Today Frying Pan News launches a series of interviews with the leading mayoral candidates, who will face off in the March 5 primary. Beginning with City Councilmember Eric Garcetti, we posed questions about what we think are the most pressing issues our next mayor must confront. Part One of our interview with Garcetti appears today; Part Two will run tomorrow, followed by a conversation with City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Frying Pan News: A lot of the mayoral debate so far has focused on challenges with the city budget and whether we should cut benefits for city employees. Can you paint your broad vision of how we bring good jobs, clean air and healthy communities to all of Los Angeles?
Eric Garcetti: Our recovery can’t be just about how we are going to cut more, tax more. My greatest fear is that we will have those who will do well no matter how bad things get – the highly educated,
» Read more about: Eric Garcetti on Walmart, Waste and Living Wage Laws »
You have to feel a little bad for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He came all the way to California this week to “poach jobs” and left empty-handed. Maybe Perry hasn’t read the studies that show very few jobs move from California to other states. Or maybe he wasn’t aware that California is on the rebound in a big way, now leading the nation in job creation. At the end of the day, Perry’s trip really was all hat, no cattle.
Over the last week, there’s been a lot of silly media coverage comparing Texas to California. It’s almost like a sports rivalry at this point. Perry says his low-regulation, low-government service, low-wage economic model is the way to go.
As a native Texan, I know better. I still remember going to the beach in Galveston and having to use turpentine to clean my feet before I left because of the oil.
» Read more about: State’s Enterprise Zones Make Rick Perry Look Smart »
The GOP’s inviolate article of faith is that big government is inherently evil. The GOP has been stupendously successful through much of the last century in tagging any Democrat that champions increased regulatory powers, higher taxes on corporations and the rich, greater public spending on health, education and job programs, and bolstering entitlement programs as a reckless, tax-and-spend enemy of private enterprise. Franklin Roosevelt was no exception to the maligning. Often forgotten in the historic lionizing of FDR for standing government on its head to blunt the hard edge of the Great Depression, was that the GOP (with some help from a small but pesky clique of Democratic congressional conservatives, big industrialists and conservative newspaper moguls) fought FDR tooth and nail on every one of his reform proposals from Social Security to tighter industry regulation. Also forgotten, is that FDR had to tweak, compromise and water down his proposals, even the successful ones, to get passage.
» Read more about: Can Obama Do an FDR in His Second Term? »
(The following appeal comes from the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and Healthy Communities.)
On November 6, Long Beach voters overwhelmingly approved a minimum wage for hotel workers in their city. The law guarantees that these workers will be paid about $2,000 a month for full-time work and receive five paid sick days a year. (Fact sheet.)
These modest provisions would help hotel workers and their families, while boosting the economy for everyone in Long Beach. The hotels, many of which are owned by wealthy out-of-state corporations, have been thriving and could easily afford to pay the minimum wage while maintaining healthy profits. However, they are doing everything in their power to thwart the will of the voters and punish their own employees – putting a few extra dollars of profit ahead of the interests of Long Beach residents and businesses,
» Read more about: Tell Long Beach’s City Council to Enforce the Will of Voters »
Activists, organizers and elected officials across the United States have come together to urge President Barack Obama to award posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the legendary organizer, Fred Ross Sr. The first to organize people through house meetings, a mentor to both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and a pioneer in Latino voter outreach since 1949 when he helped elect Ed Roybal as Los Angeles’s first Latino council member, Ross’ influence on social change movements remains strong two decades after his death in 1992. If there were a Mount Rushmore for community organizers, Ross’s angular face would be on it. Here is a brief summary of Ross’s remarkable legacy, along with instructions on how to get your message of support to President Obama in time for the February 28 deadline.
Like all activists familiar with his work, I had a reverence for Fred Ross, Sr. before I knew the full record of his accomplishments.
