Domestic Workers Archives — Page 2 of 2 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Dick Meister: New hope for domestic workers

Maria Poblet

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July 22, 2011

With a lot of luck, we may finally take decisive action to guarantee decent treatment for the world’s highly exploited housekeepers, maids, nannies and other domestic workers. There are an estimated 100 million of them, working in more than 180 countries.

Their pay is generally at the poverty level, and very few have fringe benefits such as pensions and employer-paid health care. Few have the protection of unions or labor laws, and they’re often at the mercy of unscrupulous labor contractors. Almost half of them are not entitled to even one day off per week. About a third of the female workers are denied maternity leave.

The hope for improving the domestics’ slavery-like conditions has arisen from action taken in Geneva this month at the annual meeting of the United Nation’s International Labor Organization – the ILO.

Delegates representing unions, employers and governments voted 396 to 16 for what’s called a “Convention on Domestic Workers.” The non-binding convention spells out how domestics should be treated in UN member countries – most importantly in the pace-setting United States.

In the U.S., as in most other countries, an estimated 80 percent of the domestics are women of color, subject to racial discrimination and physical and sexual abuse. In the United States, most of them are immigrants as well . They’re easy targets for exploitation, especially since, as elsewhere, domestics mainly work in private unregulated households, usually alone.

What’s more, U.S. domestics lack most of the protections of state and federal labor laws that are granted most U.S. workers outside of agriculture . Most other non-agricultural workers at least have the right to unionize. But domestics don’t even have that basic right.

The National Labor Relations Act specifically denies union rights to anyone “in the domestic service of any family or person.” That’s right. The Depression-era law that was designed to pull poverty-stricken workers out of poverty and build a middle class does indeed prohibit an entire group of exceptionally needy workers from taking a major step to improve their extremely poor working conditions. The word for that is “un-American.”

That outrageous legal prohibition has its roots in racism. Pressures from southern states, which objected to granting union rights to the mainly black domestics, was the main reason domestics were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act.

Some domestics have nevertheless formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment. But they need the force of law behind them.

The ILO convention calls for guaranteeing domestic workers in the United States and everywhere else some of the key rights that unionized workers invariably have, among them, regular working hours, vacations, maternity leaves and Social Security benefits.

Domestics would be promised what amount to contracts with employers that would make clear just what they would be expected to do, for how long, and for how much pay. Their working conditions would have to include time off of at least 24 hours a week.

Migrant workers would have to be provided with a written job offer of employment or a contract before crossing the border into another country to work.

It took several years for ILO representatives to adopt the domestic workers convention. It was finally adopted as a direct result of campaigning here and aboard by groups of activists from unions and other organizations. They will be working for the next few years to get as many nations as possible to implement the ILO convention with their help.

The effort in this country is being led by the National Domestic Workers Alliance, with major support from the AFL-CIO, which has arranged to have some domestic workers represent themselves in ILO meetings and voting.

Among other things, proponents hope to make it clear that “domestic workers are real workers, NOT powerless individuals who are expected to remain in quiet servitude and endure long hours without overtime pay, along with hazardous working conditions without access to health and safety protections.”

Proponents also hope to end the “cultural relativity excuse that sleeping on a mattress in an unheated garage is better than he or she would get in their home country, or that the poor treatment of domestics is a tradition.” The ILO convention says otherwise and workers in the United States and other countries where it is adopted “will be armed with the knowledge that there is an international standard that protects them.”

Domestics already are granted labor rights in New York State, and California legislators are considering a proposal to bring them under that state’s labor laws. But winning basic rights for the badly exploited domestic workers elsewhere will be very difficult. But so was convincing ILO representatives to take on the task, the long needed task of granting domestic workers union rights and, with them, the decent wages, hours and working conditions that come with unionization.

Yes, winning the union rights for domestics worldwide will be very difficult. But we know it can be done. And certainly we know that it should be done.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. He can be reached through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 300 of his columns.

Ten good bills for 2011

Zelda Bronstein

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June 13, 2011

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The news in Sacramento is mostly bad — Jerry Brown still can’t find the Republicans he needs to pass a budget, although maybe the redistricting process will help him. But it’s not all bad. Some important bills passed their houses of origin in the past week, and with Democrats controlling both the Senate and the Assembly and a Democratic governor, there’s actually a chance they could become law.

