Bus drivers Darian Chen, Wen Wei Zhou, and Zhan T. Huang outside the Chinese Progressive Association, which helped with a campaign against Sunshine Travel over wages and overtime. (Bill Brett for The Boston Globe) NEW YORK STATE RAISES WELFARE BENEFITS FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 19 YEARS
from the NEW YORK TIMES:
Welfare Checks to Increase for First Time in 19 Years
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Louise Ellis, who lives in a homeless shelter in the Bronx, will benefit from increased monthly welfare payments.
// //
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: July 5, 2009
The last time welfare recipients in New York saw an increase in their basic cash allowance, Derek Jeter was in high school, a subway token cost $1.15 and David N. Dinkins had just been sworn in as mayor.
Georgeanna Hicks, 54, of the Bronx, shopping at a Pathmark supermarket in East Harlem. As a single person, she will receive $151.10, up from $137.10, beginning this month. Nineteen years later, they will see another long-awaited increase beginning this month, bringing a subsidy for a typical family of three to $321 a month, from $291, city and state officials said.
For a family of four, the subsidy will rise to $413.70 a month, from $375.70.
The increase was a small line in Gov. David A. Paterson’s budget this year, but a hard-fought victory by advocates for the poor, who have long argued that the welfare subsidy was too low.
“It was way overdue,” said Mark Dunlea, the executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State, which lobbied for the increase. “Nineteen years is a very long time.”
According to the terms of the budget, the subsidy will also increase incrementally in 2010 and 2011.
On Thursday, the change was so new that many recipients had yet to realize that their checks were about to become a little bit bigger.
“What? No!” said Georgeanna Hicks, 54, as she was told of the news on her way out of the Pathmark supermarket in East Harlem. “It hasn’t gone up in years. That is great.”
Ms. Hicks, who has been on welfare for five years, said she was thrilled at the prospect of having an increase in her subsidy, however small. As a single person, she will receive $151.10, up from $137.10, beginning this month.
Ms. Hicks, who has diabetes, said she would like to find a job as a secretary, or perhaps go back to school and be trained as a dental assistant.
The extra money, Ms. Hicks said, would help her afford subway fare, which recently went up.
“I can go look for a job more often now,” she said. “I’ll do my laundry more often. I’ll spend it on things like toilet paper, lotion, dishwashing soap. I can’t really buy much of anything, but it’ll help me.”
Like many other low-income people, Ms. Hicks said she scraped by on a combination of food stamps, welfare, Medicaid and a small housing subsidy.
She also depends on her daughter, who pays for things like her cellphone bill.
But she said her daughter recently lost her job, and is struggling to keep up with her own expenses.
Several people interviewed on Thursday said they felt nickel-and-dimed by the growing cost of living, and especially by things like the higher subway fares, the rising cost of food, and even seemingly minuscule price increases at the laundry.
Ketny Jean-Francois, a single mother of a 6-year-old boy, said she was frustrated when she noticed several weeks ago that the cost of using a dryer at her laundromat had gone up: a quarter used to buy 10 minutes, but now it buys only eight.
“For other people it might be insignificant,” she said. “But if you’re counting every penny and every minute, it means something. It means something to me.”
One woman from the Bronx, who asked to be identified only as Kathy because she did not want her friends to know she was on welfare, said she expected to spend the extra subsidy — for her family of three, about a dollar a day — on household items that cannot be purchased with food stamps.
“I guess it’ll help a little bit,” she said, pausing near the door of the Pathmark. “I can’t afford to pay many of my bills.”
Louise Ellis, 57, had just finished her monthly shopping trip with her 15-year-old son, Dequan. She spent $167 on groceries, which was covered by food stamps.
She spends most of her spare cash on Dequan, who frequently needs new shoes and clothes. “Even on sale, they’re still expensive,” she said.
Ms. Jean-Francois, who lost her job as a home health aide last year, is a board member of Community Voices Heard, an advocacy organization composed mostly of people with low incomes, many of them on welfare. The group was part of the lobbying effort for the subsidy increase.
“It will improve things a little bit,” she said. “But it does feel insignificant. It feels symbolic.”
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5 PYROTECHNICS TECHNICIANS KILLED IN 4TH OF JULY ACCIDENTS
from YAHOO.COM NEWS:
AP – Smoke is seen across Ocracoke Island, N.C. Saturday, July 4, 2009 after a truckload of fireworks exploded … Sun Jul 5, 7:54 pm ET
OCRACOKE, N.C. – Five people working on Independence Day fireworks shows were killed by explosions, four of them by a single blast that rocked this remote village on the Outer Banks.
The fifth died after an explosion at a fireworks show in Pennsylvania, police said.
In another holiday accident, a pedestrian bridge collapsed in Indiana as fans were leaving a fireworks show, injuring 25 people. Authorities said Sunday the crowd had overloaded the bridge.
