Category Archives: News

Why doesn’t Napa have a day laborer center?

REBECCA HUVAL | Posted in Napa Valley Register | Posted: Tuesday, here May 3, see 2011 9:30 pm

From dawn until dusk, a group of Napa day laborers waits on a hill beside south Napa’s Home Depot parking lot for someone to hire them to move furniture, build a porch or paint a fence for about $10 an hour.

They sit cross-legged on the ground and crack jokes in the sun. On rainy days, they take shelter inside the nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken, the workers said. That’s where they go to the bathroom, too.

“This is our workplace,” said Juan Carlos, 36, of Napa, originally from El Salvador. “Every day, I clean it up.”

Unlike St. Helena, the city of Napa has no day laborer center. As a result, Napa’s day laborers wait for work outside and accept unaccounted money — which violates California law and also has the potential to get them in trouble with authorities, even if they are documented U.S. citizens.

So the workers, along with some community leaders, are hoping to build a day labor center in Napa.

“We can do something beautiful here,” Carlos said. “It doesn’t have to be big. Something small.”

Local activists said they support the idea.

“It’s good for people in the community, too,” said Lilia Navarro, a member of the Napa County Commission on Aging. “Because if people need someone to help in their garden, they can have help.”

At the day laborer center in St. Helena, the director said more than half of the workers come from Napa. Housed in a trailer on the property of Sutter Home Winery, the Work Connection Ministry of St. Helena Catholic Church sees about 30 workers on average per day.

For 15 years, the ministry has linked workers with jobs and asked that employers sign forms assuring they’ll pay at least $10 an hour.

Though most workers come from the city of Napa, the center is partially funded by the city of St. Helena.

“At least Napa could help us support this place,” said Nora Selina Garcia, director of Work Connection Ministry. “We don’t have enough people to support this place. We need some help.”

Their ministry employs two workers and has two volunteers. Even with a small staff, they’ve been able to place hundreds of seasonal workers in vineyard, construction, gardening and housekeeping jobs.

One of their workers has found fieldwork with the same vineyard for eight years, Garcia said.

“If Napa and Vallejo had another center like this, it would be great,” she said. “This is a small place. Last year, in one day, I had 53 workers. And we just have one restroom, and we have men and women. It’s difficult.”

In the south Napa parking lot, the laborers wait for work on private property owned by the South Napa Market Place. They’ve struck an agreement with businesses there to stay in the north lot across from KFC, said Napa Police Lt. Debbie Peecook.

Occasionally, Home Depot managers have complained to police about the workers loitering on private property, Peecook said. “Most of the day laborers have been really good about that, when we ask them to stand in a certain area, though they occasionally need reminders.”

As for more permanent solutions, Mayor Jill Techel said Napa didn’t have a hiring center for day laborers because no one had ever proposed one.

“In cities that have those centers, 80 percent are run by community groups,” not local government, Techel said.

While there have been complaints regarding laborers gathered at South Napa Market Place, they have been handled by police who have negotiated solutions with the men, the mayor said.

These complaints “haven’t been elevated to a political level,” Techel said.

The workers said they’ve talked with local Pastor Ricardo Bolaños of Ministerios Cosecha, or “Harvest Ministries”, but Bolaños couldn’t be reached for this report.

If built, the center could help the laborers find more jobs and become more accessible and approachable to employers, said Laura Lopez, a local activist and Legal Aid of Napa Valley volunteer.

“It’s not that people are lazy and don’t want to find a job,” Lopez said. “The work ethic is there, but the respect for the workers isn’t.”

Laborers march in Woodside

Demonstrators chanting slogans demand rights for day workers

By Rich Bockmann | Posted on YourNabe.com | Monday, link May 2, 2011 6:48 PM EDT

Supporters of workers’ rights took their message to Roosevelt Avenue Sunday, calling on all workers, and in particular non-unionized day laborers, to organize and stand up for their rights.

About 50 demonstrators marched along the avenue from the Philippine Forum at 40-21 69th St. in Woodside to the Manuel De Dios Unanue Triangle at 83rd Street in Jackson Heights, carrying signs and chanting messages of strength in numbers as they proceeded along the sidewalk.

Roberto Menses, a Queens day laborer and labor organizer with Jornaleros Unidos (Day Workers United) rallied demonstrators earlier in the day at the Philippine Forum, where different Queens pro-labor and immigrant groups meet once a month.

“We’re not ones, we’re not hundreds — we’re millions. Count us well,” they called out during an event organizers said was a prelude to the city’s May Day celebration Sunday, when immigrants’ rights demonstrators will march from Union Square to join a trade union rally at Foley Square.

Two years ago, Menses was at the forefront of a conflict between laborers who gathered at Edward Hart Playground in Woodside and the police from the 115th Precinct, who they contend were harassing them.

He led a series of marches and, according to Gustavo Mejias, a retired teacher who is with the Independent Workers Movement, the harassment of laborers and street vendors has gone down significantly.

“Immigrants’ rights are workers’ rights,” said Daniel Vila, an organizer with the May 1st Coalition, who said he expects to see upwards of 50,000 demonstrators in Manhattan this weekend.

Vila said day laborers in Queens — many of whom but not all are undocumented immigrants — are being taken advantage of by the contractors who hire them.

“They get paid $400 the first week, then $300 the next week,” he said, describing a situation of declining wages that often leads to contractors outright withholding weeks’ worth of wages.

“We have three cases now where guys are owed over $10,000,” Vila said.

Menses said that in areas throughout the borough — Astoria, Jamaica, Flushing? — some 500 or 600 laborers wait for work every day and perhaps 20 or 30 of them will get picked up. Those who do not find work will rely on local charities for food. He said that in New York City every week $20 million worth of wages are stolen from laborers by the contractors who hire them.

He framed the plight of Queens laborers in the context of larger attacks on workers’ rights, and points to recent events in Wisconsin where union workers were stripped of their rights to collective bargaining.

“If that’s happening to the workers that are unionized, imagine what’s happening to the workers that are not unionized, like the day workers,” he said.

He said he also believed that politicians, whether Democrat or Republican, did not really represent those gathered Sunday. He said President Barack Obama had failed to deliver on his campaign promises of immigration reform, and pointed to legislation in Arizona and a similar “copycat” bill waiting to be signed in Georgia that make immigrants “second-class citizens.”

“Our message is to workers and people suffering this crisis. We need to organize and fight back,” Mejias said.

Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.

Federal judges block NY town’s day laborer law

APRIL 26, here 2011, 3:46 P.M. ET
Associated Press

GARDEN CITY, there N.Y. — A new court ruling upholds a preliminary injunction barring a Long Island town from enforcing its day laborer ordinance.

The U.S. Court of Appeals decision, released Tuesday, supports a temporary restraining order against the Town of Oyster Bay.

The 2009 ordinance makes it a crime to solicit employment by shouting at cars and waving arms or signs.

Town officials argued that the law was intended to ensure public safety. Critics say it violates the workers’ rights.

The town runs through the center of Long Island from the Atlantic Ocean to the Long Island Sound.

Town Supervisor John Venditto (vehn-DIH’-toh) said in a statement he’s pleased the court did not reject the ordinance as unconstitutional. He said the town looks forward to a full hearing on the matter in court.

—Copyright 2011 Associated Press

Dealing with cancer: Family deals with radiation effects

Wednesday, April 20, 2011
By Clint Confehr, Senior Staff Writer | Marshall Tribune

PALMETTO — George Mitchell is “tired,” and willing to leave this world. He won’t force it, but he’s signed documents so s can refrain from providing that could save his life.

George, 50, and his family trace his maladies to when he and his brother, Doyce, were boys working for a day labor service that sent them to URC, Uranium Recovery Complex, near their home in Mulberry, Fla. They now live on Jack Pickle Lane, a Lewisburg address that’s just east of Marshall County.

“A lot of my es came from the environment where we grew up,” George said.

George and Doyce shoveled rocks into five-gallon buckets and carried them from one place to another. They didn’t know about radioactivity or what it can do to the human body.

The Mitchells are clear that it’s probably impossible to say with certainty that their es are from URC, a nearby phosphorus plant, the bright Florida sun, the boys’ work with asbestos, or their swimming in surface water of unknown quality.

“We grew up swimming in the water and eating the fish we caught,” George said.

“I just want somebody to benefit from what happened to me,” he said at Dr. Melvin Lewis’s office on Mooresville Highway with the who patched him up from a motorcycle accident in 1982.

Referring to George’s skin cancer, Dr. Lewis confirms information about the sun. It’s an on-going nuclear reaction and sunburn is similar to radiation exposure, so people should take his grandmother’s . She wore a bonnet when working in the cotton fields to protect her skin. Use sunscreen.

“Getting a sun tan is not the best thing to do,” Dr. Lewis said. “Skin is one giant organ over our body. It regulates our fluids and removes toxins from our body. We take our skin for granted too much.”

George always wears long-sleeved shirts now.

Too much sun and exposure to radiation can cause skin cancer, Dr. Lewis said. A Vanderbilt , Dr. Anna Clayton, indicated much the same thing in written remarks in response to questions about George’s health.

“Mr. Mitchell has suffered from a large number of squamous-cell carcinomas, an unusual amount for his age,” Dr. Clayton said.

Squamous cells may appear scaly to the naked eye.

“He continues to undergo periodic evaluation, biopsies, and excisional surgery to remove squamous-cell carcinomas that appear,” Dr. Clayton said.

George has an appointment on May 19. More surgery to remove squamous-cell carcinomas is anticipated. “I don’t know if I want this next surgery done,” he said.

Dr. Clayton continued: “Squamous-cell carcinomas can be caused by exposure to sun as well as radiation and increased numbers of them are reported in patients with significant radiation exposure,” she said.

“He did lose his eye due to squamous-cell carcinoma,” she said of surgery that removed George’s right eye.

Dr. Clayton is an assistant professor of in the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Division of Dermatology. Her office is at 100 Oaks Mall.

The Mitchells’ health became an issue for the Bedford County Board of Zoning Appeals in March 2007 when the panel granted them a temporary use permit on a year-to-year basis that sets aside strict enforcement of zoning codes limiting the number of “principal structures” on less than 15 acres.

The Mitchells have had four. The parents’ house and three mobile homes; one each for the brothers, George, Doyce and Eric. They’ve paid for three permits each year.

Bedford’s director of planning, zoning, building and codes, Chris White, has authority to grant extensions on payment and this year he’s granted leeway for the Mitchells who had been paying $30 for three extra dwellings. The fee per unit went up to $100 before White became director eight months ago.

The increase was “to be more consistent with other counties,” White said. Furthermore, there was abuse of what might be seen as a loophole. White knows it’s not typical to have three permits on one lot, but he also acknowledges the Mitchells’ have a “greater burden.”

Electrical and mechanical breakdowns resulted in George deciding to give his trailer away. He lives in his parents’ house now.

So, as the boys’ mother, Naomi, scrapes money together for the fees from government assistance that sustains the family, she, her husband, Lawrence “Buddy,” and the brothers are frank about their family.

Doyce had a “pouty lip,” Naomi says of her son’s lower lip. It protruded like he was pouting. Now, it’s thin since surgeons removed cancer. When they were eight and 12 years old, her sons went to the beach, riding in the back of a pickup truck and Doyce’s lower lip got sunburned.

She’s fair skinned and sees that and sunlight as a reason for what ails her on her leg. Doyce and George have red hair. George’s is darker, but both have had problems with their skin.

In Florida, Buddy was a carpenter. Much of his work was outside and he has skin lesions on his arms. Naomi was a ’s aide at Lakeland General Hospital.

The Mitchells moved to Palmetto on a suggestion from Sam Parolini of the Belfast Community who grew up with Buddy at Mulberry, Fla. Sam works for a construction company on Fishing Ford Road and is out of state now on a job.

Tennessee’s sunlight, however, seems less punishing than Florida’s Naomi said.

George and Doyce worked at URC for about five weeks.

Asked what she thinks when watching TV news about the nuclear power plant that broke down in Japan during the earthquake, Naomi replied, ” There are going to be a lot of people dying; not right now, but in years to come from the radiation.

“I believe a lot of people who may die… may say it’s from radiation, but the s are not going to say it’s from radiation…”

George has also had surgery to treat an aneurism in his head. There’s another that can’t be treated.

He feels as though he died, but was brought back by medical professionals before surgery for his first aneurism.

George’s face hurts almost all the time, he said. After working in a garden, he comes in and feels like he’s burned by the sun. He refuses to take pain .

“Now,” he said, “I’m tired.”

(Source: Marshalltribune.com)

Immigration law uncertainty hangs over Hispanic neighborhoods

Source: East Valley Tribune
updated 4/18/2011 12:46:11 PM ET

Adan Gallegos stands with a crowd of day laborers waiting on job offers in front of the Circle K convenience store in Chandler’s “Little Sonora” neighborhood.

On this day, there are about a dozen men alongside him near the corner store at 295 S. Arizona Ave. — which fronts the neighborhood of small apartments and mobile home parks where residents say at least 90 percent of the people are from the Mexican state of Sonora.

“The crowd waiting out here used to be bigger, ” says Gallegos, 38, who has lived in the neighborhood south of downtown Chandler for about 20 years. “Not anymore.”

“I used to watch the news about SB 1070. I think it was to scare people out of town. A lot of the people I used to see, I don’t see anymore. They either moved out of state or back to Mexico.”