At the top of my list is the measure by Darrel Steinberg that could allow counties and school districts to raise a wide range of taxes. It is, as Sen. Mark Leno notes, a “game changer.” And it only requires a simple majority of both houses. (I wonder: Could the San Francisco supervisors put a tax measure on the ballot in November on the assumption that the Steinberg bill will be in effect by then?) If the GOP won’t budge on the budget, the Dems need to at least give local government the chance to find the resources to keep essential services running.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano got AB 9, also known as Seth’s Law, approved on the Assembly floor. The measure, named in memory of Seth Walsh, a 13-year-old gay student from Tehachipi who suffered years of harassment and abuse, gives school districts the tools (and the mandate) to address bullying.

The Assembly also approved Ammiano’s AB 889, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, which gives domestic workers the same basic labor-law protections as other California workers, and AB 1081, the TRUST Act, which would allow California counties to opt out of S-Comm, the awful federal law that seeks to force local cops to become ICE agents.

Over at the state Senate, Mark Leno won approval for 11 bills, including SB 914, which would mandate that police get a warrant before searching the data on a person’s cell phone. It’s crazy that SB 914 is even necessary, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that, while you need a warrant to search a personal computer, you don’t need one to search a cell phone. SB 790 makes it easier for local agencies to form Community Choice Aggregation systems. SB 819 would give the state more authority to take firearms away from people who have committed felonies or have been institutionalized for mental illness. (The NRA’s going to hate this bill — felons have the right to guns, too …) SB 233 — another one I really like — gives local government the right to impose vehicle license fees.

Sen. Leland Yee won overwhelming support for SB 8, which mandates that foundations affiliated with the University of California, Cal State or community college campuses abide by the same public records laws as the schools themselves. (The Sarah Palin speaking fees bill.) SB 364, which requires corporations that get tax breaks for job creation to prove they’ve actually created jobs. SB 9 — another one that ought to be a no-brainer — ends the practice of giving juvenile offenders sentences of life without parole.

Seems likely all of these will emerge from the remaining house — and then we’ll see whether Brown is willing to sign progressive legislation.

Domestic workers celebrate Women’s Day with call for justice

Andrew Lam

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March 7, 2011

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On the fifth floor of a building in Chinatown salty porridge, fried pastry, and oranges were being passed for at a special Women’s Day meeting of the Chinese Progressive Association. Of course, the day itself is Tuesday, but as member Wen Lan Rong told me (through an interpreter), in China the holiday is a much bigger deal: women often get the day off work to go out to special meals or outings with their lady friends. Staff and volunteers passed out roses and folic acid vitamins to the females in the room, but the morning played host to a discussion of a campaign that, if successful, could be a much more substantial way of honoring women in our society: the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights and attendant legislative drive.

Rong said that she first heard of the domestic worker campaign when the CPA went to the US Social Forum last summer in Detroit. New York was a month away from passing the bill, which now guarantees overtime pay, rest days, and protection against harassment from employers in an industry that mainly employs immigrant women and that used to be subject to negligible oversight. An ex-restaurant worker that is currently involved in the CPA’s struggle for labor law enforcement in the service industry, Rong is ready to be an ally in the campaign’s new struggle to become law in California. “We fight not just for our rights, but the rights of all men, women, and children,” she said, mentioning the CPA’s support of the Filipino caregivers who fought for and won $70,000 in back pay from unfair employers last year.

And after a CPA organizer’s Power Point presentation on California’s plan to mimic New York’s results – and even improve on them, as our state’s proposed bill includes the right to advance notice of termination, an uninterrupted eight hours of sleep for live-in workers, and the right to cook one’s own food at work – many of Rong’s fellow community activists agreed.

Which is how we found ourselves making an activist day of it – heading from Chinatown meeting to the Women’s Building for the domestic workers’ campaign kick-off. Originally slated to be in Dolores Park, the California Household Workers Rights Coalition of women’s and other community groups – including Mujeres Unidas y Activas, Filipino Advocates for Justice, and Hand in Hand, a coalition of domestic worker employers – packed itself into the community center’s Audre Lorde room (forced by the drizzle outside) for skits, songs, testimonials from local domestic workers, and the warm, fuzzy feeling of female solidarity.

