Category: Labor

Some people go on and on about labor unions as if they’re some kind of STD, so un-hip to the reality that the Labor Movement is us, We the People.

Who else labors?

As far as my relations with unions is concerned, if it hadn’t been for the San Diego Teachers Union I wouldn’t have enjoyed the time of a lifetime, a period of three years where I put work aside and took a “Parental Leave,” the first such leave taken by a man in the school district.

I don’t know how that wonderful opportunity made it through all the stancing and dancing required to get a contract signed. I think it must have happened as kind of an after thought, something put on the table as part of a tooth fairy like wish to mess with management’s mind, and the district must have gone along with it in a “Whatever, if it sails your boat” frame of mind, knowing they weren’t going to give up much more. That’s how negotiations go in the labor movement sometimes.

After nearly twenty years of ‘reform’, the schools of Chicago remain among the lowest performing in the nation.

A funny thing happened on the way to labor’s extinction: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) staged one of the most daring and important strikes in recent memory. As Chris Hedges put it during his Democracy Now interview last week “the teachers’ strike in Chicago is arguably one of the most important labor actions in probably decades.” And in the midst of this struggle, most of the corporate media around the country have decried the horrible greedy teachers from their editorial pages and assured readers that they were on the side of the children rather than the teachers.

I shakily tried to take a picture with my AT&T 3G cell phone of a cactus painted by Mario Chacon. I acquired it from him a while back in Chicano Park. I had to shade the painting from the glare of a blue sky with the sun shining high and bright and far and wide and finally I got about as good a picture as I was going to get no matter how hard I had tried.

Trite as it may seem my persistence in getting this snapshot was based on Mario telling me that the protrusions reaching out from the cactus spoke to the persistence of the indigenous people.

“Sanders said another savings in the works will come from using managed competition to lower the cost of city employees performing jobs that private companies can do for less. One such job is residential trash services. San Diego city employees are paid to collect trash. Most other California cities contract with a private company and residents pay for their own trash services.

“We don’t have to have government employees mow the laws in our parks. We don’t have to have government employees pick up trash,” Sanders said. Mayor Jerry Sanders reviews his legacy at La Jolla luncheon La Jolla Light 9/11/12

Three months to go in the last term of our first strong mayor — Jerry Sanders, and the legacy polishing tour has begun.

A dozen community volunteers showed Saturday for the Green Store and OB Rag clean-up of the Gateway Project. We began about 7:45 and went till 10:30 or so.

Weeds, weeds, weeds. We hacked, shoveled, dug, pulled weeds by the hand, raked, sweated … and … we ensured we didn’t take or pull flowers and native plants. But there was a lot of dead stuff, some trash, but a lot of work was needed to make the place less of an eye-sore and more of an inviting place for OBceans. One guy came by and said he weekly toured the site and picked up trash.

By Kali Kat / Special to the OB Rag

With the one year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street just around the corner on September 17, and many other cities’ occupy anniversaries falling in the weeks just after, like Occupy San Diego’s one year anniversary on October 7, the question being begged is:

“What is the current state of the Occupy movement?” If you go down to the Civic Center or your local City Hall, are people still living there?

The Occupy movement, including Occupy San Diego (OSD), is still alive and well, but no, there are not people still living there – well not people flying the Occupy flag anyways.

It has finally come down to this: the weed-strewn corner lot at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard and West Point Loma can be tolerated no more! The Gateway Project is an embarrassment to every OBcean who cares about how the community looks.

Community volunteers will be assembling tomorrow – Saturday, September 8th – in the morning at the lot and will be attacking the weeds with a vengeance. The clean-up is being sponsored by the Green Store and the OB Rag – and organizers are expecting 30 volunteers to show up. Most of the work will be done between the hours of 8 a.m. and noon.

In praise of the American worker

by Lorena Gonzalez

As a single mom, on my busiest mornings I struggle to ensure that everyone’s teeth are brushed, breakfast is eaten, lunches are made, the kids get to school on time and I get into work. On those mornings, it’s the barista at the local coffee shop who quickly passes me a hot cup of coffee with plenty of room for milk that makes things a little more bearable. She is my daily reminder that no matter what we do, work connects us all; we depend on one another’s work.

Dave Rice, an OBcean and current blogger for the San Diego Reader and former writer for the OB Rag was assaulted yesterday – August 29th – while covering a story about the mistreatment of Hilton Hotel employees. He was assaulted by men who work for the hotel.

Here is a report from the San Diego Free Press by Doug Porter on Dave Rice’s experience:

Mission Valley mayhem… A press conference being held yesterday by the Employee Rights Center to air charges that the hotel’s operator, Connecticut-based HEI Hospitality, had been named in a complaint …

The following ran as an editorial at today’s San Diego Free Press:

We un-nominate San Diego as a convention city in case Hurricane Isaac forces the Republicans to flee Tampa. What?

Today’s news had two items of interest: Hurricane Isaac barreling toward Florida just may disrupt or adversely affect the Republican Convention being currently set up in Tampa. Romney & Co may have to relocate their shindig.

The other bit – actually an editorial in the U-T San Diego – had this headline: “If Isaac Roars, San Diego Should Welcome GOP”, and goes on to declare:

“But if the worst should happen, and Republican officials are suddenly forced to relocate the GOP national convention to begin Monday in Tampa, we nominate San Diego as the new convention host city.”

Midway Express Car Wash
3460 Midway Dr.
San Diego, CA
619-223-1691

I have never owned a new car before. I mean “really new.” My new Camry L had only 25 miles when I drove it off the lot. I have had it almost 5 months, and have had it “professionally” washed two times. (See my first review several months ago.) For the most part, I have washed it myself but for some reason the birds are attracted to the sky blue color, and this time I could not reach the middle of the roof when it was splattered by bird feces when I parked under a tree to keep the car cool. OK – dumb. But…the car was cooler than if I hadn’t parked under the tree; and the bird droppings didn’t bake on to the roof like it might have if it was out in the sun. OK – you are right. It was dumb.

I decided to take the car to the “Midway Express Car Wash” because there are three car washes in the area that I wanted to try.

Editor: The following lesson in immigration law by our blogger Jack Hamlin – a lawyer and law professor – was initially set as a comment to an article criticizing the US Supreme Court upholding Arizona’s draconian SB 1070’s main provision, “show me your papers.” The court left standing SB 1070’s most controversial provision requiring Sheriff Joe Apario type, “state and local police to check the immigration status of anyone that they suspect is in the country illegally; if that person was initially detained for other legitimate reasons.”

The Arizona v. U.S. decision, from what I understand, came down on two points of law. 1) Separation of Powers/Supremacy Clause, and 2) The Preemption Clause. Let me explain, while you must take into consideration it is mid-afternoon on a sunny, summer, Sunday, in OB, California.