One More Day of Protests Planned in St. Louis Area
New York Times - October 13, 2014, by Minica Davey and Alan Blinder - After demonstrations that varied from...
New York Times - October 13, 2014, by Minica Davey and Alan Blinder - After demonstrations that varied from choreographed marches to tense late-night encounters with law enforcement agents, protesters said they expected a series of acts of civil disobedience around the region on Monday, the last of four days of organized protest that has drawn throngs of people to the St. Louis area over questions about police conduct.
Leaders for the protests provided few details of their plans, except to say they would be employing a strategy used by demonstrators in North Carolina, who last year began staging weekly protests known as “Moral Mondays” in response to actions by the state government, which was newly controlled by Republicans. Those protests in Raleigh, the state capital, resulted in hundreds of arrests and served as a template for similar, smaller demonstrations across the South. The website for what organizers here have called a “Weekend of Resistance” said simply, “We’ll be hosting a series of actions throughout the Ferguson and St. Louis area.”
It is an area on edge after more than two months of demonstrations that began in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where an unarmed black teenager was fatally shot by a white police officer in August. In recent days, the displays of anger have spread to the city of St. Louis, where protesters have appeared at the symphony hall, outside playoff games for the St. Louis Cardinals and near the neighborhood where another black teenager was killed last week by a white off-duty police officer.
Early Sunday morning, tensions mounted between the police, dressed in riot gear, and a group of demonstrators who held a sit-in at the entrance of a St. Louis convenience store and refused to move. Seventeen people were arrested on accusations of unlawful assembly, pepper spray was used by some officers, and D. Samuel Dotson III, the city’s police chief, said he had seen a rock thrown at an officer and heard of other rocks being hurled.
Although some protesters spoke of plans for nonviolent demonstrations on Monday, organizers warned that frustrations had intensified because of the police response on Sunday morning. “Instead of de-escalating rising tensions in the city, Chief Dotson’s comments are inciting anger and making matters worse,” the organizers of many of the protests said in a statement early Sunday. The demonstrators, they said, “showed the best of our democracy, and the St. Louis police demonstrated the worst of their out-of-control law enforcement agency. The police brutalized peaceful people protesting their brutality.”
One question seemed to eclipse all other concerns here, among the protesters and the police alike: What will happen when a grand jury considering charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot Michael Brown, 18, on Aug. 9, returns its decision, perhaps next month?
“It may clearly be a flash point,” the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou said of the possibility that Officer Wilson would not be prosecuted. “People are going to be angry. There are definitely going to be protests.” In an interview before he spoke at a rally Sunday night, he added, “But this is part of a long struggle. It is part of a long struggle against police brutality.”
Chief Dotson, who walked amid the crowd during some of the weekend demonstrations and defended the police handling of the standoff early Sunday, was unwilling to make predictions. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said in an interview on Sunday afternoon. “We hope that the community recognizes that the process works.”
Preparing for Monday’s events, several dozen demonstrators sat in a church sanctuary on Sunday morning for what amounted to a tutorial on tactics of civil disobedience. Lisa Fithian, an experienced activist from Austin, Tex., pressed audience members to call out the reasons they were there. She heard responses like “anger” and “solidarity” from a crowd that included people from the American Federation of Teachers and St. Louis’s Coalition of Artists for Peace.
In a parking lot outside the church, Ms. Fithian spoke about breathing deeply to stay calm, especially as the authorities close in on a demonstration. She talked of remaining aware of where the police officers were posted along nearby streets. She explained possible responses by the authorities to an array of actions by a protester being taken into custody. She demonstrated the mechanics of going limp.
“It’s really essential to practice it,” she said. The crowd eventually returned to the sanctuary, where journalists were asked to leave. The organizers said they would be planning specifics of the protests.
Source
Activists from around the country to march, hold workshops in Pittsburgh
Activists from around the country to march, hold workshops in Pittsburgh
An estimated 1,500 demonstrators will hit the streets of Downtown Pittsburgh this afternoon — and both geographically...
An estimated 1,500 demonstrators will hit the streets of Downtown Pittsburgh this afternoon — and both geographically and politically, they expect to cover a lot of ground.
The “Still We Rise” March, which kicks off a two-day gathering of activists from around the country, begins at 2:30 and will feature stops including the Pittsburgh branch of the Federal Reserve, the headquarters of UPMC and the Station Square office of Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey.
Ana Maria Archila, co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, which is organizing the gathering, said the activists are turning out to put the spotlight on issues communities face such as economic inequality, racism and xenophobia.
“… We will win our rights,” she said, adding that the event “is really the launch of a national grassroots community.”
In fact, the “People’s Convention” at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center expects to attract over 40 progressive groups from 30 states, focusing on issues ranging from immigrant rights and racial equity to environmental concerns and public schools advocacy. A parallel program will involve policy discussions among progressive elected officials: Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and City Councilor Daniel Lavelle are among those participating.
The event “reflects what we’re trying to do in Pittsburgh, on a national level,” said Erin Kramer, executive director of activist group One Pittsburgh.
Here as elsewhere, organizers have pressed fast-food employers to raise minimum wages to at least $15 an hour, and fought for a city ordinance requiring employers to grant paid sick leave to workers. Other cities are weighing “fair scheduling” ordinances that require giving workers earlier notice about, and input on, their work schedules.
Immigration issues, which have become a critical issue in this year’s presidential race, also will be a key topic. While Ms. Kramer said the convention is about more than electoral politics, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “is really a threat for a lot of participants. He’s literally talking about building walls and sending people home. You may see a Trump puppet in the parade, more as a rodeo clown than anything else.”
The agenda may seem sprawling. “It is hard to weave these things together,” Ms. Archila admitted. One goal of the convention is for participants to craft a “statement of unity” outlining a vision to guide future activism.
But “all of our issues are interconnected,” said Pittsburgh education activist Pam Harbin, who will attend the convention to discuss tactics and lessons with organizers from elsewhere. “A $15 minimum wage is deeply connected to the fight for quality schools, because if you have parents working three jobs, you really can’t ask, ‘Why aren’t these parents more involved in their kids’ education?’”
Campaigns for higher wages or better worker protections often concentrate on the federal level. But with Washington in a partisan deadlock, activists are increasingly pressing for change locally.
“In some ways, people became more reliant on the federal government, and that took some of the wind out of the sails of local activism,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the left-leaning Center for Media and Democracy. “But seeing the federal government crippled is an opportunity to reinvigorate local democracy.”
There are perils to the approach, as Pittsburgh has learned. Here as elsewhere, while progressives may control city hall, conservatives often rule state capitals.
State law has barred enforcing a Pittsburgh law to require the reporting of lost-and-stolen firearms, for example. And last December, an Allegheny County judge struck down ordinances requiring paid sick leave for employers, and special training for building security guards. A 2009 Supreme Court ruling barred municipalities for setting such rules for employers, Judge Joseph James ruled.
“It’s a growing trend to see these special interests using their access at the state level to preempt local democracy,” Ms. Graves said. This weekend will feature discussions of the challenge, but because states can limit local authority, “It’s extremely difficult to overcome.”
And a local ordinance may not help struggling families across the city line — at least not immediately.
Still, said Ms. Kramer, “If you lift the minimum wage in one place, people say, ‘Why not me?’ You have to start by painting an alternative picture.”
By Chris Potter
Source
Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nation’s Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Report Shows Illinois Has One of the Nation’s Highest Black Unemployment Rates Despite an Improving Economy
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still...
Across the country, the economy is supposed to be slowly picking up, but the unemployment rate for Blacks is still about twice the rate of whites. A report by Progress Illinois said the state’s Black unemployment rate is one of the worst in the nation.
According to analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI,) only two other states, New Jersey and South Carolina have higher Black unemployment rates than Illinois. D.C. had the highest Black unemployment rate at 14.2 percent, while Tennessee had the lowest at 6.9 percent. Illinois’ Black unemployment rate declined to 11.5 percent in the second quarter of 2015, according to Progress Illinois.
The nationwide unemployment rate has fallen to about 9 percent. However, the Black jobless rate is twice the white unemployment rate of 4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“African Americans are still unemployed at a higher rate than their white counterparts in almost every state,” said EPI economist Valerie Wilson, who conducted the unemployment analysis. “We need policies that look beyond simply reducing unemployment to pre-recession levels as an end goal.”
In a press release, Connie Razza, director of strategic research for the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), said, contrary to the improving economy, “Black America is still in the middle of a Great Recession.”
According to Progress Illinois, EPI and the Center for Popular Democracy both called on the Federal Reserve to support policies that would help Black America.
“When [Fed] Chair [Janet] Yellen and other Fed officials talk about raising interest rates in 2015, they are talking about intentionally slowing down the economy and job growth, which would make it harder for most Americans, and particularly Black workers, to find good-paying jobs,” Razza said. “The direct consequences of the Fed’s projected interest rate hikes would harm millions of workers.”
A tight labor market, which we have now, benefits employers since there are more people looking for fewer jobs. This allows employers to keep labor costs low and easily fire workers, because there are hundreds of people lined up to replace them. Razza said the Fed needs to support policies that would move towards a full employment economy.
“A full-employment economy, as we saw in the late 1990s, shrinks racial inequity and will bring particular benefits to Black workers, who are disproportionately unemployed, underemployed, underpaid, and endure more difficult scheduling circumstances in the workplace,” Razza said.
Black unemployment has been a long-standing problem. The Labor Department began tracking employment figures by race in 1972 and since then the Black jobless rate has stubbornly remained at twice the white rate. Employment experts say its not just a matter of training and education. Studies have shown Black men with college educations have higher unemployment rates than white men with just a high school education.
However, economists say the improving economy is making it easier for all Americans, including Black people, to find work.
“Now, you’re starting to see a broad recovery which is reaching groups with high unemployment rates like African-Americans and teens,” said Michael Madowitz, an economist at the American Center for Progress in a CNN article.
This issue was also brought up during the last Republican debate.
“Once you have economic growth, it’s important we reach out to people who live in the shadows… which includes people in our minority community and people who feel they don’t have the chance to move up,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate.
Source: Atlanta Black Star
NYC debe apoyar a la numerosa población inmigrante para asegurar una fuerza laboral exitosa
NYC debe apoyar a la numerosa población inmigrante para asegurar una fuerza laboral exitosa
Marta tiene dificultad para encontrar trabajo últimamente. Con frecuencia, cuando va a solicitar empleo haciendo comida...
Marta tiene dificultad para encontrar trabajo últimamente. Con frecuencia, cuando va a solicitar empleo haciendo comida o labores domésticas, lo primero que le preguntan es, “¿Habla inglés?” Marta siempre responde la verdad, que solo sabe un poco.
Con frecuencia, los empleadores la rechazan porque quieren personas que dominen el inglés. “Estos días, la verdad que es muy difícil conseguir trabajo”, dijo Marta.
La ciudad de Nueva York tiene la población inmigrante más diversa entre todas las grandes metrópolis del mundo. Los inmigrantes constituyen más de 40% de la población y casi la mitad de la fuerza laboral de la ciudad.
Pero la ciudad enfrenta una paradoja: si bien la tasa de empleo entre los inmigrantes es más alta que la de los oriundos de Nueva York, un porcentaje desproporcionado de aquellos tienen empleos con poca paga, sus ingresos promedio son más bajos que los de las personas nacidas allí y, con frecuencia, se ven más afectados por la pobreza. Muchos de ellos, al igual que Marta, tienen conocimientos limitados de inglés, lo que puede dificultar que encuentren un trabajo bien remunerado.
Desde que el alcalde de Nueva York Bill de Blasio asumió el mando hace poco más de dos años, la ciudad ha comenzado a reestructurar el sistema de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, lo que crea una oportunidad importante de eliminar las injusticias que enfrentan los neoyorquinos inmigrantes.
El nuevo marco de la ciudad para su sistema de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, llamado Career Pathways, promete invertir un nivel sin precedente de fondos en capacitación laboral y educación orientado a los trabajadores más vulnerables de la ciudad, para asegurar que la inversión de la ciudad en la fuerza laboral sea uniforme en las diversas agencias municipales y colaborar con los empleadores y otras partes interesadas a fin de mejorar la calidad de los empleos con salarios más bajos en la ciudad.
Ahora que se está implementando el nuevo marco para el desarrollo de la fuerza laboral, se debe aprovechar la oportunidad para asegurar que se atiendan las necesidades de la numerosa fuerza laboral inmigrante de Nueva York. La gran mayoría de los trabajadores en las ocupaciones de mayor crecimiento en la ciudad, desde auxiliares de servicios de salud a domicilio hasta obreros de construcción, enfermeros diplomados y programadores de computadoras, son inmigrantes. Como tal, los trabajadores inmigrantes son fundamentales para la vitalidad económica de la ciudad, y su éxito debe ser primordial en la reforma del sistema laboral de la ciudad.
Los trabajadores inmigrantes y postulantes a empleo enfrentan muchas barreras singulares que limitan su superación en la fuerza laboral. Por ejemplo, un número considerable de inmigrantes no hablan inglés bien y tienen, en promedio, un nivel más bajo de educación formal.
Al mismo tiempo, hay miles de inmigrantes con grados universitarios u otras credenciales educativas que no se reconocen en Estados Unidos y, por lo tanto, no tienen otra opción que realizar trabajos en los que no se aprovechan del todo sus aptitudes y talento. Además, entre los trabajadores con salarios bajos, que son mayormente inmigrantes, la explotación es algo común. Esto es particularmente cierto en el caso de los trabajadores indocumentados y quienes trabajan en la economía informal.
El éxito del plan de Career Pathways depende de su capacidad de eliminar las principales barreras que enfrentan los neoyorquinos inmigrantes. Un informe preparado conjuntamente por el Center for Popular Democracy y Center for an Urban Future identifica estas barreras y describe una estrategia coordinada para enfrentar los obstáculos que impiden que los trabajadores inmigrantes alcancen plenamente su potencial.
Específicamente, la ciudad y las entidades privadas que financian la fuerza laboral deben invertir en clases de inglés, educación de adultos y programas de capacitación y titulación para trabajadores con diversos niveles educativos y de dominio de inglés. Esto les permitiría aprender las destrezas que necesitan para ser competitivos en la fuerza laboral y evitaría que se estanquen en empleos con poca paga.
En segundo lugar, la ciudad debe asegurar que los trabajadores inmigrantes estén enterados de estos servicios al asegurarse de que se ofrezcan en los vecindarios donde los inmigrantes viven o trabajan. Una gran manera de hacerlo es asociarse con organizaciones sin fines de lucro en las comunidades inmigrantes y asegurar que los fondos disponibles estén llegando a los programas laborales en las comunidades inmigrantes.
Finalmente, una estrategia de desarrollo de la fuerza laboral que es eficaz para los inmigrantes debe mejorar la calidad de los empleos con salarios bajos que ocupan a tantos de ellos. Esto incluye mejorar las leyes de protección laboral y velar por su cumplimiento, algo que con frecuencia no se hace, además de lograr un sueldo mínimo más alto y acceso a licencia pagada por enfermedad. Los mismos empleadores son una parte importante de esta conversación, y la ciudad debe usar su influencia para ayudarlos a mejorar la calidad de sus empleos peor pagados.
Sin un enfoque coordinado para asegurar que los servicios de desarrollo laboral estén atendiendo a los inmigrantes, el plan de la ciudad corre el riesgo de pasar por alto a un grupo enorme de trabajadores y personas que buscan empleo. En este momento tenemos la oportunidad de asegurar que se incluyan a los inmigrantes como parte esencial de este plan.
By Kate Hamaji & Christian González-Rivera
Source
Under Trump, local governments become activists
Christine Knapp had been on maternity leave for nearly three months, but on Wednesday the director of the mayor’s...
Christine Knapp had been on maternity leave for nearly three months, but on Wednesday the director of the mayor’s Office of Sustainability hoisted a diaper bag on her shoulder, packed her 11-week-old daughter, Sabine, into a stroller, maneuvered into a creaky elevator in City Hall, and rode up to the mayor’s reception room. This was just too important to miss.
Read the full article here.
It’s Not Just Low Pay Stressing Out Part-Time Workers
Bill Moyers - July 24, 2014, by Neha Tara Mehta - Besides struggling to make ends meet because of low wages, millions...
Bill Moyers - July 24, 2014, by Neha Tara Mehta - Besides struggling to make ends meet because of low wages, millions of part-time workers in America also face uncertainty over when they will be called in to work. Irregular schedules and last-minute notice make it hard for these workers to find other work, go to school and make arrangements for child care or caring for aging parents.
As The New York Times reported last week:
About 27.4 million Americans work part time. The number of those part-timers who would prefer to work full time has nearly doubled since 2007, to 7.5 million. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 47 percent of part-time hourly workers ages 26 to 32 receive a week or less of advance notice for their schedule.
In a study of the data, two University of Chicago professors found that employers dictated the work schedules for about half of young adults, without their input. For part-time workers, schedules on average fluctuated from 17 to 28 hours a week.
“Frontline managers face pressure to keep costs down, but they really don’t have much control over wages or benefits,” said Susan J. Lambert, a University of Chicago professor who interpreted the data. “What they have control over is employee hours.”
According to the National Women’s Law Center, food service workers experience a 70 percent average variation of work hours every month. For retail workers, the variation is 50 percent and for janitors and housekeepers, it’s 40 percent.
Lawmakers across the country are beginning to notice how irregular schedules complicate the lives of part-time workers, and are taking measures to address the problem. Employees of federal agencies now have the right to request work schedule flexibilities. Workers in San Francisco and Vermont can ask for a more flexible or predictable work schedule. In a report released in June, New York City comptroller Scott M. Stringer made a case for a legislation that would give employees the chance to make such requests “without fear of reprisal.”
Congress is swinging into action on this issue as well. On Tuesday, Representatives George Miller and Rosa DeLauro introduced the Schedules That Work Act. Miller admits that the bill may meet with opposition, but thinks that it will highlight “often callous scheduling practices.”
The Guardian reports that another version of the bill is brewing in the Senate:
Senators Tom Harkin and Elizabeth Warren are co-sponsoring of the Senate’s version of the bill. Carrie Gleason, co-founder of Retail Action Project, said [that] Warren will introduce the Senate version in upcoming weeks.
A single mom working two jobs should know if her hours are being canceled before she arranges for daycare and drives halfway across town to show up at work,” said Warren. “This is about some basic fairness in work scheduling so that both employees and employers have more certainty and can get the job done.”
Although some businesses are saying the bills would represent government overreach, the clothing store Zara has already promised to start giving its part-time employees two weeks notice on their work schedules.
Source
Report: Millions of Dollars in Fraud, Waste Found in Charter School Sector
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste...
The Washington Post - April 28, 2015, by Valerie Strauss - A new report released on Tuesday details fraud and waste totaling more than $200 million of uncovered fraud and waste of taxpayer funds in the charter school sector, but says the total is impossible to know because there is not sufficient oversight over these schools. It calls on Congress to include safeguards in legislation being considered to succeed the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The report, titled “The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities To Waste, Fraud, And Abuse,” was released jointly by the nonprofit organizations Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy. It follows a similar report released a year ago by the same groups that detailed $136 million in fraud and waste and mismanagement in 15 of the 42 states that operate charter schools. The 2015 report cites $203 million, including the 2014 total plus $23 million in new cases, and $44 million in earlier cases not included in last year’s report.
It notes that these figures only represent fraud and waste in the charter sector uncovered so far, and that the total that federal, state and local governments “stand to lose” in 2015 is probably more than $1.4 billion. It says, “The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud.”
The report makes these policy recommendations:
■ Mandate audits that are specifically designed to detect and prevent fraud, and increase the transparency and accountability of charter school operators and managers. ■ Clear planning-based public investments to ensure that any expansions of charter school investments ensure equity, transparency, and accountability. ■ Increase transparency and accountability to ensure that charter schools provide the information necessary for state agencies to detect and prevent fraud.
It also says:
State and federal lawmakers should act now to put systems in place to prevent fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement. While the majority of state legislative sessions are coming to an end, there is an opportunity to address the charter school fraud problem on a federal level by including strong oversight requirements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is currently being debated in Congress. Unfortunately, some ESEA proposals do very little reduce the vulnerabilities that exist in the current law. If the Act is passed without the inclusion of the reforms outlined in this report, taxpayers stand to lose millions more dollars to charter school fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
The charter school sector has expanded significantly in the last decade and now educates about 5 percent of the students enrolled in public schools. The Obama administration has supported the spread of charter schools; President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $375 million specifically for charters, a 48 percent increase over last year’s actual budget.
Proponents say charters offer choices for parents and competition for traditional public schools. Critics say that most charters don’t perform any better — and some of them worse — than traditional public schools, take resources away from school districts, and are part of an effort to privatize public education.
The report says that any “effective, comprehensive fraud prevention system” should include:
■ Taking proactive steps to educate all staff and board members about fraud; ■ Ensuring that one executive-level manager coordinates and oversees the fraud risk assessment and reports to the board of directors, oversight bodies, and school community; ■ Implementing reporting procedures that include conflict disclosure, whistleblower protections, and a clear investigation process; ■ Undergoing and posting a fraud risk assessment conducted by a consultant expert in applicable standards, key risk indicators, anti-fraud methodology, control activities, and detection procedures; and ■ Developing and implementing quality assurance, continuous monitoring, and, where necessary, correction action plans, with clear benchmarks and reporting
The report details cases across the country, among them:
The District of Columbia In February 2015, the DC Public Charter School Board unanimously voted to revoke the charter of the Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter School. The DC Attorney General is suing the founder, Kent Amos, for diverting public education funding to a private company for his personal profit. That private management company paid Amos more than $2.5 million over the last 2 years. Over the past 10 years, the school has paid the private entity more than $14 million and, while costs to the private company declined over that time, management fees rose. The charter board’s oversight report showed “no pattern of fiscal mismanagement.” Members of the DC Public Charter School Board have described their limited ability to oversee for-profit management companies, which face no requirement to disclose salaries or other pertinent information.
Michigan In April 2014, Steven Ingersoll, founder of Grand Traverse Academy, was convicted on federal fraud and tax evasion. He did not report $2 million of taxable income in 2009 and 2010. The school’s audit revealed a $2.3 million prepayment to Ingersoll’s school management company. The school’s later decision to write down $1.6 million of the loan put the school in a deficit position for the first time. Ingersoll then used half of a $.8 million loan for school construction to pay down some of his debt to the school.13 After the founder’s ouster, his daughter-in-law continued to handle the finances of the school.
Ohio In January 2015, the state auditor released a report of the results of unannounced visits by inspectors to 30 charter schools. In nearly half of the schools, the school-provided headcount was significantly higher than the auditors’ headcount. Schools are funded based on headcount, so these inflated figures amount to taxpayer dollars siphoned away from students. Among the seven schools with the most extreme variances between reported head count and the auditors’ headcount, almost 900 students were missing, at a cost of roughly $5.7 million.16 Auditors identified eight other schools with troubling, but less significant variances. In June 2014, a grand jury indicted the superintendent and 2 board members of Arise! Academy in Dayton of soliciting and accepting bribes in exchange for awarding a “lucrative” consulting contract to a North Carolina-based company. The contract was worth $420,919 and the charter personnel received kickbacks in the form of cash, travel, and payments to a separate business.
California In July 2014, the Los Angeles Unified School District performed a forensic audit of Magnolia Public Schools. They found that the charter-school chain used education dollars to pay for six nonemployees’ immigration costs and could not justify $3 million in expenses over four years to outsource curriculum development, professional training, and human resources services that the school itself reported doing.
Queens Radio Show Aims to Help Day Laborers Avoid Death or Injury on the Job
Queens Radio Show Aims to Help Day Laborers Avoid Death or Injury on the Job
As a muted telenovela played on a T.V. overhead, Jorge Roldan inched toward the microphone in a basement radio studio...
As a muted telenovela played on a T.V. overhead, Jorge Roldan inched toward the microphone in a basement radio studio in Corona, Queens.
Speaking in Spanish, Roldan, a coordinator at the Laborers’ International Union of North America who is based in Long Island City, reminded his audience, mainly construction workers, that their bosses are obligated to give them respirators when they work on jobs involving airborne contaminants like asbestos.
“New York is an old city – many buildings have asbestos,” he said. “Wash your clothes in two different machines. The asbestos resist everything.”
His advice was standard fare for Sin Fronteras. Since April, the hour-long program has brought together six Latinos weekly to offer advice on a delicate topic for the Latino immigrant community: the exploitation and mistreatment of undocumented laborers.
Translated “Without Frontiers,” the offering is the only public-affairs program of 91.9 Radio Impacto 2, an unlicensed Spanish-language music station founded in 2008 that caters to the Ecuadorian population. Sin Fronteras focuses on worker-safety issues, but also promotes cultural events in the Ecuadorian and Latino community. Its guests have included Queens Assemblyman Francisco Moya and Ecuadorian Consul General Linda Machuca, among other local leaders.
More than 98,000 Ecuadorians live in Queens. Latinos account for over 27 percent of the borough population and are a nearly equal percentage of the construction workers citywide, according to a 2015 report by the New York Committee for Operational Safety & Health, a labor advocacy group. An investigation in 2013 by the non-profit Center for Popular Democracy found that between 2003 to 2011, Latino and/or immigrant workers made up three quarters of fatal falls at construction sites in New York City.
“We don’t want more of our people to die,” said Sin Fronteras’ founder, Rosita Cali, an Ecuadorian immigrant who also co-directs Padres en Acción, an organization in Jackson Heights that offers workplace safety trainings sponsored by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration – known as “OSHA classes.”
“Workers have to protect themselves,” she said. “They have the right to say, ‘no, I’m not going to go on that ladder.’ They have a voice and a vote.”
Juan, a 28-year-old Ecuadorian construction worker, represents the people the program tries to reach. An undocumented immigrant, he said he has been a construction worker since March and makes $17 an hour, nearly one-third more than in his previous job working in a kitchen. But about two months ago, he said, he started feeling sick after working with fiberglass insulation in a building in Brooklyn.
Juan said he asked his construction supervisor for a mask, but was told that there were none available.
“They told us that there weren’t any, that we would have to wait,” said the worker, who asked that his last name not be published. “The day went by, and then the week. How can that be?”
By the end of the week, he said, he had an obstructed sense of smell, body aches and a cough, which his doctor attributed to inhalation of fiberglass.
“When you remove the insulation, the dust rises – even your skin starts to sting,” said Juan.
Christina Fox, the work center coordinator for New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a non-profit based in Jackson Heights, said the Latino laborers she works with often don’t report injuries to their supervisors. She explained that workers might not think their injuries are severe enough or don’t know that they have a right to receive compensation.
Attending a workplace safety class could change this.
“A worker will be able to go to their job, recognize there’s a crack in the retaining wall, stop, and tell their supervisor,” she said. “But low-income workers don’t [always] have the flexibility to leave the job. A lot of workers might enter that risk situation.”
It’s a scenario that Sin Fronteras aims to address. Cali began pushing for more workers’ rights classes several years ago. When she heard in 2013 that the Ecuadorian Consulate was running out of space to host OSHA classes, she offered up the basement of her jewelry store and barbershop in Corona – the same basement where her program is now recorded.
For two months, she said, dozens of immigrants flocked to her shop weekly to learn about their right to report workplace accidents, regardless of legal status.
“When I saw how huge and exaggerated the demand was, I said, ‘this can’t be – we’re going to hold classes in other places,'” recalled Cali.
She created Sin Fronteras to expand the outreach. Like the majority of the hosts on the program, she doesn’t have professional radio experience, but the station’s owners immediately liked the idea of a program that seeks to help the community. The six hosts on Sin Fronteras are all volunteers and include a lawyer who specializes in construction accidents and the founder of Padres en Acción, Ronaldo Bini, who speaks about public-safety measures.
“Because people lack knowledge, they aren’t prepared and lose the chance to build their lives,” said Cali. “We want people to listen to the radio programs and come here and take OSHA classes, scaffold classes for workers’ protection.”
Maria Fernanda Baquerizo, the community relations coordinator at New York’s Ecuadorian Consulate, said that labor abuse is prevalent in the largely undocumented Ecuadorian community in Queens.
“It’s very positive that our community, our immigrants, can listen to important information of where to receive help,” she said. “Because generally the people who are abused at work, the undocumented, think that their employers can abuse them and not pay them wages… Immigrants feel helpless, they feel alone. They don’t know how to move forward.”
By Leila Miller
Source
Internal Emails Show ICE Agents Struggling to Substantiate Trump’s Lies About Immigrants
Internal Emails Show ICE Agents Struggling to Substantiate Trump’s Lies About Immigrants
As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country last February in the first mass raids of the...
As hundreds of undocumented immigrants were rounded up across the country last February in the first mass raids of the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials went out of their way to portray the people they detained as hardened criminals, instructing field offices to highlight the worst cases for the media and attempting to distract attention from the dozens of individuals who were apprehended despite having no criminal background at all.
Read the full article here.
12 hours ago
12 hours ago