Among the guest speakers were several domestic worker employers, one of whom testified from her wheelchair that her success in life wouldn’t be possible without the help her domestic workers provide her in getting her ready for her days. “Without my attendants, I never would have been able to get my master’s degree.” A representative of the female clergy community read a letter about the significance of the campaign on the 100th anniversary of the holiday to promote women’s rights, on behalf of her colleagues that couldn’t attend (apparently they’re busy on Sunday). “Some think there are no battles to be won, but let us not be decieved. One arena where the struggle still exists in the US is that of the domestic workers, who work without many rights in the workplace.”

Cuz let’s be frank, there are definitely male domestic workers – I should know, in my younger days I worked on SEIU’s childcare and homecare worker campaign up in Oregon and there were lots of engaged, awesome men that worked in other peoples’ homes. But cooking, cleaning, and caring for the young, the old, and the differently-abled has traditionally been regarded as “women’s work” in our society – and as such, minimized and denigrated to the point where workers in these fields rarely receive the respect and compensation they deserve. Not to mention the fact that unlike most workers, domestic workers tend to only have a coworker or two, if any, at their worksite, making organizing campaigns like this one all the more difficult.

So it was nice to see that not only is California responding to New York’s cue, but that the charge is being led by women’s groups themselves. Go on, ladies. After Maria Luna, a member of Mujeres Activas y Unidas, gave a shout-out to the three generations of females in her family in the audience, she sang a song she’d composed for the occasion, sung to the tune of “Cielito Lindo.”

Ay yi yi yi, somos mujeres (Ay yi yi yi, we are women)

Mujeres haciendo cambios en nuestras vidas (Women making changes in our lives)

Somos mujeres (We are women)

California domestic workers expert tribunal

April 1 1:30-5 p.m., free

State Office Building

455 Golden Gate, SF

www.nationaldomesticworkeralliance.org

The invaluable legacy of Willard Wirtz

David Talbot

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April 28, 2010

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Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half –century.

Never has there been a greater champion of U.S. workers than former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, who died on April 24 at 98. Certainly in more than a half-century of covering labor, I’ve never met anyone more dedicated – or more effective – in winning and preserving vital protections for working people.

That was the lifelong task of Wirtz, who served as secretary under presidents Kennedy and Johnson from 1962 to 1969, a brilliant, charming Harvard Law School graduate who spent his life helping ordinary Americans, especially the poor.

Much can be said of Wirtz’ long and distinguished career in government and academia, and his work in government and private practice as a mediator and arbitrator who helped prevent or settle many strikes and resolve many other serious labor-management disputes.

Wirtz expanded the Labor Department’s job-training and education programs that were developed especially for the underemployed and undereducated and at-risk youth, increased unemployment assistance for those who lost jobs to foreign trade, created literacy programs for workers and sharply and publicly chastised construction unions for their bias against African-American workers.

Wirtz was also a leader in the passage of laws that prohibit discrimination against women and older workers in pay and otherwise. And he was one of the first to call for laws protecting workers with disabilities from discrimination.

Wirtz clearly was what current Labor Secretary Hilda Solis calls “President Johnson’s general in the war on poverty.”

Wirtz himself said of his time as secretary that “If there was a central unifying theme . . . It was in the insistence that wage earners – and those seeking that status – are people, human beings for whom ‘work,’ but not just ‘labor’ . . . constitutes one of the potential ultimate satisfactions.”

I particularly remember a trip Wirtz made to California in 1965 in response to grower requests for creation of an “emergency program” that would in effect restore the highly exploitative Bracero Program that for more than two decades had enabled growers to hire underpaid, overworked and generally mistreated poverty-stricken Mexicans.

The Braceros had to silently accept the rotten conditions or be sent back to Mexico to be replaced by other poverty-stricken Braceros. And domestic workers had to uncomplainingly accept the conditions or be replaced by Braceros – if they were even hired, Growers much preferred the necessarily compliant Mexicans.

Wirtz did his utmost to enlighten the general public about the abysmal conditions of those who harvest most of our fruits and vegetables. He took a whirlwind tour of California’s lush farmlands with a planeload of reporters in a battered DC3, popping up unannounced at farms to ask embarrassing questions and point to conditions that most newspaper readers and television viewers associated only with the dim past recorded by John Steinbeck in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Growers tried to limit his agenda to farms where they had hastily and improved conditions for a token number of workers. But Wirtz would not be denied.