The blast at Ocracoke came as workers were unloading fireworks Saturday from a truck at the Anchorage Marina, shaking homes and businesses across the southern end of Ocracoke Island and rattling residents and tourists.
Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said agents determined the cause was accidental. ATF will not investigate further, but a workplace safety agency such as the state Labor Department likely will try to find the specific cause, he said.
Dock master Robert Raborn was about 200 yards away from the truck and said the explosion was one of the loudest things he had ever heard.
“It was like 40 minutes worth of fireworks going off in four seconds,” Raborn said.
One of the workers died at the scene Saturday and three others died later at area hospitals, including one who died on Sunday, said Hyde County spokeswoman Jamie Tunnell.
Another person was listed in fair condition at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center at the UNC Medical Center in Chapel Hill.
The Ocracoke victims worked for Melrose South Pyrotechnics near Rock Hill, S.C. The company said it had sent a representative to work with investigators.
Meanwhile, a silent parade was held Sunday in tribute to the victims and the people who responded to the explosion, following the intended route of Saturday’s Independence Day parade.
In Pennsylvania, state police fire marshals were investigating the death of a worker Saturday at the start of the grand finale of fireworks at Quakertown’s Memorial Park.
Quakertown Police Chief Scott McElree said authorities immediately halted the show and evacuated part of the park in eastern Pennsylvania.
Authorities did not immediately identify the man’s employer.
At Merrillville, Ind., the collapse of a wooden pedestrian bridge dropped at least 50 people into a lake Saturday night and injured about half of them, police said. None of the injuries was life-threatening, authorities said.
The collapse occurred at Hidden Lake Park in Merrillville, about 45 miles southeast of Chicago, as spectators were leaving a fireworks display at about 10 p.m.
The wooden, cable-suspended bridge could support about 40 people at a time but as many as 80 were on it when it gave way, said Ross Township Trustee John Rooda, who attended the fireworks show. The township operates the park.
“The problem is it was overloaded,” Rooda said.
In Albuquerque, N.M., a man watching a fireworks show was killed by lightning from a thunderstorm Saturday evening and his wife was also injured, police said. Names of the victims were not released and authorities said the woman was listed in stable condition at a hospital.
And in Missoula, Mont., an 8-year-old girl was accidentally electrocuted and two other children were injured while watching a fireworks show Saturday night from a church rooftop. Missoula County Sheriff Mike McMeekin said the children had climbed on some air-conditioning equipment.
Home fireworks shows also proved dangerous.
In Wisconsin, Jefferson County Sheriff Paul Milbrath said a 12-year-old boy suffered a head injury when he was hit by one of the pyrotechnics fired at a July Fourth party. The boy was taken to a hospital in Milwaukee. His name and condition weren’t released.
The Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., treated five patients who were hurt in fireworks accidents, spokeswoman Gail Short said Sunday.
Flames from fireworks damaged at least seven homes in western Washington state and destroyed some ranch housing near Harrah on the Yakama Indian Reservation, causing more than $2 million in damage, authorities said.
CHINESE BUS DRIVERS PROTEST AGAINST SUNSHINE TRAVEL’S 18 HOUR A DAY WORKDAYS AND $ 95 A DAY WAGES – bus line owner calls them “Red Guards”
from the BOSTON GLOBE:
Bus drivers, company caught in labor battle
Chinatown firm’s owner files suit to defend name
Chinatown firm’s owner files suit to defend name
Bus drivers Darian Chen, Wen Wei Zhou, and Zhan T. Huang outside the Chinese Progressive Association, which helped with a campaign against Sunshine Travel over wages and overtime. (Bill Brett for The Boston Globe)
By Jazmine Ulloa, Globe Correspondent | July 5, 2009
A controversy that has captured the attention of the Chinese community is pitting a group of bus drivers against a well-known Hong Kong-born businesswoman.
The 10 drivers say they were forced to work longer hours than the government allows for Sunshine Travel Services and then let go after protesting pay cuts. But Lorraine Tse, owner and founder of the Chinatown company, has denied the allegations, with the labor feud escalating in recent months to dueling news conferences and a lawsuit – all played out in Chinese-language newspapers.
One of the drivers caught up in the dispute, Wen Wei Zhou, says he feels lost.
“We do not know what else to do from here,’’ he said in an interview. “What can we do?’’
Drivers’ pay was reduced from $100 a day to $90 or $95, depending on experience. With the assistance of the Chinese Progressive Association, Wen and eight drivers began waging a campaign against Sunshine Travel in April, by holding a series of demonstrations.
In a letter submitted on their behalf by the Chinese advocacy group to the office of state Attorney General Martha Coakley, drivers contended the company was skirting minimum wage and overtime laws by cutting pay and pushing them to work 12 to 18 hours a day. A round trip to Washington, D.C., for example, would take about 17 hours, including time spent cleaning and repairing the bus, drivers said.
