[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Tip of the Iceberg in California’s Local Governments Trying to Maintain Public Safety Spending With Federal, State, and Local Cuts

By Robert Cruickshank

After months of wrangling and negotiating the city of Vallejo has voted to declare bankruptcy. And to hear the local media tell it, like the San Francisco Chronicle, it is the fault of public workers, not poor political leadership:

“After about four hours of discussion and public comment from the standing-room-only crowd, the council voted 7-0 to approve Tanner's recommendation to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection as a means to reorganize its finances, which have been shattered by spiraling public employee salaries and the plummeting housing market....

“The city and its public safety unions have been at the bargaining table for about two years. The city is asking for its police and firefighters to take salary, benefit and staff cuts, while the unions say any further cuts would endanger public safety as well as the safety of the police and firefighters.

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

by Kevin Sharkey [courtesy of Blog for America]

Brevard Workers For Democracy

Resolution: 01-08

Subject: Ending sweat-shops and slavery in the fields

WHEREAS, there is an ongoing human rights crisis in Florida's fields, including:

1. poverty wages, rooted in an antiquated piece-rate pay system that hasn’t changed significantly in nearly 30 years;

2. long hours without overtime pay when work is available, unemployment and transience when it is not;

3. physical abuse and wage fraud by crew leaders, supervisors, and growers;

4. damage to body and soul from back-breaking labor, with no employment benefits such as sick days, paid leave, health insurance, or pensions;

5. retaliation against workers who protest or organize to alleviate these inhuman conditions;

6. and, most shamefully, modern-day slavery, with six successful federal prosecutions of farm labor operations for servitude in Florida over the past decade, and a seventh just initiated, involving well over 1,000 workers and more than a dozen farm employers;

(Click Read More for the rest of this post)