By closely examining the true conditions of Mexican and domestic workers alike, Wirtz was hoping to show the rest of the country the need for major reforms that would promise decent pay and working conditions and deny growers their request for Mexican workers under an “emergency program.”

On the ground, he sped with a busload of reporters over dusty roads from one huge square patch of green and brown to another. We had a hard time keeping up with Wirtz, Neither his good humor nor his seemingly inexhaustible energy lessened as he put probing questions to men and women working in the fields.

At one stop in Southern California, for instance, he strode briskly down one long dirt row after another, a pipe gripped tightly in his teeth, shoes covered with dust, to greet workers as they stooped painfully, grasping the short-handled hoes used to weed and otherwise prepare the strawberry, sugar beet and lettuce crops for harvest.

“Wirtz is my name, good to see you” was a typical icebreaker – first voiced at 5:30 a.m. – only five hours after Wirtz had gone to bed.

At another stop, he walked away shuddering from the communal lavatory in the center of a circle of a ramshackle two- and three- room buildings overrun with barefoot children.

He greeted me, his face twisted in disgust.

“Did you see it?” he asked. “God!”

At yet another stop, Wirtz stood in the center of a field, surrounded by workers, looking out over tall rows of asparagus that covered the land in all directions.

“Where,” he asked the grower, “are the toilets?” The grower, genuinely incredulous that the question would even be asked, explained that “there are none.”

Elsewhere, Wirtz paid a surprise visit to a farm labor camp at breakfast time, finding conditions that “make me ashamed anything of this kind exists in this country. Looking at the food, I wonder how anyone can eat it!”

Wirtz returned from California determined to greatly limit, if not halt, the flow of Mexican workers that growers hired in lieu of improving conditions to attract domestic workers.

As Wirtz and others predicted, curtailing grower use of Mexican workers forced growers to improve conditions in order to attract more domestic workers. The improvements were generally short-lived, however, as growers turned to the masses of undocumented Mexicans for workers.

Yet thanks in large part to Willard Wirtz, the country had seen clearly the great need to improve the conditions of some of our most necessary but most exploited workers. That helped lay the groundwork for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and others who are continuing the struggle today for decent farm labor conditions.

That’s but a small part of the invaluable legacy of Willard Wirtz, who helped guarantee decent conditions to millions of working people in a wide variety of fields.

What’s not generally known is Wirtz’ role in desegregating the Labor Department staff. As former Labor Department Director of Information John Leslie notes, at the time that Wirtz became Labor Secretary in 1962, the only African Americans on the staff were messengers and drivers. Leslie recalls that “Bill decided to send a message by starting in the deep South . . .We went to Atlanta and called all the regional directors together . . . and immediately drew agitated opposition.

“Every excuse not to hire blacks in professional positions was given – history, local custom, no qualified Blacks, employee relations ” and more, including an assertion that “our female staff won’t go to the bathroom with Blacks “… Bill quietly answered, ‘Then they will be mighty uncomfortable by the end of the day.'”

Despite the objections of his regional directors, Wirtz prevailed. The Labor Department staffs were integrated, in the South and elsewhere.

We shouldn’t forget, either, Wirtz’ courageous stand against the Vietnam War, including the bombing of North Vietnam ordered by his boss, President Lyndon Johnson. That drew a demand from Johnson in 1968 that Wirtz resign. But two days later, Johnson relented, fearing that Wirtz’ resignation would embarrass him and hurt Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee. Wirtz stayed on, but didn’t mute his opposition to the war.

EVERY CRANNY AND CROOK

Among his other considerable talents, former Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz was one of the country’s foremost collectors of malaprops. His collection, naturally, was studded with gems from Washington, that font of bureaucratese and other language butchery.

Wirtz, for instance, told of a Labor Department official who insisted that “it’s just a matter of whose ox is being goosed.” And there was:

A newspaperman who ‘d “been keeping my ear to the grindstone.”

A bureaucrat who was certain that “we’ve got to do something to get a toe hold in the public eye.”

A politician who demanded that “we hitch up our trousers and throw down the gauntlets.”

A corporate official who wanted to know “if you’ve got any plans underfoot.”