A bus driver can be on the road only for a maximum of 14 hours a shift and must have 10 hours off afterward before driving again, according to American Public Transportation Association standards.
“You always had to stay with the bus,’’ said Zhan T. Huang, who worked for Sunshine bus carriers for two years. “If some thing happens to that bus, it comes out of your pocket.’’
Drivers said they could not use their log books to prove their assertions because supervisors had told them to change their hours to abide by state safety inspections.
“If you want a job, you have to keep doing what they want,’’ Zhou said.
Most of the former drivers are originally from China and had worked for Sunshine for two or three years. They stayed because they needed the job and spoke limited English, making it difficult to get help, they said.
Tse vigorously defends Sunshine Travel, best known for its inexpensive $15 to $17 trips to Mohegan Sun Casino.
“I have worked too long and too hard to keep my reputation here, that is why I have to stand up for me and my company,’’ said Tse, whose office shelves are lined with framed photographs of her with Greater Boston politicians, Chinese political leaders, and Hong Kong movie stars.
“These relationships do not take a day to build,’’ she said, pointing to the photos. “They have taken years.’’
Tse also said Sunshine Travel should not be targeted because it does not directly employ the drivers. Zhou and the other eight drivers were hired by Morning Sun Bus Co., Coach America LLC, and New England Coach Express LLC.
But Tse owns Morning Sun and is a resident agent for Coach America, according to state records.
In the lawsuit, Tse and Sunshine Travel accuse the Chinese Progressive Association of defamation, libel, slander, and infringement of Sunshine’s logo for leaflets the group has passed out, according to the documents.
A Superior Court judge found that the leaflet violated copyright laws, court documents show. The Chinese association has filed a counterclaim, and the case is expected to go to trial after the summer.
Tse’s attorney, Donald Bumiller, said the case was filed to stop the personal attacks against his client. But Cyndi Mark, an attorney from Greater Boston Legal Services representing the association and the bus drivers, said she believes it was only meant to undercut the drivers’ efforts to claim their rights.
Amy Leung, a community organizer with the Chinese Progressive Association, saved ads that she said Tse has bought in Chinese-language newspapers to rally the Chinese small-business community against the association and the workers. The ads refer to the former drivers as “poison-hearted’’ and “red guards,’’ Leung said.
Still, in recent years, more immigrant workers are learning about their rights, said Chau-Ming Lee, executive director for the Asian American Civic Association. No matter the outcome of the case, he said, the drivers will have been exposed to the empowerment process.
And that is a positive step, Lee said. 
© Copyright // 2009 The New York Times Company
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MORE ON THE SEIU WAREHOUSE WORKERS ORGANIZING DRIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
from the LOS ANGELES TIMES:
LABOR
Unions hope to organize Inland Empire warehouse workers
A labor coalition known as Change to Win is focusing on the vast warehouse and distribution hub in the region, which handles goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
By Ronald D. White
July 1, 2009
The Inland Empire has become a new battleground for unions looking to organize warehouse workers and broaden labor’s clout in international trade, a $300-billion industry in the Southland.
The fledgling movement is backed by a coalition of unions with more than 6 million members known as Change to Win. That’s the national labor group that broke with the AFL-CIO in 2005 and includes the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the United Farm Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, among others.
The unions’ targets are warehouse and distribution centers in the Inland Empire counties of San Bernardino and Riverside, which together make up one of the nation’s biggest logistics networks. The facilities handle much of the container cargo that moves through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the busiest trade gateway in the United States.
“They want to start here because there is such a large concentration of the industry here. It’s a great sandbox and it would be a real coup if they do it,” said John Husing, an economist who specializes in the Inland Empire goods-movement industry.
Nearly 2,900 warehouses of at least 50,000 square feet each dot the Inland Empire. The facilities, which employ nearly 113,000 people, are operated by hundreds of companies, including some of the nation’s largest retailers.
The unions’ strategy is to try to build broad-based community support for better working conditions for warehouse workers, much in the way that labor was able to convince businesses that janitors were being treated unfairly.
“It is a huge, monumental task. You cannot do this one warehouse at a time,” Tom Woodruff, organizing director of Change to Win, said from his office in Washington. “There needs to be a general union movement. We expect to have a long-term campaign there.” Retailers said the best way to raise living standards for workers is through a strong industry and a vibrant U.S. economy.
“If we are concerned, we are concerned about efforts in Washington that would change the rules for union organization,” said Rob Green, vice president for government and political affairs at the National Retail Federation.
Green was referring to federal legislation backed by Change to Win that would make it far easier for workers to join unions.
The organizing effort comes at a tough time for the warehouse and distribution industry, which has long been one of the region’s most dependable sources of jobs.
Warehouses in the Inland Empire added nearly 40,000 positions from 2000 to 2007, Husing said.
But international trade has been slammed by the recession, and Husing said warehouse employment has fallen 6.7% from the peak in 2007, with most of those losses coming this year.
