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The California Nurses Association (CNA) held a press conference Thursday, August 19th accusing Sutter Health's California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), which operates St. Luke's Hospital, of discriminating against Filipino nurses. The union filed a class action grievance on behalf of Filipino applicants denied jobs at the hospital and, along with Filipino community groups, filed a complaint asking the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the discrimination claims.
At the press conference, the union provided sworn declarations made by three former managers at CPMC. The declarations claimed that the hospital had instituted a policy against hiring Filipino and foreign-graduate nurses. One former manager reported that a CPMC executive repeatedly instructed him not to hire Filipinos, telling him, "The Filipinos are always related, or know each other and that's not good. You're not to hire them."
Union and community leaders suggested that the decline in the hiring of Filipino registered nurses is connected to their activism. The union presented data showing that Filipinos made up 66 percent of the nurses at St. Luke's when CPMC took over the hospital in 2007. But beginning in 2008, after nurses, including many Filipinos, successfully campaigned against CPMC's planned closure of St. Luke's, the number of Filipino new hires dropped to 10 percent.
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On July 22nd, about 1500 members of UNITE HERE! Local 2 and supporters demonstrated in San Francisco, culminating in a mass civil disobedience in front of the Grand Hyatt in Union Square. Police arrested 150 people in San Francisco and 10 at a similar demonstration at the Hyatt in Santa Clara.
Demonstrators stated that the Hyatt Hotel corporation is making millions of dollars by demanding that the hotel workers get locked into recession contracts that include layoffs and increased workloads. In both San Francisco and Santa Clara, the protests had significant support from other unions, as well as from social justice and anti-war organizations.
In addition to the actions at two Hyatt hotels in the Bay Area, demonstrators protested and risked arrest in Chicago, Honolulu, San Francisco, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Boston, Rosemont, Vancouver, Toronto, Miami, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and San Diego on the same day.
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UNITE HERE!
Saying that Meg Whitman's election would threaten their meal and rest breaks and put patient care in jeopardy, nurses protested in front of the Republican candidate's home on July 15th. Nurses decided to take to the streets in large numbers after Whitman mailed letters and fliers to nurses' homes telling them not to believe statements made by the California Nurses Association. The day of action started with over 1,100 people chanting in protest in front of Whitman's Atherton home and ended with a rally and speakers' event at Cañada College.
On Tuesday, May 18th, local LGBT groups rallied in front of the federal building in San Francisco to call on community members to contact their congressional representatives and urge them to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. ENDA would ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Currently, it is legal in many states to discriminate against LGBT people and there are no federal laws protecting LGBT people in the workplace.
Community members, local groups, and politicians spoke about the importance of passing ENDA. Mason Davis of the Transgender Law Center cited a survey showing that 97% of transgender Americans experience employment discrimination and that they are twice as likely to experience poverty and unemployment as a result.
"For years now, hundreds of us have been working tirelessly...to make sure that ENDA would become a reality," Davis said. "In 2007, Congress told us that we needed to do the work to pass ENDA and we have been doing that work."
Davis reported that House speaker Nancy Pelosi has committed to making sure ENDA passes in the house in this congressional year. But community groups, politicians, and leaders are calling on everyone who cares about getting ENDA passed to contact their congressional representatives and urge them to pass the bill.
Video and Photos
May 15th marked the 80th day of a bitter lockout that has put 61 food service and maintenance workers out of work in Pleasanton. The workers – members of Unite Here Local 2850 – were locked out by Castlewood Country Club in February as it and the union were negotiating a new contract.
Workers and their union had been trying to preserve affordable family health coverage. Prior to the lockout, Castlewood proposed a new contract that would have had low-wage workers paying $739 a month for family coverage. In a counter proposal that was actually cheaper than management's, workers offered to forgo a raise in exchange for preserving affordable family health coverage. But Castlewood did not respond to the union's proposal, opting instead to lockout its workers on February 25th.
Workers and their union have accused Castlewood of union busting and starvation tactics. “We think the real reason for the lockout is not about money but about getting rid of the union,” said locked-out worker Angel Melendez.
Castlewood management told Melendez and his coworkers that they could return to work if they got rid of their union. But in a decertification election held shortly after the beginning of the lockout, workers voted overwhelmingly to keep their union. “Despite Castlewood's starvation tactics, the workers voted to preserve their union,” said Local 2850 researcher Nischit Hegde. “And everyday they're voting with their feet on the picket line.”
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End the Castlewood Lockout
A flashmob invaded the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco on May 8th, singing and dancing before an amused audience of tourists and hotel guests. The activists performed to accompanying horns and drums of the Brass Liberation Orchestra with their own version of the Lady Gaga song Bad Romance, "Don't Get Caught in a Bad Hotel". The spectacle drew attention to a boycott called by the workers of the hotel who are eager to get a fair contract and affordable healthcare.