Another official who warned that “if this keeps up, we’ll all go down the drain in a steamroller,” One official was concerned that “we’re being sold down the drain.”

But not to worry, said an optimistic official, “We can get this country out of the eight ball.”

“It may not work,” said a high union official, “but let’s take a flying gambit at it.” An Agriculture Department official insisted that “we have to deal with the whole gambit of this affair.”

And that wasn’t the half of it. Consider these gems, also uttered by labor and management leaders and, of course, bureaucrats:

“That kind of business gets my dandruff up.”

“When I smell a rat, I nip it in the bud.”

“That idea doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance in hell.”

“Let’s don’t go off the deep end of the reservation.”

“If we try this we’re likely to have a bear by the horns.”

“Somebody’s going to think there’s dirty work behind the crossroads.”

“Let’s grasp this nettle by the horns.”

“Somebody’s likely to rear up on his back.”

Wirtz himself was no slouch at malaprops. For example, there was his, “We’ve got to be careful about getting too many cooks in the soup.”

But few men, the secretary included, are likely to top the explanation of an unsuccessful candidate for the Maryland Legislature that Wirtz recalled.

“I think I deserved to win,” he told a gathering of his supporters after his defeat. “I went to every cranny and crook in this district.”

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his recent columns.

U.S. Census begins, officials work to quell fears

Sasha Cuttler

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March 15, 2010

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By Adrián Castañeda

Federal Census forms are being mailed out today, March 15. It’s a massive government effort to count everyone who lives in the United States that comes every 10 years, and it’s being matched by an equally strong effort by nonprofit groups to ensure that even marginalized residents get counted.

In a country that once counted slaves as 3/5 a person and did not count Native Americans at all, it appears that the 2010 census will come the closest to counting all people living in the U.S. Millions of dollars are being spent to inform people of the importance, and the function, of responding to the decennial census – and saving the feds from spending further millions on door-to-door enumerating.

Among other things, the population count is used to determine the apportionment of public funds to various communities and of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Despite all the immigrant-bashing by right-wingers who claim to revere the U.S. Constitution, that guiding document requires that all persons, not just citizens, be counted. It is for this reason that special care is being taken to include the historically undercounted communities such as low-income families, non-English speakers, and immigrants both undocumented and documented.

For Alex Darr, office manager of the San Francisco census office that covers all of the Mission and Bayview districts, the task is difficult but familiar. A veteran of the 2000 census, when some estimates say as many as 100,000 San Francsicans were not counted, Darr says the census has evolved in both form and execution.

What used to be a multi-page document with as many as 52 questions per person has now been whittled down to just 10. “Ten questions in ten minutes, we like to say around here,” says Darr. The questions are of the most basic sort, requesting the age, sex and race of every member of a household. It does not ask about citizenship. Even more reassuring to immigrants, 2010 is the first census that will be available en Español. Spanish language forms will be arriving in the Mission, but that and the laws that require participation may not be enough to encourage people to respond.

The U.S. Census Bureau is actively recruiting bilingual speakers to work in the Mission and educate residents of the importance of the census for things like social services and infrastructure. Employing residents of the area, Darr says, will reassure people that responding to the census is not a risk when census-takers begin knocking on doors in late May because, “it’s easier to hear this from your neighbor.”

A document released by the census bureau estimates that for each percentage point of the population that does not return its census form by the April 14^th deadline, the government will spend $80-90 million sending out census-takers to visit homes. Darr says that his office’s efforts will, “save [residents] some trouble, save the government some money as well.” San Francisco’s census-takers, with a starting salary of $22 per hour, will be among the highest paid in the country.

In addition to the boost in recruitment, Darr’s office has teamed up with a variety of community organizations to form the Mission Complete Count Committee and build on the existing relationships with residents. Rosario Anaya of the Mission Language and Vocational School (MLDS) says students at the center are being urged to pass on information about the census to their families and the building is being used as a training center for census workers. Anaya says the response has been good but there is hesitation. Some residents have told her, “We get counted but there’s no services coming back to us.”

Joel Aguiar of the SF Day Laborer program says his group trained day laborers and domestic workers to go out and engage their friends in discussion about the census. “When they think of the census, they’re not going to think of somebody knocking on their door,” Aguiar says of their program. Many of the workers are worried that by responding to the census, they would put their housing at risk by inadvertently revealing to the landlord or housing authorities how many live in their crowded homes.