If the organizing movement gains traction, he said, it might prompt some of the nation’s biggest and best-known retailers to move their warehouses to parts of the country where costs are lower.
The unions see the economic downturn as an opportunity to make inroads with blue-collar employees, who they say haven’t shared in the tremendous wealth generated by international trade.
Woodruff said retailers increasingly are outsourcing their distribution work to independent delivery companies and temporary agencies that offer low wages and few benefits.
That’s hurting the livelihoods of workers such as Olga Romero, 55, of Fontana.
Since the recession took hold, Romero said, she has gone from working directly for a retailer that offered healthcare coverage and other benefits to accepting lower-paying jobs obtained through temporary-placement agencies. And even that work has dried up.
“I had paid vacation, a 401(k), but since I started working through temporary agencies, there have been no benefits and I have not been able to earn much more than $8 an hour,” Romero said. “Since January, I have not been able to find any work at all.”
A labor group calling itself Warehouse Workers United is handling the local organizing effort.
This year it has held a series of demonstrations. It has blocked the entrance of a Wal-Mart warehouse, organized a sit-in and picket line at a temporary-employment agency and blocked an intersection used by several warehouses in Ontario.
The group has yet to unionize a single workplace, but a spokesman said the struggle had just begun.
“We’re not expecting to get these workers into the middle class this year, but we think our momentum is growing,” said Nick Allen, campaign coordinator for Warehouse Workers United. “The workers are hungry.”
CYNTHIA McKINNEY – letter from an Israeli jail
from NYC INDYMEDIA:
Cynthia McKinney: Letter from an Israeli Jail
By FGM
This is Cynthia McKinney and I’m speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies – and even crayons for children; I had a suitcase full of crayons for children.
Keywords:
While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis highjacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people of the world to see how we have been treated just because we wanted to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza.
At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation Cast Lead [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the US representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver three tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.
During Operation Cast Lead, US-supplied F-16s rained hellfire on a trapped people. Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide. US-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs – new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel’s onslaught that Gaza had become Israel’s veritable weapons testing laboratory, people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.
The world saw Israel’s despicable violence thanks to Al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international water… It’s a miracle that I’m even here to write about my second encounter with the Israeli military, again a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.
The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime… I am now known as Israeli prisoner number 88794. How can I be in prison for collecting crayons to kids?
Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else’s children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza’s children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.
I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza’s children could color and paint, that Gaza’s wounded could be healed, and that Gaza’s bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.
But I’ve learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it’s incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream… like my cellmates, one who is pregnant. They are all are in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better… The once proud, never-colonized Ethiopia [has been thrown into] the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must free their country because superpower politics [have] become more important than human rights and self-determination.
My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn’t cheap. Many of them represent their family’s best collective efforts for self-fulfilment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel, only after they arrived Israel told them, “There is no UN in Israel.”
The police here have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious and proud women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world’s first Jews and Christians. I too believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.
The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped in Ramle’s detention facility. And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that hope, change, and “yes we can” were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfilment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.
It was a slick marketing campaign as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel’s marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.
We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from a Birmingham jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I too would one day have to [write one]. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the US have a lot to atone for, for what they’ve done to others around the world.
What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people’s children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I’m experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. [But] I’m lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?
Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I see being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] What are you willing to do?
Let’s change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity. I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes. I appeal to the United State’s Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel country report in its annual human rights report. I appeal once again to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.
I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I’ve met at Ramle. This is Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.
***Cynthia McKinney is a former Democratic US congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate, and an outspoken advocate for human rights and social justice. The first African-American woman to represent the state of Georgia, McKinney served six terms in the US House of Representatives, from 1993-2003, and from 2005-2007.
***McKinney’s remarks are transcribed here from a telephone call received by WBAIX.org.
FEDS LEAN ON AMERICAN APPAREL TO FIRE 1,800 IMMIGRANT GARMENT WORKERS IN THEIR LOS ANGELES FACTORIES
from the NEW YORK TIMES:
U.S. Shifts Strategy on Illicit Work by Immigrants
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters
American Apparel has made immigrant labor a hallmark of its social message, which includes extending legal status.
// //
Published: July 2, 2009
Immigration authorities had bad news this week for American Apparel, the T-shirt maker based in downtown Los Angeles: About 1,800 of its employees appeared to be illegal immigrants not authorized to work in the United States.
But in contrast to the high-profile raids that marked the enforcement approach of the Bush administration, no federal agents with criminal warrants stormed the company’s factories and rounded up employees. Instead, the federal immigration agency sent American Apparel a written notice that it faced civil fines and would have to fire any workers confirmed to be unauthorized.
The treatment of American Apparel, which has more than 5,600 factory employees in Los Angeles alone, is the most prominent demonstration of a new strategy by the Obama administration to curb the employment of illegal immigrants by focusing on employers who hire them — and doing so in a less confrontational manner than in years past.
