Several years ago, I spent time in a rural area of Ghana, a few miles outside the bustling city of Kumasi. As part of a public health research team, I was studying childhood diseases that come from lack of clean water. My goal was to understand how parents made decisions about how to treat their children’s water-related illnesses. Yet while treatment is critical, I was struck most by our relative powerlessness to prevent these diseases from happening in the first place.
More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war, according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Across the globe from Ghana, here in the United States, we are fortunate to have some of the best public water systems in the world. In the U.S., public water has a long history of prompting economic development and advancing leaps in public health and safety.
Unfortunately our public water systems are under threat.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe’s plan to end Saturday mail delivery beginning August 5 is a “disastrous idea that would have a profoundly negative effect on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and on millions of customers,” says Letter Carriers (NALC) President Fredric Rolando.
Postal Workers (APWU) President Cliff Guffey says:
USPS executives cannot save the Postal Service by tearing it apart. These across-the-board cutbacks will weaken the nation’s mail system and put it on a path to privatization.
He adds that the USPS already has begun slashing mail service by closing 13,000 post offices or drastically reducing hours of operation, shutting hundreds of mail processing facilities and downgrading standards for mail delivery to America’s homes and businesses.
Rolando calls Donahoe’s strategy in dealing with the Postal Service’s financial challenges a “slash-and-shrink approach.”
Postal unions have tried to work with USPS management to develop costs savings and growth measures.
As I embark on a new chapter in my life as President and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Southern California, I’d like to reflect here upon some of the lessons I have learned while working at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy for nearly 10 years. If we are going to help workers overcome the oppression they face on their jobs, and if we are going to work with communities to help them to become healthy and viable, then we have to have a dynamic plan and strategy that will lead to victory. Simply put in LAANE language, we must have a “strategy to win.”
For nearly 20 years LAANE has utilized this strategy to win to gain victories that have improved the lives of 350,000 people nationwide. It has engaged labor partners, environmental and community groups, and faith-based organizations, to score victories in and around Los Angeles.
» Read more about: The Calculus of Organizing: A Strategy To Win »
When I moved to East Hollywood a number of years ago, I asked a friend who lived next door if it was a quiet neighborhood. “No,” she said, “there’s a different trash truck every morning, sometimes more than one, sometimes at 6 a.m. If it weren’t for that, it would be quiet.”
Unfortunately, she was right. We would get stuck behind trucks on our way to work as they blocked our narrow neighborhood street. Our block was lucky enough to get repaved roads — but they were immediately destroyed by the heavy trash trucks, which carved deep ruts into the new finish and leaked trash juice into the setting asphalt.
A few years later, I started working in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, a low-income community of color where many of the city’s industries and pollution sources are concentrated. In Pacoima, I observed how the 10 or so trash trucks we’d seen each week in East Hollywood,
» Read more about: How L.A.’s Waste System Trashes Our Streets & Our Health »
(Editor’s Note: Today we continue our series of posts from invited writers who offer thoughts on what the coming four years hold for Los Angeles and its next mayor. These opinions do not reflect the views of Frying Pan News or the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.)
Before Antonio Villaraigosa won his first term as mayor, he came over to my house to film a commercial. This took place by the merest chance. My neighbor across the street is a union organizer, a fellow progressive and a respected figure in local Democratic circles — he might have had something to do with Villaraigosa’s sudden appearance in our neighborhood. A whole bunch of staffers fanned out up and down our street that morning, knocking on every door to ascertain where they might mingle with hoi polloi and gather up a few sound bites.
» Read more about: Memo to Next Mayor: We’re All in This Together »
The walking, talking, governing refutation of the notion that there are no second acts in American lives is on a roll in California. “I’ve never been more excited,” Gov. Jerry Brown says, “and this is my 11th year on the job.”
Brown, 74, has ample reason for excitement. After a calamitous recession (inland California was the epicenter of the subprime quake) and nearly a decade of record deficits and legislative gridlock, Brown has come up with a budget that will put the Golden State into surplus territory without requiring further cuts. In November, voters approved Brown’s ballot measure, Proposition 30, which raised taxes on the wealthy and stabilized state finances to the point that Standard & Poor’s upgraded California’s credit rating last week. The new revenue has gone chiefly to schools and universities, though Brown wants to change K-12 funding so that money flows disproportionately to those districts with more impoverished and Spanish-speaking children.
In February 2005, Patti Phillips sat by her daughter’s bedside during the weeks before Stephanie Phillips died of bone cancer. Patti was able to be at her daughter’s side the day she died because of the federal law that allows millions of Americans to take family leave without risking their jobs. “You want to be there with your child…. and you don’t want to worry about your job,” said Phillips, 49, an inventory specialist at Coca-Cola in Atlanta. “The law gives you peace of mind.”
This week will mark 20 years since the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was signed into law by the newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton on February 5, 1993, after years of bitter opposition by the Chamber of Commerce and other business lobbies. Clinton said that it was time for employers to make basic commitments to American workers so that during those critical times when we must put our family’s health first,
» Read more about: The Family and Medical Leave Act and Its Enemies »
For years, women who clean rooms at Hyatt hotels have been speaking out against the injuries and hazards they face at work. In a recent press statement, Hyatt denied there is a problem, reducing citations and settlements to mere technicalities. Despite their protests, California state regulators disagree.
In a bold move last week, state regulators fired back at statements made by a Hyatt spokesperson that problems housekeepers face at the Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel were “the equivalent of lagging paperwork.”
According to Amy Martin, the chief counsel of Cal/OSHA who called the San Francisco Bay Guardian disputing claims made by a Hyatt spokesperson:
“Cal/OSHA believes it found plenty of evidence both of injuries sustained by housekeepers, as well as violations of Cal/OSHA regulations.”
Comments traded by Hyatt and government officials last week came after a major settlement in a longstanding case [revolving] around housekeeper injuries at the Hyatt Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel.
» Read more about: Frisco Hyatt: “WHAT Injury-Wracked Housekeepers?” »
(Editor’s Note: Living in Los Angeles is a day-to-day experiment requiring patience and improvisational skills. So does governing this sprawling metropolis of 3.8 million people. The city’s next mayor, however, cannot be satisfied with merely coping with issues as they arise, but must be able to look forward and anticipate and define the city’s needs for the next four years. To this end we’ve asked writers to share their thoughts about what lies ahead – and around the corner – for Los Angeles.)
Going green may be all the rage. But get into the weeds and you may lose a few people. Take energy efficiency. Yes, it’ll save you money, create good jobs (if done right) and help us preserve the planet. But walk into a party and start talking about window caulking, attic insulation and compact fluorescent bulbs, and you may soon find yourself alone in a corner.
» Read more about: Beyond the Election: How Green Will Our City Be? »
Most of us have been on both sides of it — receiving a coffee or sandwich from an employee who seems just a little too happy to serve you, or being forced to beam a smile at a rude customer who views you as merely an annoying obstacle in his busy day. The term for this coerced sunniness is “emotional labor,” as first defined by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in 1983.
Hochschild coined the term “emotional labor” in her 1983 book, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, where she described it as ”management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display … sold for a wage.”
Midwives, psychologists and funeral home directors are expected to calm the seas of their clients’ moods, and affluent visitors of high-end boutiques and restaurants pay a healthy premium to be coddled by their employees — but should workers making little more than minimum wage be forced to smile or be fired?