But Aguiar says the laborers found that, “really a lot of their fears are unfounded.” Many of the community groups in the Mission will also be hosting Questionnaire Assistance Centers starting March 19^th, with multilingual staffs to help anyone who needs help filling out forms. Information on individual QAC sites and much more on the census will be printed in El Tecolote’s late March issue.

MLDS is one of several groups who participated in conjunction with the city and the SF Recreation and Parks Department in a community soccer tournament over the weekend at Garfield Park. The tournament featured both adult and children’s teams representing the various social justice groups as well as a team fielded by the census bureau. Aguiar says the soccer games strengthened the census education effort by “associating it with something which is already a community event.”

The Mission is also home to a number of single room occupancy hotels, or SROs, that are another community that was vastly undercounted by the last census. “Many SROs don’t have buzzers, have absent managers, or have managers who will not let us in,” says Kendra Froshman of the Mission SRO Collaborative. In response, the Mission SRO has joined a citywide coalition formed by the Community Housing Partnership to push for legislation that would change SRO visitor policies to allow census workers to enter.

The Mission is not the only area on Darr’s agenda. While citizenship is not a major issue in Bayview-Hunter’s Point, investigation into the low mail-back rate after the 2000 census found that many residents did not return their forms simply because they did not have a mailbox on their street. It remains unclear if mailbox distribution is one of the many things the government uses census data to calculate, but for the 2010 census, the Postal Service and the Housing Authority have set up various locations in the neighborhood where people can drop off their completed forms to be mailed.

“We are starting at a new beginning point for people to understand the importance of being counted,” Bayview Census representative Omar Khalif says of the outreach effort he has been working on since last July. Khalif attributes the low return rate to misinformation, saying many of the people in the area are hesitant to divulge personal information to the government despite being on government assistance and living in government housing.

As part of the effort, many different groups, such as the SF Housing Development Corporation, have come together to form the Bayview Complete Count Committee and host a series of community events such as a Gospel feast on March 28, giving residents a chance to win prizes for turning in their forms early. Flyers posted in community centers urge residents that being counted could mean thousands of government dollars in funding for their neighborhood. Working with all the established groups has given the census office better access to an often-disenfranchised community, Khalif says: “This is something that benefits us as a whole.”

The first census since the 9/11 attacks and the federal government crackdown that followed has many has many people understandably worried about giving too much personal information to the government. Census data is used by a variety of government agencies as well as private entities for everything from allocating federal funds to academic research and even advertising.

Many undocumented people fear that participating in the Census will tip off ICE agents. However, personal census information, including names, is strictly confidential even to other agencies within the government. “If the president asked me for your census form, I can say ‘No, you can’t get it,'” U.S. Census Bureau Director, Robert Groves recently told a crowd of immigrants in a Texas bordertown.

The long form of the 2000 census asked a variety of questions including employment, living expenses, and citizenship. These questions are now found on the American Community Survey (ACS), which is sent out every year to a small percentage of homes and gives the Department of Commerce more up to date and in depth data on how Americans live. Yet fears on both sides of the issue persist.

Some Latino advocacy groups such as the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders (CONLAMIC) have launched a campaign urging Latinos to boycott the census until Congress passes comprehensive immigration reform. “Before you count us you must legalize us,” proclaims the president and founder of CONLAMIC, Rev. Miguel Angel Rivera, on his website. Similarly, several conservative politicians have spoken out about counting non-citizens, as it will shift Congressional power and federal money to areas with high populations of immigrants.

Conservative U.S. Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minnesota) briefly called for a boycott of the census, saying on air that the survey is intrusive but does not ask the right questions. “This would be your perfect opportunity to find out how many illegal aliens are in [the] United States,” she suggested. She also cited the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II as a misuse of Census data. Census Bureau officials have stated that the USA Patriot Act does not override the explicit, legally mandated confidentiality of the census. Government assurances do little to quell public fears, but it is possible that the boots on the ground work done by census takers and their partners in the various community groups around the city will make the 23rd census a success.

Dick Meister: Slavery and Segregation

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June 4, 2009

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It was racism that in 1935 kept farm workers and domestics from being granted protection of U.S. labor law

By Dick Meister

(Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator.)

It’s been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization
– the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law’s protections – farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.