Unlike the approach of the Bush administration, which brought criminal charges in its final two years against many illegal immigrant workers, the new effort makes broader use of fines and other civil sanctions, federal officials said Thursday.
Federal agents will concentrate on businesses employing large numbers of workers suspected of being illegal immigrants, the officials said, and will reserve tough criminal charges mostly for employers who serially hire illegal immigrants and engage in wage and labor violations.
“These actions underscore our commitment to targeting employers that cultivate illegal work forces by knowingly hiring and exploiting illegal workers,” said Matt Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
On Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency known as ICE, said it had sent notices announcing audits of hiring records, like the one it conducted at American Apparel, to 652 other companies across the country. Officials said they were picking up the pace of such audits, after performing 503 of them in 2008.
The names of other companies that received notices have not been made public. American Apparel became a window into the new enforcement tactics because, as a publicly traded company, it issued a required notice on Wednesday about the hiring audit.
The Obama administration’s new approach, unveiled in April, seems to be moving away from the raids that advocates for immigrants said had split families, disrupted businesses and traumatized communities. But the outcome will still be difficult for illegal workers, who will lose their jobs and could face deportation, the advocates said.
Immigration officials have not made clear how they intend to deal with workers who are unable to prove their legal immigration status in the course of inspections, but they said there was no moratorium on deportations.
Executives at American Apparel were both relieved and dismayed after receiving the warning from the immigration agency of discrepancies in the hiring documents of about one-third of its Los Angeles work force. The company has 30 days to dispute the agency’s claims and give immigrant employees time to prove that they are authorized to work in the United States, immigration officials said. If they cannot, the company must fire them, probably within two months.
But no criminal charges were lodged against the company and no workers have been arrested, American Apparel executives and immigration officials said.
The fines followed discussions over 18 months between federal officials and American Apparel, after immigration agents first inspected the company’s files in January 2008, said Peter Schey, an immigration lawyer representing the company. Mr. Schey said a raid had been averted because the company cooperated with the audit and because immigration agents had not found any labor abuses.
“There is no evidence of any exploitation of workers or violation of labor laws,” he said. “And there is not a single allegation that the company knowingly hired an undocumented worker.”
American Apparel and its outspoken chief executive, Dov Charney, have waged a campaign, emblazoned on T-shirts sold across the country, criticizing the immigration crackdown of recent years and calling on Congress to “Legalize L.A.” by granting legal status to illegal immigrants.
Most garment workers in American Apparel’s huge shop in Los Angeles work directly for the company, not for subcontractors, its records show. They earn at least $10 to $12 an hour, well above minimum wage, and receive health benefits.
At a news conference last year, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles publicly lauded Mr. Charney for helping the city with its faltering economy by providing “the dream of a steady paycheck and good benefits for countless workers.”
While it has been no secret that American Apparel’s largely Latino work force probably included many illegal immigrants, Mr. Schey said the company had been careful to meet legal hiring requirements. Many illegal immigrants use convincingly forged Social Security cards or other fake documents when seeking work.
In a statement, Mr. Charney said that many of his workers cited by the immigration agency were “responsible, hard-working employees” who had been with the company for more than a decade. Mr. Charney, an immigrant from Canada, said he hoped they would be able to prove their legal status. But because of the recession, the company said, it will not be hurt financially if it has to replace them.
Mr. Schey said the hiring audit at American Apparel had been “professionally done.” By contrast, Mr. Schey has brought more than 100 damage claims against the immigration agency on behalf of American citizens who said they were illegally arrested last year in Los Angeles in an immigration raid at a different company, Micro Solutions Enterprises.
Immigration officials, who asked not to be identified because the case is continuing, said the fines to American Apparel so far were about $150,000.
Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for the immigration agency, said it had taken steps to limit negotiations with employers that in the past had resulted in steep reductions in fines the employers ultimately paid.
Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House, said the amount of the fines was crucial.
“If this is a truly conscientious effort to get tough with employers to say the days are over of profiteering with illegal immigrants, that’s fine,” said Mr. Bilbray, who opposes any effort to give legal status to illegal immigrants. “But if the fine will be so low that it’s just part of doing business, there’s no deterrent.”
Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an advocacy group, said she welcomed the end to “showboat enforcement raids.” But in the end, Ms. Salas said, “there is still enforcement of laws that are broken,” adding, “The workers will still lose their jobs.”
ENVIRONMENTAL LAWSUIT BLOCKS CHEVRON FROM EXPANDING RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA OIL REFINERY – 1,000 CONSTRUCTION WORKERS TO BE LAID OFF
from the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:
Judge: Chevron must halt Richmond expansion
David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, July 3, 2009
(07-02) 17:50 PDT Martinez — A judge has ordered Chevron Corp. to stop work on its controversial oil refinery expansion in Richmond, handing environmentalists their biggest victory in a long fight over the project.
Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Barbara Zuniga gave Chevron 60 days to wind up work on the project, which would have given the 107-year-old refinery greater flexibility to process different types of crude oil. Zuniga’s orders, dated Wednesday, were released Thursday.
Her ruling doesn’t kill the upgrade project outright. But before it could proceed, Chevron would need a new environmental impact report and a new permit from the Richmond City Council, which narrowly approved the project last year. Zuniga ruled last month that the original environmental report didn’t answer key questions, siding with environmental and community groups that had sued to stop the expansion.
“The court held Big Oil accountable,” said Will Rostov, staff attorney for Earthjustice, one of the groups involved in the suit. “The judge got it.”
The victory, however, comes at a cost.
San Ramon’s Chevron began the upgrades in September, bringing in more than 1,000 workers for the task. The company laid off 100 of those workers Thursday and will cut more in the coming weeks.
“While we believe the court’s decision is wrong, we will begin demobilizing,” said Chevron spokesman Brent Tippen. “For contract workers, there will be no project to work on until this is resolved.”
The company has not given up on revamping the refinery, Tippen said. But scrapping the upgrade would cost workers $50 million to $75 million in lost income, he said.
In addition, the city would lose $61 million that Chevron pledged to community programs as part of the project’s approval, Tippen said.
“As of right now, we are reviewing our options and will work with the city to find a path forward,” Tippen said.
The groups suing Chevron want the workers retained until construction can begin again.
They doubt that the oil company, America’s second largest, will walk away from the project. Instead, they want Chevron to agree to limits on the use of heavier grades of crude oil at the refinery, grades they fear could produce more air pollution.
“The workers shouldn’t pay for Chevron’s mistake,” said Greg Karras, senior scientist for Communities for a Better Environment, another of the suit’s plaintiffs. “The real solution is to replace the refinery’s ancient equipment. Design it right, design it for the same quality of oil.”
Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin echoed that point. “We can get a good project, and hopefully this ruling will help us do that.”
The fight over the refinery has focused on the types of oil processed there. But it has also involved long-simmering resentment among the refinery’s neighbors, who say pollution from the aging facility threatens their health.
Chevron describes the project as an important upgrade. Although the refinery would still process the same amount of crude oil, it would be able to make about 7 percent more gasoline from that oil.
The refinery would still use the same kinds of crude oil that it does now, according to the company. The four-year upgrade, however, would let the refinery process larger amounts of the heavier grades of crude already used there.
Opponents consider that description a smokescreen. They say the project’s true intention is to handle even heavier grades of crude oil, grades that contain higher levels of toxins such as mercury and can lead to more air pollution.
“This is a trend across the country,” said Rostov. “We’re running out of the good stuff and using more of the dirtier oil.”
Last month, Zuniga ruled that the project’s environmental report was too vague about the types of oil that would be processed after the upgrade was complete.
City Councilman Jim Rogers said Thursday that the judge’s ruling could finally bring the opposing sides to a compromise. Last year, he proposed that the project go forward under the condition that an independent party would sample air pollution near the refinery to make sure it didn’t get worse after the upgrade. He plans to pursue that idea again.
“My feeling is, out of crisis comes opportunity, perhaps the opportunity for both sides to agree to monitor the air,” Rogers said. “And if it’s dirtier, then Chevron would not get to run the heavier, dirtier crude. They wouldn’t have to rip out the machinery and scrap it; they just couldn’t use the dirtier crude.”
E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/03/BALT18IENG.DTL
This article appeared on page B – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
MORE ON THE SUPREME COURT’S DEFENSE OF WHITE PRIVILEGE IN THE NEW HAVEN FIRE DEPARTMENT
from the BLACK AGENDA REPORT:
High Court Tries to Freeze White Privilege in Place
Submitted by Glen Ford on Tue, 06/30/2009 – 20:34
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Glen Ford
Click the flash player below to listen to or the mic to download an mp3 copy of this BA Radio commentary.
The real “activist” judiciary if represented by the U.S. Supreme Court majority than is determined to re-enshrine white privilege in law. The New Haven firefighters ruling is an assault on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “The High Court decision would preserve an ethnic, clan and family racial protection racket that has been embedded in fire and police departments for generations.”
High Court Tries to Freeze White Privilege in Place
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“What the racist majority is actually attempting to do is to freeze white privilege in place.”
In siding with white firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut, the 5-4 Supreme Court majority treats white dominance in firefighting as a kind of harmless “tradition” rather then evidence on its face of systemic, institutional racism in hiring and promotion. The ruling reflects a general white American worldview, that sees the Irish fireman as an iconic figure, even in neighborhoods that long ago turned Black or Latino. Under the terms of the past world the majority seeks to preserve, the white fireman and cop is a wholesome and “natural” presence, rather than an affront to every non-white resident of the neighborhood.
The Supreme Court majority, in striking down Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s ruling in New Haven, is raising the bar significantly for minorities seeking entrance or promotion in these historically white men’s clubs – the police precincts and station houses. The justices now demand “strong, basic evidence” of previous discrimination. Yet such evidence is everywhere available in the firefighting and police professions. What the racist majority is actually attempting to do is to freeze white privilege in place. In this case, the High Court decision would preserve an ethnic, clan and family racial protection racket that has been embedded in fire and police departments for generations – the most raw and obvious form of on-the-job apartheid.
“A general white American worldview sees the Irish fireman as an iconic figure, even in neighborhoods that long ago turned Black or Latino.”
The white-dominated society, through its media and cultural institutions, actively glorifies this historical white entitlement to jobs by reserving special places of honor for men, and now women, who are third and fourth generation fire and police persons. Most whites do not even question how white ethnic groups, clans and individual families perpetuated themselves in relatively well paid, stable and prestigious civil service employment, from one generation to the next. It is accepted as simply “the way of the world” and a good thing, a comforting situation to most white people – and especially comforting to the sons and daughters that feel entitled to follow their fathers and grandfathers into the firehouse or on the beat or into the white ethnic-dominated construction trades.
The rightwing judges that now dominate the federal judiciary constantly warn against judicial “activism” – when in fact it is they who are on a reactionary political mission to preserve white privilege. They attempt to dismantle key elements of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As Dr. Ron Walters has written, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act has been “settled law” for 35 years. Its clear intent was to prevent the “protected classes” – which, at the time, meant Blacks – from being excluded from employment as a result of testing devices. The forces of white privilege have been trying to turn the Act on its head, ever since, by framing whites as in need of protection. As if society has ever been weighted against the interests of white men.
The actual impact of testing in New Haven and elsewhere has been to exclude Blacks and Latinos. These are the facts that racist judges willfully ignore. Instead of facts, they substitute color-blind mumbo-jumbo, a thin cover for race privilege preservation.
BUILDING TRADES TO TAKE 10% PAY CUT ON ALL CHRYSLER AND FORD AUTO PLANT CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE JOBS
from the DETROIT BUILDING TRADESMAN:
Automotive downturn arrives at trades’ doorstep, 10% givebacks set for Chrysler, Ford work
The National Maintenance Agreements Policy Committee approved a series of modifications to its industrial maintenance and construction contracts with Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. on June 3, a move that is expected to create hundreds of millions of dollars of savings for each company over the next two years and help boost them back to financial solvency.
Through the NMAPC, International Union leaders agreed to what amounts to a 10 percent cut on union wages on Chrysler and Ford projects. The status quo remains with General Motors, which was not part of the agreement.
In return, the two auto manufacturers agreed to utilize union contractors, working under the terms of the National Maintenance Agreements, on 100 percent of their industrial maintenance and construction projects over the next two years.
NMAPC Impartial Secretary Stephen R. Lindauer said this move is indicative of the group’s commitment to building a partnership of safety, productivity, quality and strength.
“Ford and Chrysler understand the National Maintenance Agreements are the best tool they have in getting the job done on time and on budget,” Lindauer said. “Similarly, the labor and management partners at the table are committed to the long-term success of their customers, and are willing to make difficult sacrifices to ensure that success.”
The National Maintenance Agreements Policy Committee negotiates and administers the National Maintenance Agreements, a series of collective bargaining agreements utilized by more than 2,500 industrial contractors who employ members of 14 building trades international unions.
The modifications will affect union workers, and the contractors who employ them, in a total of 54 facilities across ten states — Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Michigan will see the greatest impact, with 26 facilities affected by the addendum. The modifications will expire as part of a sunset clause on June 3, 2011.
A PROFILE OF THE PROBABLE NEXT AFL-CIO PRESIDENT, RICHARD TRUMKA
from the NEW YORK TIMES:
Combative Union Leader Steps From the Shadows
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Richard Trumka is expected to easily win election as A.F.L.-C.I.O. president at the federation’s convention in September.
// //
Published: July 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — Richard Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., can boast of something unusual for a labor leader — one of his videos has more than 535,000 hits on YouTube.
That video shows Mr. Trumka giving a stemwinder of a speech at a steel workers’ convention last year, telling union members it would be wrong — and stupid — to vote against Barack Obama because of his race.
“There’s no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more suffering than racism — and it’s something we in the labor movement have a special responsibility to challenge,” Mr. Trumka said. “It’s our special responsibility because we know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.”
Mr. Trumka’s friends often say that speech lifted him out of semi-obscurity after spending the last 14 years taking a back seat to John J. Sweeney, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president. But now Mr. Trumka, a former coal miner and fierce critic of corporate America, is running all out to succeed Mr. Sweeney, who is retiring, as president of the nation’s main labor federation.
