paid tacky wages. Like hotel workers.

He made it clear that the tourist industry isn’t going to ply their trade with $30 million dollars of the city’s money unless they pay hotel workers what they deserve.

How refreshing is that, a mayor for the people, a man standing up for the folks who make visitors to “America’s Finest City” comfortable and well fed, with nice pools for a swim on well manicured hotel grounds. These people get out and about town and spend money by the ton and the people who added so much to the fineness of their stay don’t get anywhere near their fair share of this bounty.

The hoteliers, however, get way more than their ownership status should allow and around these parts they have historically treated their workers as though they don’t care about them. The reason being? Because they don’t care about them.   [Read more…]

20 Arrested at Mission Valley Hilton Protest over Job Security

by

Twenty people were arrested Friday evening during a protest at the HiltonMissionValley hotel during a protest stemming from the refusal of management to take step to protect employee jobs during the sale of the property. Tarsadia investments is currently negotiating to buy the location.

Those arrested included hotel workers, family members, clergy and community advocates. The hotel has been the focus of organizing efforts by union advocates for months now. Employees were recently forced to re-apply for their jobs by the current owner, HEI Hotels and Resorts, a move aimed at breaking the back of a burgeoning employee organizing effort.

Employees were told by management on January 13th that they face mass layoffs. The hotel filed notice with the state of its intention to lay off workers on under the state’s WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) system run by the Employment Development Department.   [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Downtown Tourism Showdown: Today’s Council Hearing is the Start of the Dump Filner Campaign

by

Nothing will be decided at today’s hearing before the San Diego City Council (2pm) about the Tourism Marketing District funding. And that’s somehow appropriate; given that the whole battle over Mayor Bob Filner’s refusal to sign off on authorization of a 39 year deal is really nothing more than a proxy battle for a much bigger conflict.

At the bottom of all this is the inability of the city’s ‘downtown crowd’ to live with last fall’s election of Filner, who’s proven true to his word thus far about not continuing to do business as usual in San Diego.

INSIDE: Today’s Battle at City Hall, Majority of Hoteliers Voted Against 2% Fee, Right Wing Heads Explode as Michelle Obama Appears on Oscars   [Read more…]

An Invitation to Rick Perry to Come Back to California

by

by Angie Wei/California Labor Federation

You have to feel a little bad for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He came all the way to California this week to “poach jobs” and left empty-handed. Maybe Perry hasn’t read the studies that show very few jobs move from California to other states. Or maybe he wasn’t aware that California is on the rebound in a big way, now leading the nation in job creation. At the end of the day, Perry’s trip really was all hat, no cattle.

Over the last week, there’s been a lot of silly media coverage comparing Texas to California. It’s almost like a sports rivalry at this point. Perry says his low-regulation, low-government service, low-wage economic model is the way to go.

As a native Texan, I know better. I still remember going to the beach in Galveston and having to use turpentine to clean my feet before I left because of the oil. And I know being a worker in Texas is no joy, either. Workers have few rights. Collective bargaining is rare. If you’re injured on the job, tough luck. Texas is dead last in workers’ compensation coverage. Health insurance is hard to come by. Wages are low, and as a result, poverty is high. The Rick Perry fairy tale of Texas being an oasis is nothing more than a Texas-sized lie.

But we think Rick Perry ought to come back. Yep, you read that correctly. We should invite Perry back to California with open arms.   [Read more…]

PERB Smacks Down Prop B: Pension Reform Initiative Ruling Explained

by

To the surprise of……well, no one, really, Prop B was deemed illegal according to state law by an administrative law judge in a ruling released Tuesday evening, essentially invalidating Prop B.

The City, of course, intends to appeal the ruling.

The crux of the case is this: Proponents of Prop B insist that it was a “citizens initiative,” since it was put on the ballot after a petition drive that gathered over 115,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. Therefore it reflects the will of the people and should not be overturned. Opponents of Prop B noted that according to state law workers rights cannot be put to a vote via ballot initiative……in a nutshell.   [Read more…]

Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader Both Condemn Postal Service Decision

by

By Matthew Rothschild / The Progressive –RSN

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Senator Bernie Sanders condemned the U.S. Postal Service for its decision to end Saturday delivery.

“The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) today continued its tradition under the leadership of Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe of shooting itself in the foot,” Nader said. “The only question that remains is: When will the madness end? By ending Saturday letter delivery in August 2013, as the USPS has proposed, millions of customers who take advantage of its services will be harmed, mail service will be slowed, and the USPS’s current death spiral will deepen.”

Nader also called into question the legality of the move.   [Read more…]

State Hits Walmart Contractor with Wage Theft Ruling

by

from Warehouse Workers United/Frying Pan News

The state of California has ordered a Southern California warehouse that processes merchandise for Walmart and other retailers to pay 865 workers more than $1 million in stolen wages.

The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement issued the citations Monday, Jan. 28 against Quetico, LLC, a large warehouse complex in Chino, California. Back wages and unpaid overtime total more than $1.1million and in addition the state issued about $200,000 in penalties.

“Quetico is strict when it comes to enforcing its rules with workers so it is only fair that the state enforce the laws that the company broke,” said Abraham Guzman, a warehouse worker who has been at Quetico for about two and a half years. “I am satisfied that the law will now be followed and workers have won justice.”   [Read more…]

The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy

by

And why Walmart, McDonald’s and every hospital in the country should be unionized

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed.   [Read more…]

What Would We Do Without Wishful Thinking?

by

In last week’s column I noted how the tax increases on the 1% included in the “fiscal cliff” deal amounted to little more than the political equivalent of a love tap for the rich because upper income tax rates remain much closer to their historic lows than to their mid-twentieth century highs.  This is disheartening because, as the political narrative shifts toward some form of austerity in the name of deficit reduction, our country’s historically high level of economic inequality remains deeply entrenched and there simply will not be enough revenue to engage in a robust progressive program centered around “nation building at home” as President Obama likes to say.

In sum, the unemployment crisis and other key social and economic needs will take a back seat to deficit reduction and the battles will not be about whether an austerity agenda is the right course for America but rather what form of austerity program we should pursue.  While there is an impressive list of eloquent critics (from Paul Krugman and Robert Reich to Joseph Stiglitz and Bernie Sanders) bemoaning this wrong-headed approach, we seem destined to ignore them and head down a road that spares the comfortable while further burdening the afflicted.   In elite opinion circles, it’s a bipartisan consensus.   Sure the wing nuts on the right are crazy but the even the Democrats are largely wedded to the gospel of Simpson-Bowles.

But isn’t this bitter medicine that will make us all better in the long run?  No, it’s bad policy that amounts to a not too-thinly-veiled class war.    [Read more…]

Ten Reasons that 2012 was an Unprecedented Winning Year for San Diego Region Working Families.

by

by Lorena Gonzalez

Workers throughout the United States and in San Diego faced unprecedented challenges this year. A full scale attack on middle-class wages and benefits, along with a tough economy, made 2012 seem like a very long year for middle and working class folks. But, when it was all said in done, this year should leave a smile on our faces in San Diego – and these are 10 of the reasons why…   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry