Protesters Show Support for Undocumented Immigrants in Santa Rosa March
By Martin Espinoza The Press Democrat March 6, 2018
More than 1,500 immigrants and their supporters marched through downtown Santa Rosa on Monday as part of a national campaign calling on President Donald Trump and Congress to bring permanent relief to undocumented immigrants.
The march, which started at Santa Rosa Junior College, was held on the day the president had hoped to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — an executive order under former President Barack Obama that granted temporary relief from deportation to those illegally brought to the United States as children.
Por Martin J. Bennett The Press Democrat 31 de diciembre de 2017
El año pasado, California se convirtió en el primer estado en aprobar un salario mínimo de $15 por hora. Este salario mínimo entrará en vigor progresivamente en el transcurso de siete años: el 1 de enero de 2018 aumentará a $11 por hora para grandes empleadores y a $10.50 por hora para negocios con 25 empleados o menos.
Además, casi dos docenas de ciudades californianas ya han aprobado leyes de salario mínimo de $15 por hora que entran completamente en vigor más rápidamente: San Francisco en 2018, San José en 2019 y Los Ángeles en 2020.
Hoy en día el salario mínimo no es un salario digno o de autosuficiencia, y la diferencia entre ambos es a menudo malinterpretada. California promulgó un salario mínimo por primera vez en 1916, junto con otros 9 estados, y el gobierno federal lo hizo en 1938. El objetivo de las leyes de salario mínimo era crear un piso salarial que ofreciera un nivel de vida adecuado para todos los trabajadores.
En 1933, el presidente estadounidense Franklin Roosevelt declaró: "Ningún negocio cuya existencia dependa del pago de salarios inferiores al digno a sus trabajadores tiene derecho a continuar en este país. Al decir salarios dignos, me refiero a aquellos que rebasan un nivel de subsistencia básico; me refiero a los salarios de una vida digna".
Immigrant Families Seek Help After Fires By ELOÍSA RUANO GONZÁLEZ The Press Democrat November 12, 2017
Cristalyn Robles and her family hurried in the early hours of the firestorm last month, loading four clients into wheelchairs as wind-driven flames roared toward the Larkfield assisted living facility where the immigrant family lived and worked.
As embers rained down on the darkened street near Cardinal Newman High School, Robles, her mother, her husband, Charlie, and their 7-year-old son ran to safety, each pushing a wheelchair holding the residents in their care.
“My son was crying, ‘Mommy, Mommy, I can’t see.’ I told my son, ‘You have to be brave. You have to get Maria out of here,’” Robles, 40, said.
Her mother, Alicia Tanael, 65, waved down a pair of motorists passing by and loaded the clients into their vans.
“It was very fast. All that came to mind was to get our residents out,” Robles said, recounting their escape from the Tubbs fire that destroyed the assisted living facility on Ursuline Road, leaving the family jobless and without a home. Grateful relatives of those who the family saved have started a GoFundMe page to help with their recovery.
On Saturday, Robles and her family, who currently are sleeping in her brother’s living room, stopped by the Roseland Village Neighborhood Center on Sebastopol Road, where local organizations were providing financial assistance for undocumented families impacted by the Sonoma County wildfires. Dozens of families already were lined up when the doors opened at 10 a.m.
Up From the Ashes: North Bay Fires: For Undocumented Workers, an Uphill Journey After the Fires
By Dani Burlison KQED Forum
The national media calls them the “wine country fires” — the destructive fires in Sonoma and Napa Counties which decimated thousands of homes and businesses in October.
But to understand the fires’ impact on the immigrant community, the “wine country” description only tells part of the story. Of the roughly 28,000 undocumented immigrants who live and work in Sonoma County, some laborers who worked at affected vineyards after the fires had fewer or no grapes to pick; others picked what was left in the vineyards without masks, prompting an advisory from the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
An even larger population of immigrants utilized widely throughout the county are the undocumented domestic workers — house cleaners, landscapers, and pool cleaners — who relied on employment at large homes in the upper-class hillside neighborhoods of Fountaingrove, the Foothills, and elsewhere.
Nearly all of those homes no longer exist.
Local immigrant advocates predict that domestic workers, and not vineyard workers, will face the biggest challenges rebuilding their lives after the fires. In addition to maid services, landscapers, and house cleaners having far fewer houses to clean and maintain, other longstanding issues of housing and assistance for Sonoma County’s undocumented population have been exacerbated by the fires.
From Sonoma County Ashes, a Fund for Undocumented Immigrants Rises
By Leilani Clark Civil Eats November 27, 2017
Like many who awoke to the smell of smoke in the early hours of October 9th, Agustin Vivienda and his family raced out of their home and tumbled into the family car. As flames streamed into their neighbor’s backyard, Vivienda’s wife had just enough time to toss the children’s U.S. birth certificates and other important documents into a bag; Agustin grabbed the family’s two Chihuahuas.
While the family fled to the nearby town of Windsor, the rental they had just moved into—at $1,850 per month, a bargain in pricey Sonoma County—burned to the ground. Their home was one of over 4,600 destroyed by the Tubbs Fire, the most devastating wildfire in California history.
And now, Vivienda—along with an estimated 38,500 other undocumented residents who have made homes in Sonoma County—finds himself back at square one: In addition to his home and belongings, the 45-year-old construction worker also lost his tools and his work truck in the fire.
“It takes tools to make money to support my family and it takes money to buy my tools,” says Vivienda. “Even though I would like my own place to live, this is my main priority so I can go back to work full-time.”
By Leilani Clark Made Local Magazine September/October 2017 Teamsters, labor leaders, and environmentalists unite to demand local waste management companies make a commitment to living wage jobs, worker safety, and environmentally friendly practices.
Twenty-seven years ago—at the urging of his brothers who had found jobs witha local waste management company— Patricio Estupiñan immigrated from his hometown in Central Mexico to Sonoma County. Within no time, he was hired to drive a garbage truck. When the company eventually sold to the Ratto Group, a subsidiary of North Bay Corporation, the county’s largest waste hauler with service to eight of nine cities, Estupiñan, now married with two children, was earning $24.70 an hour with benefits.
After the sale, things deteriorated. First, Estupiñan’s hourly wage was cut by one dollar, a loss that he calculates cost him thousands of dollars a year. Then, he realized he was being paid more than the employees who were already with the Ratto Group, and they grumbled about rarely receiving raises. The two-tier wage system bothered him. Why should two people do the same amount of work and not receive similar pay?
“Three or four drivers tried to do something about it and got fired,” he tells me over coffee on a Saturday afternoon in Roseland. “[The management] told people, ‘If you want a raise, there’s the door.’”
Arriba la Basura Por Leilani Clark Made Local Magazine Septiembre/octubre 2017
Los Teamsters, líderes laborales y ambientalistas se unen para exigir que las empresas locales de manejo de desechos se comprometan a ofrecer trabajos con salarios dignos, salvaguardar la seguridad de sus trabajadores e implementar prácticas respetuosas del medio ambiente.
Hace veintisiete años, a instancia de sus hermanos que habían encontrado trabajo con una compañía local de manejo de desechos, Patricio Estupiñan emigró de su ciudad natal en el centro de México al Condado de Sonoma. En poco tiempo, fue contratado para conducir un camión de basura. Cuando la compañía finalmente fue vendida al Grupo Ratto, una subsidiaria de North Bay Corporation, el mayor transportista de desechos del condado con servicio a ocho de las nueve ciudades, Estupiñan, ahora casado y con dos hijos, ganaba $24.70 por hora con beneficios.
Después de la venta, las cosas empeoraron. Primero, el salario por hora de Estupiñan se redujo en un dólar, una pérdida que calcula le costó miles de dólares al año. En seguida, se dio cuenta que le pagaban más que a los empleados que ya trabajaban para el Grupo Ratto, y que se quejaban por recibir aumentos muy de vez en cuando. El sistema salarial de dos niveles le molestaba. ¿Por qué dos personas que trabajan lo mismo no reciben un salario similar?
“Tres o cuatro conductores intentaron hacer algo al respecto y fueron despedidos”, me dice tomando café un sábado por la tarde en Roseland. “[La gerencia] le dijo a la gente: ‘Si quieren un aumento, ahí está la puerta’”.
Close to Home: A Local Good News Story for Labor Day
By Ofelia Cardenas and Juanita Galipo The Press Democrat September 3, 2017
We work as a housekeeper and banquet server, respectively, at the Hyatt Vineyard Creek hotel in Santa Rosa. We are both mothers and Santa Rosa residents.
This Labor Day, we are celebrating a victory that will immediately benefit us and about 50 of our coworkers at the Hyatt, but which we hope will spread to hospitality workers throughout the North Bay.
Last month, together with a majority of our coworkers, we chose to join a union, and management respected our choice. That may sound like an unremarkable series of events, but in fact it is extraordinary. Most of the time, when workers try to organize a union, they face vicious resistance from their employer. The path to unionization winds through a minefield of intimidation and retaliation, and many workers who set out down that path never make it, either because they get fired or because the entire organizing campaign is defeated.
Clean Up and Recovery from the fires is now underway, but the need is still great. NBJwJ is committed to ensuring that our community's recovery is a just and sustainable one for all workers affected by the fires, especially the many undocumented workers who will be unable to apply for resources. To that end, we joined with NBOP and the Graton Day Labor Center to start a fund with Grant Makers for Immigrants and Refugees to support undocumented children, families and community that have also lost either their homes or places of work. We established UNDOCUFUND.ORG to raise funds for this vulnerable group of workers. Please consider giving generously.
Donate here online: UndocuFund.orgor send a check to: UndocuFund c/o GCIR, P.O. Box 1100, Sebastopol, California 95473-1100
If you or someone you know could benefit from this fund, please go to Undocufund.org for information. Or contact: Omar Medina at omedina@undocufund.org