Expected to win easily, Mr. Trumka would bring a more combative style to running the federation at a time when organized labor seems to be growing weaker in the nation’s workplaces but stronger in Washington.
With union leaders desperate to stop labor’s long decline, many are hoping Mr. Trumka will figure out a way to raise labor’s energy, profile and numbers. At the same time, some union leaders worry that Mr. Trumka will be a polarizing figure who might not be adept at building consensus among the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s 56 unions, a crucial step in moving it forward.
If elected — and he may well run unopposed — Mr. Trumka, 59, would bring the tough guy image he developed in his 13 years as president of the United Mine Workers. In that position, he led long, successful strikes against Pittston and other coal companies, often persuading hundreds of miners to block roads to pressure the companies.
In 1989, he led a 10-month walkout by 1,700 miners in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky after Pittston moved to cut health benefits to disabled and retired miners. During that strike, there were 3,000 arrests of miners and their allies.
In his speeches, Mr. Trumka often accuses companies of squeezing their workers and lashes out at outsourcing and free trade.
“For 30 years corporate America has really dominated the political scene, and it’s hurt this country,” he said. “Somewhere along the line, their interests began to diverge from the interests of the country. Multinationals do what they think is best for them even if it’s not in the interests of the country. One of our main objectives is to realign the interests of corporations with the interests of the nation.”
While Mr. Trumka sometimes felt invisible the last 14 years —“I was a good soldier,” he says — he takes credit for creating and overseeing labor’s effort to use union pension funds to press companies over executive pay and many other issues.
If Mr. Trumka is elected at the federation’s convention in September, he would become the main voice and face of American labor. With his Polish ancestry, heavy mustache, brawny frame and dynamic, earthy speaking style, he has been compared with Lech Walesa, the leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement.
Mr. Trumka went to work in the mines at 19, sometimes alternating several months below ground and several months in school. He graduated from Pennsylvania State and received a law degree from Villanova.
His office is filled with memorabilia — his and his father’s mining helmets, pictures of his son playing football at Cornell and several professional football buddies. His top-floor office faces the White House, just across Lafayette Square.
“He represents old labor,” said Gary N. Chaison, a labor relations professor at Clark University. “I think he will be a real different type of leader. He has more fire in the belly.”
His us-against-them style, Mr. Chaison said, could make it harder to attract the white-collar and young workers labor is wooing.
Mr. Trumka hopes to beef up organizing activities, mobilize labor’s grass roots, attract young workers and ally labor with low-wage workers — things Mr. Sweeney also sought to do. Like Mr. Sweeney he vows to do his utmost to enact the “card check” bill to make unionizing easier.
Later this month he will speak to the N.A.A.C.P., hoping to forge a partnership to help low-wage African-American workers.
“I don’t think we can reach these low-wage workers unless we build these partnerships so that we have entree into their community,” Mr. Trumka said. “My overall goal is to speak for all workers, young and old, union and nonunion, and give them a voice.”
Business groups voice concern about Mr. Trumka. “He’s obviously going to be very aggressive,” said Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “I think it will be more of the same we saw under Sweeney, which was a demonization of the employer community to drive up membership.”
Mr. Trumka has been meeting with many union presidents to seek their endorsements. Gerald W. McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, played a pivotal role behind Mr. Sweeney’s ascension in 1995, and he has endorsed Mr. Trumka.
“Rich has a great deal of experience,” Mr. McEntee said. “He will be more forceful, more aggressive. He knows the inner workings of labor. He’s the best equipped for the job.”
Inside A.F.L.-C.I.O. headquarters, many praise Mr. Trumka’s fire and dedication to workers, but some wonder whether he is right for the job.
“People are asking whether Rich can be an effective organization leader, as opposed to an effective speechmaker and whether he can lead the movement in a broad statesmanlike fashion rather than a narrow, provincial fashion,” said one official who insisted on anonymity, not wanting to upset one of his bosses.
Some union leaders say Mr. Trumka’s candidacy may impede the months of efforts to reunify the labor movement. The service employees, the Teamsters and five other unions quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to form a rival federation in 2005.
James P. Hoffa, the Teamsters’ president, has been angry at Mr. Trumka since Mr. Trumka backed his opponent, Ron Carey, in a 1996 race for the Teamsters’ presidency.
“I know the Teamsters have some ill will toward Rich, but hopefully we can put that behind us,” said Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers.
Without bringing charges against him, federal prosecutors have suggested that Mr. Trumka helped steer $150,000 in A.F.L.-C.I.O. funds to the Carey campaign in an illegal scheme. Invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, Mr. Trumka declined to answer federal investigators’ questions.
If Mr. Trumka is elected, labor’s many foes will certainly take him to task for using the right against self-incrimination in that case.
Asked about invoking the Fifth, Mr. Trumka responded: “Our members don’t care about that. They are about who’s going to fight for them to help them with their jobs and their paychecks.”