“Fix the Debt,” the CEO-led campaign promoting fear and what some have called near-hysteria over the national debt, has met its grassroots nemesis: “Flip the Debt.” While speaking at a Fix the Debt conference on Monday, Honeywell International Inc. CEO David Cote was interrupted several times by Flip the Debt protesters over tax loopholes that allow companies like Honeywell and General Electric to pay far less taxes than ordinary Americans.
Three minutes into Cote’s keynote address, the first heckler trumpeted:
“Fix the Debt claims to seek bipartisan solutions to reduce the deficit, but Fix the Debt is nothing more than a CEO lobby whose real objective is huge corporate tax breaks and drastic cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. David Cote and his CEO friends receive a lot from government: In 2011, Honeywell received $725 million in government deals, making it the 35th largest federal contractor.
» Read more about: “Fix the Debt” Meets Its Match: “Flip the Debt” »
On January 23 of this year, Scabby the Rat, a 16 foot tall rodent first inflated in 1990 by protesting Chicago bricklayers, had a scare. Sean McGarvey (@BCTDPrez), president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department, took to Twitter following a meeting with presidents and state councils to address his 488 followers: “Issued a call to retire the inflatable rat. It does not reflect our new value proposition.” Jill Cashen, Communications Director for United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) responded favorably @BCTDPrez and to her 387 followers, notching up the rhetoric to #deflatetherat.
On January 24, @ScabbyTheRat (7,737 followers) who reports on “anti-labor activity no matter where it happens” had a day in the sun, albeit it a busy one. Catapulted by Mike Elk (@MikeElk, 10,278 followers) — perhaps labor’s most dedicated and voracious Tweeter — and his story from In These Times, @ScabbyTheRat tweeted 28 times,
We are workers who move Walmart merchandise at a private warehouse in Chino, California. Just a couple of weeks ago the state of California ordered the warehouse owner to repay us more than $1 million in stolen wages. The California Labor Commissioner determined the warehouse operator, Quetico LLC, had shorted our paychecks and those of more than 800 workers.
Para leer en Español haz cliq aquí.
We are so happy that justice has been served, but we continue to risk our jobs just because we blew the whistle. The company is denying it did anything wrong and appealing the state’s ruling. In the meantime we are worried about retaliation and losing our jobs. We don’t know if we will be fired. Walmart has done nothing.
You can help us. Sign our petition to Walmart.
» Read more about: Petition: Walmart-Contract Workers Fear Retaliation »
My friend pastors a vibrant congregation in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles. Her people reflect the neighborhood and the church worships in both Spanish and English. In a conversation this week I asked her how her folks were doing. Her voice dropped, and she shook her head. “There are no jobs,” she said, “and the ones who work can only get part-time hours.” With dismay, she said, “I don’t know how they are making it.”
I don’t either. At one extreme, high-end properties – homes that sell for several millions of dollars – had a banner year in 2012. Sales of super-expensive automobiles reached record levels. Exotic vacation destinations are packed. The number of jobs in Los Angeles County has reached about 4.3 million, almost the number we had before the Great Recession began five years ago, although there are now also more people looking for work than then.
» Read more about: Of Biblical Proportions: Inequality and Poverty Wages »
Most of us know how badly Walmart treats its employees. Yet whenever the remedy of paying a living wage is proposed, opponents always argue that the cost to Walmart shoppers is too high, and that low-income consumers will be hurt the most.[1]The question is: What will a living wage for Walmart workers cost Walmart shoppers?
First, some background. A 2005 study found that Walmart jobs in metropolitan areas pay less and are less likely to offer benefits. Other researchers demonstrated that Walmart workers earn on average 31 percent less than workers in large retail stores as a whole and about 60 percent of the wages of unionized workers. They also found that an astounding 75 percent of full-time workers with at least one year on the job made below $10 an hour and less than half were enrolled in Walmart’s cost-prohibitive health plan.
Moreover,
» Read more about: Walmart: The Low Cost of High Road Retailers »