by Bonnie Allen from "Sonoma County Gazette" [http://www.sonomacountygazette.com/cms/pages/sonoma-county-news-article-1507.html]:
To download the "The State of Working Sonoma 2013: Income Inequality, Poverty, and Low-Wage Employment", go to [www.livingwagesonoma.org]. For more information about the North Bay Organizing Project, see [www.northbayop.org]
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Good news: Unemployment in Sonoma County has declined to less than the national average, and far less than the rest of California. But how good is the news really?
For those who might not have thought economic inequality was a concern for Sonoma County, the April 27 People’s Equity Summit—sponsored by a coalition of nearly 20 labor, faith, environmental and community organizations under the umbrella of the North Bay Organizing Project (NBOP)—was an eye opener.
A report by East Bay researcher Ginny Brown based upon U.S. Census data from 2007 to 2010 found stagnant wages and increasing poverty, with real median income falling, deepening disparities along racial and gender lines, and a rising cost of living—especially health care—that is increasing burdens on working families in the county.
Most job growth occurred in the low-wage sector at the expense of middle-class jobs, resulting in an hourglass economy with high and low wage jobs and very little in between. Nearly 50 percent of new jobs are projected to pay less than $15 per hour.
Equitable and ‘Just Growth’ -
Chris Benner’s keynote speech, “Just Growth,” based on his book of the same name, pointed to other troubling trends nationwide: Increasingly, record growth in GDP parallels slow growth in jobs. Job growth has gotten slower with each recession since 1961. The economy has been restructured, and income inequality has grown.
In many ways, inequality drove our economic crisis, said Benner, an associate professor and researcher at the Center for Regional Change at UC Davis. But there’s a way out, he said. It centers on restoring that equality, or equity.
Benner and co-author Manuel Pastor spotlighted four communities around the country that defied the downward trends. Among them was Jacksonville, Florida. A historic site of brutal racial repression, Jacksonville has transformed itself. It did this, interestingly, by expanding its city limits to the entire county.
Thus, suburbanites, city dwellers and the rural poor were brought together to find common goals. Negotiating for a larger common good has increased equity among residents—and it’s been good for growth and prosperity in Jacksonville. Benner saw a lesson here: the more diverse the decision-making body, the greater the social equity and economic growth in those communities.
Benner noted that growing populations—and economies—tend to be diverse ones. So we’d better find solutions that incorporate that diversity.
Following the keynote speech, workshops addressed inequity in several areas, with organizers giving concrete examples of what works to bring about equity in the areas of transportation; workforce diversity; organizing around race, class and gender; the school-to-prison pipeline; and labor and immigrant rights.
Immigrant Rights and Comprehensive Immigration Reform -
Jesus Guzman came to the United States when he was a year old. He’s as American as, say, John McCain.
Yet Guzman is an undocumented immigrant. The 23-year-old student, program manager at the Graton Day Labor Center and chair of the NBOP immigrant rights task force, invited participants at the immigration rights workshop to write what they knew about their immigration history on a sheet of paper and tape the paper to an appropriate place on a time-line of immigration history. Those who preferred were invited to draw their story.
One hauntingly simple drawing showed a flag of El Salvador. It showed a stick figure with a gun in the process of shooting at another stick figure. It showed more stick figures lying on the ground, with their eyes exed out to show they were dead.
It’s easy to paint the undocumented with a broad brush, but many are hardworking young adults who came to the U.S. as children and have few ties to their country of birth. NBOP is working to give them a path to citizenship by lobbying for comprehensive immigration.
Their successes to protect immigrant rights at the local level include getting the police to recognize the Mexican Matricula card as valid ID in traffic stops, so that those carrying them would not have their vehicles impounded during a routine traffic stop because of having no driver’s license. The task force is also lobbying local elected officials to end law enforcement’s practice—not required by law—of holding undocumented lawbreakers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.
Labor Organizing in the Service Sector -
Immigrants, documented or not, struggle to make ends meet in the mostly service sector jobs available to them. Union membership has declined since its heyday in the 1950s. There’s a reason for this, said Wei-Ling Huber, president of Unite Here Local 2850, representing employees in restaurants, hotels, airports and the textile industry who are mainly immigrants, women, and people of color.
Manufacturing jobs became unionized during an era when a manufacturing job was the route to a middle-class income. Workers fought hard for this right.
But manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for decades. Service jobs—such as those in restaurants and hotels—once considered low paying and unskilled work— can become good jobs if the immigrant workforce is unionized. A living wage and good benefits for these jobs is crucial to rebuilding the middle class.
With the help of unions, Huber said, “we can create jobs that are similar in income to the old manufacturing industry.”
“One example is San Francisco hotels, where nearly every hotel is unionized. So we have a cook making $23 per hour, compared to a cook in Santa Rosa, who’s making about $10.” A barista makes $15 per hour and a housekeeper, $18.50. For each job, $2 per hour goes into pensions and benefits.
According to Marty Bennett, research and policy analyst for the union, hotel employees in strong union cities where most employees are in unions make an average total compensation of $3 per hour more than employees in weak union cities.
Union organizing in the service sector is hard, said Huber. Employees are easily intimidated. Some are undocumented and many immigrant workers have limited English skills. They can be fired without cause at any time.
Bennett said it was the union’s focus on training its members as organizers and building community-labor coalitions to support labor organizing that enabled Unite Here’s success, in Las Vegas and San Francisco, and close to home at the Petaluma Sheraton, Sonoma County’s first union hotel. “We are one of the unions that are growing, because of our emphasis on organizing.” Honoring its diverse makeup, the union also bargains for the rights of undocumented and immigrant workers.
Locally, the union has the wind at its back, thanks to an agreement that ensures a free and fair election process for union representation for 1,200 employees to be hired at their new Rohnert Park casino in October. With a living wage and comprehensive medical and retirement benefits, these tax-paying employees could add to Rohnert Park’s troubled tax base and could be a source of economic growth in Sonoma County.
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