It’s been one year since Senate Bill 1070 was passed by the Arizona Legislature and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer. The state’s controversial undocumented immigration bill — which makes it a crime for Mexican nationals to live in Arizona — sparked cheers from many, and fury from others. Debates about SB 1070 took place from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Opponents marched. Supporters tried to strike up copycat bills in other communities. Entertainers, businesses and even community leaders in other states cried foul and called for boycotts.

Since then, legal experts on both sides have fought over the measure. But while much of the teeth of the new law is still tied up in court, the bill’s impact can be felt in communities like Little Sonora. Whether completely because of SB 1070 or the combination of Arizona’s 9 percent unemployment and scarcity of jobs, people have left.

The Centre De Trabajo — Day Labor Center — sits behind the Free Methodist Church on Arizona Avenue, across the street from the Circle K. From the church, Rev. Jose Gonzalez can see the crowd of men hoping for employment. Last year, he said, the crowd of men on the corner was about double.

“Things are slowly picking back up,” Gonzalez said. “This year has been a little better, but we still don’t see the number of people here that we used to.”

Gallegos said that’s because the economy is bad and it’s still difficult to get a job.

“There’s been a lot of changes. The neighborhood is different now,” Gallegos said. “When I go to Mexican businesses and grocery stores, there’s barely any Hispanic people anymore. They’re scared.”

A year after the bill was signed, the Hispanic community is “uncertain,” with some debating whether to stay as the school year comes to an end, said Mesa Unified School District community liaison Deanna Villanueva-Saucedo.

“The hysteria died down, but it’s been replaced by this continual uncertainty,” she said. “Mesa has great heart and community connections. To see that level of uncertainty is disheartening because it’s not what community should be about.”

When classes began last August, Mesa leaders were surprised to find that about 2,400 students did not return to their schools.

At the time, some of the blame was put on the fears felt by the community because of SB 1070.

As the district looks to next year, an even sharper decline is predicted — about 2,800 students. But there are other factors at play: foreclosures, jobs losses and pay cuts.

“We really work at making that personal contact with family. It goes beyond this issue. It’s just exasperated,” Villanueva-Saucedo said.

Businesses have felt the loss of people — and their dollars — as well.

“Since 2007, we’ve lost about 75 percent of our business,” said Nino Mihilli, 30, who works at the Mama Mia Market, his family’s business at 731 S. Arizona Ave. “These laws have added fuel to the fire and have chased businesses and people out of the state. It is killing the economy on all levels and chasing away the purchasing power of the state.

“If we did not own the property, we would’ve closed our business a long time ago,” Mihilli added. “We started losing business after the E-Verify law was passed in the summer of 2007. Then it was Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s raids. It was just blow after blow after blow.”

Mihilli’s family is Italian and moved to Arizona from Detroit about 20 years ago, seeking better jobs and more opportunities. He received a degree in business management from Arizona State University and also runs an insurance company. In the 10 years the market has been in business, it has expanded from 1,200 square feet to 6,000, Mihilli said.

“We’ve grown with Chandler and the neighborhood, and then it all came tumbling down,” he said. “Not so long ago, people couldn’t find a place to live in the neighborhood. Now, go to any trailer park or apartment complex — everything is available.”

In fact, Mihilli has written a screenplay, “The Mexican Dream,” taking what he calls a reverse approach to immigration — Americans are the immigrants and find themselves in the roles of the Mexicans, Mihilli said.

“The ethnic community is a very simple community,” he said. “The majority of all nationalities are here for a proper cause, mostly to work. This country was built on immigrants, and I don’t think that Arizona’s leadership is consistent in recognizing that.”

In west Mesa, where roadside Mexican restaurants dot Main Street, Luis Mesqueda has owned Adrian’s No. 2 Mexican Restaurant at 1011 W. Main for 15 years. He didn’t think he was going to make it past his 14th year because of looming implications from SB 1070 and customers moving out of state.

“I’ve lost more than 50 percent of my business,” Mesqueda said. “The government? Phfffft! This is worse now, and it’s not going to change, but we’re hanging in there. It can’t get any worse. We’re there now.”

The debate that SB 1070 stirred crosses cultures, political standing and residency status. Opinions about the end result of the legislation — and how many people left Arizona because of it — will likely do the same.

“People want to isolate the issue, but there are so many things tied to it,” Villanueva-Saucedo said. “It can’t be just pigeonholed to that. … So many other factors are going on in our community: the housing crunch, the economy issues. People have to go where they can find jobs.”

• Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com