Saturday, May 1st is May Day, or International Workers Day. The Bay Area observed the holiday with celebrations, marches, rallies, and street parties. Events on Saturday included rallies, marches, and demonstrations for immigrant and workers rights in San Francisco, Watsonville, the East Bay, Fresno, Modesto, and San Jose. Celebrations and street parties were held in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Oakland.
A clamor across the country to hold banks and Wall Street accountable for the financial crisis started in earnest this week with a large demonstration in San Francisco. Hundreds of protesters rallied in front of the building where Wells Fargo's annual shareholders meeting was being held on April 27. They said bankers broke laws, lack ethics and need to create jobs for working people instead of rewarding themselves with huge bonuses.
After having worked for over two years without a contract, Oakland teachers watched the Oakland Unified School Board unilaterally impose a labor contract on April 21st. The new contract largely ignores the recommendations of a recent fact-finding panel, allows for no pay raises for teachers, increases class sizes, lays off teachers, and threatens adult education programs. The teacher's union, the Oakland Educator Association, called for a one-day city-wide strike on April 29th to defend and strengthen public education and to fight for a fair labor contract.
Oakland teachers, students, and community members picketed at neighborhood public schools from 6am-11am, then marched and rallied at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland at 12 noon. The Oakland Unified School District administration building at 2nd Ave and 10th St in Oakland was picketed as well.
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Oakland Teacher Strike Solidarity Action
Strike Announcement |
Oakland Teachers Set to Strike April 29th After Board Imposes Contract |
oaklandteachers.wordpress.com
The Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival takes place each year in California's central coast communities in and around Santa Cruz.
Reel Work presents cultural events, bringing together award-winning documentary film producers, workers, activists, students, and the public with the goal of increasing community awareness of the central role of work in our lives, to discuss economic and global justice issues, and to bring alive the history and culture of the labor movement in the US and abroad. Reel Work highlights how workers and community members band together to achieve justice and dignity in the streets, fields, and workshops.
Cinematic representations of labor each year include local and international works, world premieres as well as classics. Reel Work inspires festival participants to join in the struggle for worker rights locally, nationally and globally to achieve social justice and international solidarity.
 The Enduring Legacy of Howard Zinn: "The People Speak" at Reel Work | Interview with Rogelio Martinez Saldana
4/25 @ 12pm: Food Inc | 4/25 @ 7pm: Brother Can you Spare a Dime? | 4/26 @ 7pm: Two documentaries on the economy | 4/27 @ 7pm: Workers & Climate | 4/28 @ 7pm: The People Speak, a tribute to Howard Zinn | 4/30 @ 8pm: The Garden | 5/1 @ 4pm: May Day Parade and Sing-along | 5/2 @ 7pm: Watsonville on Strike | 5/3 @ 7pm: Heart of the Factory | 5/4 @ 7pm: Why Are We in Afghanistan | 5/5 @ 7pm: Bound For Glory
On April 7th, UC Santa Cruz issued a statement that the undergraduate Community Studies major has been suspended. The suspension restricts new admission to the major for at least two years. Professor and Department Chair B. Ruby Rich notes that, "Community Studies has roots back to the early days of [UC Santa Cruz] and a devoted following among students, alumni, and community organizations." In an interview with campus radio station KZSC, Community Studies Lecturer & Field Study Coordinator Mike Rotkin stated, "I don't want to be cynical, but there's been a number of programs that have been put on suspension in the past, none of them have ever come back."
Mike Eli writes about the mine blast at Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine: "I have (as you can imagine) watched the coverage of Upper Big Branch closely... But if you had sat alongside me listening to those news report, you would not have known what every single miner in southern West Virginia knows: Massey was the national flagship of union breaking.
"Until the 1980s, southern West Virginia was the heartland of the United Mine Workers. It was unthinkable that a non-union mine could operate there (as they did in the fringes of the coalfields, in Harlan county Kentucky or in the far West). But as the combination of government, police, strip mining and exhaustion broke the miners’ movement of the 1970 , Massey dared to open a mining complex in Raleigh County, in the heart of the UMWA’s stronghold.
"Look at the news coverage. Think about what it took to avoid reporting this simple history of Massey’s militant anti-unionism. Think of how many people told each news reporter that Massey was hated as a spearhead of de-unionization. Think of how decisions had to be made in the news organizations NOT to feature that fact, or draw the simple conclusions."
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Kasama Project
On March 29th, Teachers for Class War interviewed students and teachers marching up the Central Valley from Bakersfield to Sacramento. They are making their voices heard to protect funding for public education in California, from kindergarten through university. The Teachers spoke with Jenn, Manny, Clay, Naomi, and Jose about why they're marching.
On March 9th at Golden Gate National Recreational Area's Fort Baker in Marin County, nearly a hundred UC service workers, students and supporters from UCB, UCSF, UCSC, and UC Davis entered the hired meeting space of Blum Capital Partnership, the Cavallo Point Lodge, and picketed the street in front. Richard Blum is a UC regent and the husband of California Senator Diane Feinstein.
