Compiled by Oliver Adriance
John Avalos: (PHOTO FROM HTTP://AVALOS08.COM/)
Noel Celis was owed thousands in back wages, while his employer earned over $100,000 each month from the elderly patients. Wage theft is a problem amongst live-in caregivers, and most are fearful of complaining.
“We meet dozens of live-in caregivers that are getting much less than minimum wage, but are afraid to stand up for their rights. Here we have a success story that shows if caregivers come forward, they will have community support and can get justice,” said Silas Shawver, an attorney who worked closely with community advocates to win Noel’s back wages.
“This press conference marks momentum for caregivers to come out from the shadows and stand up for their rights. Nicky Diaz became a symbol for millions of workers who felt used and undervalued. Noel Celis is paving the way for group home caregivers to demand respect for their work,” said NAFCON spokesperson Bernadette Herrera. “Meg Whitman tried to sweep her former nanny’s complaints under the rug, but there is growing community concern for domestic workers and caregivers and gubernatorial candidates would do well to support their rights.”
Supervisor John Avalos proposes nation’s strongest local hiring law
Next year, San Francisco public dollars will create 9,400 jobs as the city embarks on an ambitious ten year, $27 billion capital investment plan. A city-funded study released Monday shows that San Francisco’s performance in meeting its goal of employing 50% local residents on public works is at an all-time low, while city unemployment has peaked: from July 2009 to July 2010, only 20% of city funded construction hours were performed by local residents, down from 24.1% over the past seven years.
Yesterday at City Hall, 150 out-of-work local union members, community contractors, social justice advocates, organizers, labor leaders, and environmentalists surrounded San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos as he announced his proposal to replace San Francisco’s “good faith” efforts approach to local hiring with a requirement that contractors hire a set percentage of residents within each construction trade that will increase from 30 percent to 50 percent over the next 3 years. The proposal penalizes contractors that fail to meet this requirement but offers financial incentives to those that do.
Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “when it comes to making local investments with our tax dollars for building our public infrastructure, it makes sense that we have as much benefi t as we can at the local level.”
Federal government caught exporting toxic ewaste to developing countries and contaminating workers
Following the release of a investigation by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General revealing that federal prisons routinely exposed inmates to toxic heavy metals and exported hazardous wastes to developing countries, the Basel Action Network (BAN) calls for consumers large and small to use only qualifi ed recyclers that will not export hazardous wastes to developing countries and will not utilize prisoner labor for managing it.
BAN urges passage of new House Bill 6252, introduced in part by Rep. Mike Thompson of California, which will ban the export of US hazardous wastes to developing countries. And BAN urges all consumers of electronics, large and small, to be sure to only take their e-Wastes to recyclers who do not export the equipment to developing countries.
For more information contact: Jim Puckett, Executive Director, BAN, Tel: 206-652-5555, e-mail: jpuckett@ban.org.
