[GPSCC-chat] Organized labor, immigrants, the rights of all workers, and Jim Beall

[Spencer Graves]

Hello, All:


       This afternoon, I attended a panel discussion on "Organized 
Labor, Immigrants & the Rights of All Workers" 
(www.sanjosepeace.org/calendar_event.php?eid=20120515164135927 
<http://www.sanjosepeace.org/calendar_event.php?eid=20120515164135927>). 
Three speakers (David Bacon, Fritz Conle, and Adriana García) described 
numerous cases to support the claim that "an attack on one is an attack 
on all".  For example, the criminalization of work by people here 
without papers gives employers license to employ all manner of illegal 
tactics to prevent workers from obtaining proper enforcement of US law 
regarding workplace safety, etc.  Fritz Conle described a woman whose 
application for disability compensation was denied, claiming she had 
already collected all that was due her. After checking, it was revealed 
that after California law was changed to allow people to apply for 
unemployment benefits via telephone or Internet, a post office box in 
Delano, CA, had been given as the address for several former employees 
of a certain firm, including Conle's client.  This was almost certainly 
fraud, but Conle was unaware of any pressure to investigate and 
prosecute this case, though he was able eventually to get unemployment 
for his client.


       For me, one of the most memorable parts of the session was the 
comments by Jim Beall, currently representing California Assembly 
district 24 (http://asmdc.org/members/a24 
<http://asmdc.org/members/a24/>) and running for California State Senate 
in district 15 (www.jimbeall.com <http://www.jimbeall.com/>).  He said 
that beginning at age 15, he had worked for several years doing stoop 
labor in California's agriculture industry.  While picking tomatoes, he 
noticed another group also picking tomatoes but at roughly double the 
rate.  He later learned that they were Braceros (Wikipedia, "Bracero 
Program"), being paid half the rate per tomato, so at the end of the 
day, the Braceros took home roughly the same amount of money he did for 
half the production.  Some years later, he was working towards the south 
end of the Central Valley, when he noticed several law enforcement 
vehicles appear with their red lights flashing.  Many of his co-workers 
disappeared at that moment, ran from the field, got in their cars, and 
left.  That happened to be Friday, when everyone got paid -- except for 
the undocumented, who had fled for fear of arrest.


       Best Wishes,
       Spencer


-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:www.structuremonitoring.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cagreens.org/pipermail/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org/attachments/20120721/4b01068e/attachment.html>