The National Park Service finally ordered protesters off park grounds. No arrests were made, but Blum was once again called on his failure to end poverty at UC. AFSCME advocates for rehiring the workforce, stopping student fee increases, and ending the privatization scheme, and wants Blum and the Regents to stop playing on Wall Street with California citizen-owned assets.
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On March 1st, hundreds of MUNI workers from TWU Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 250-A, riders, and community organizations rallied and marched in downtown San Francisco to oppose the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) proposed budget cuts and threatened layoffs. The march began at Powell and Market and went down Market to rally in front of the MTA offices calling for the cuts to be on the Mayor Newsom-appointed executive managers. The march then went to City Hall for a spontaneous forum led by TWU cable car driver and union organizer Eric Williams, who explained what the workers are forced to put up with and called for unity between MUNI workers and riders.
The San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI) is a vital service to the people of San Francisco serving over 700,000 riders a day. In the current economic environment affecting public services across the country, workers and the poor are being forced to bear the brunt of the crisis. There is no end to money to bail out the banks, but when it comes to essential services, there is none.
The San Francisco MTA has waged a campaign against the TWU in an attempt to weaken the union and to cover their own mismanagement in creating MUNI’s financial mess. It has called for cuts in service, hikes in fares and for the layoff of 176 TWU operators. At yesterday’s rally in front of the MTA offices, the union asked for an independent accounting of the MTA's $783 million budget, of which only $200 million is spent on operational costs.
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During Fall Quarter at UC Santa Cruz, the custodians that clean dorms had their hours cut on Thursdays and Fridays which resulted in overflowing trash cans, unsanitary bathrooms and increased cases of illness in residents. These cuts were fought and revoked. Now workers say they must unite with students and fight to defeat unsafe cuts to dining hall custodians.
On Monday through Thursday, February 8-11, UCSC staff and students will hold demonstrations at a different dinning hall for each of the four days, from 11:30am-1:30pm to protest the rising cost of student fees while student services are being slashed; major cuts to labor time while forcing workers to perform more labor; and workers, being rushed through their shifts, aren’t able to thoroughly clean dining halls, resulting in unsanitary eating commons and an unsafe working environment.
Read more | Publish your coverage to the SC-IMC newswire
Previous coverage: Service Workers Ratify Historic Contract With UC
Last month members of the California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day accompanied movie propmaker and former Downey Studio worker Steve Basile on a visit to the San Carlos, California headquarters of Tesla Motors, Inc. Together they asked Tesla, makers of high-end electric cars, to consider the number of health problems that have been connected with the Downey site before putting a manufacturing facility in that city. Tesla Vice President for Communications Ricardo Reyes assured the group at that time that the company had no intention of making a decision in haste, and said Tesla would make arrangements to meet with workers who have been injured in Downey.
One month later with all calls and emails to Tesla unanswered, the worker safety advocates were joined by the Raging Grannies in demonstrating in front of the car company's tony Menlo Park showroom. Protesters carried signs saying "Downey's Brownfields Aren't Green" and sang of solidarity with workers, then held a press conference attended by both corporate and independent media reporters.
Read more | Photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | Video | California Coalition for Workers Memorial Day
On December 17th, 2009, dozens of supporters of the KPFA-Pacifica show Flashpoints, which is also carried around the country, went to the station to hear a report on the layoffs and attacks on the show by the KPFA management. After Manager Lemlem Rijio vacated the building to avoid answering questions, Amelia Gonzalez, the assistant manager, told the rally that the station had violated the union contract and laid off staff disregarding the seniority list. She said they were in discussion with CWA 9415 on how they could have layoffs without regard to the station wide seniority list.
The first victim of this new cutback campaign was Eric Klein, Flashpoints' technical producer and engineer, whose half-time position was eliminated with no advance notice on December 7; Dennis Bernstein, the show's host, wasn't informed until he went looking for Klein an hour before airtime. After co-host Nora Barrows-Friedman emailed station manager Lemlem Rijio seeking an explanation and making the case that the show requires a technical producer, Rijio invited her to "share her concerns" in person. When they met on December 9, Barrows-Friedman argued that it was "unreasonable" to expect her to absorb Klein's work on top of her other responsibilities, whereupon Rijio "casually" informed her that her hours were being cut in half, from 40 to 20 per week, effective immediately.
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Cuts to KPFA's Flashpoints Spark Outrage | Award Winning Flashpoints Radio Show Under Threat by KPFA Management | KPFA Lemlem's Ambush Of Flashpoints Producer Nora-Barrows-Friedman | KPFA's Manager Lemlem Rijio Shuts Down Flashpoints Without Notice For Fund Drive? | Robert Knight and the Knight report axed by KPFA management-KPFA CL Management Seeking To Shut Down Flashpoints | Letter from KPFA General Manager to Our Listening Community | Open Letter to KPFA General Manager, Lemlem Rijio and the KPFA community | Flashpoints receives Top 20 Media recognition
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