By Nadin Abbott
April 7, 2013 (San Diego)—East County residents and Congressman Juan Vargas (D-51), whose district includes the border areas in East County, turned out yesterday in support of low wage workers staging a hunger strike at the Mission Valley Hilton. Vargas spoke with ECM on immigration reform and how it applies to this situation.
The workers want the right to organize a union and collectively bargain for a labor contract. Employees contend that management is using immigration status to selectively threaten union organizers—while at the same time outsourcing housekeepers’ work to undocumented workers paid more than long-time employees.
According to Alma Romero, a resident of El Cajon and one of the organizers of the hunger striker, “we started the campaign to unionize the hotel a year ago.”
One reason for this was that the hotel management was offering workers three days of work, while hiring outside contractor workers who were working full time. “They are giving them up to six days,” said Romero (photo, right).
That’s not because outside workers are cheaper. In fact, that’s not the case, Romero said. “Housekeeping staff from the agency make nine dollars an hour, and hotel employees make eight dollars an hour.”
None of the workers have any benefits, such as health care. Moreover, and why she decided to go on a five day hunger strike, the workers who come from the agency are undocumented workers, according to her.
The original company that this organizing campaign started with is HEI Hotels. But HEI sold out to Evolution Hospitality recently.
Regardless, another thing that has been happening is that hotel management,
I recently wrote a piece about why the standardized assessments that are being designed to align with the Common Core State Standards will not be as “game changing” as supporters, such as Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have promised. Here, an …
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Editor’s Note: Debra Dunn is on the faculty at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), where she spearheads classroom and project work in Design for Sustainable Abundance and the application of user-centred design to service learning.
From 2001-2003 as a Senior Executive at Hewlett Packard I chaired a working group of the UN Information and Communications Technology Task Force. Our goal was getting technology into the hands of underserved populations around the world to improve education, health care and economic development. NIIT’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Sugata Mitra had received international acclaim for his famous “hole-in-the-wall” experiment in the New Delhi slum of Kalkaji, fueling the belief that if kids had access to the internet they would essentially educate themselves. Technology companies, foundations and development agencies invested heavily in computers and
Bill proves school vouchers still have no traction in the House
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. This week, some state Republicans wanted the House to lap up private school vouchers, touted as a panacea by Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and Sen. Dan Patrick. But when it came time to vote, the house must not have been thirsty. Vouchers were shot down in a 103-43 vote.
The bill in question was a
budgetary amendment filed by Corpus Christi Democrat
Abel Herrero, that prohibits public money from being used for private schools. Although Herrero indicated on the floor that he believes the bill would apply to tax credits as well as vouchers, it is unclear if the bill itself supports his claims. The language seems to open a loophole, as long as the credits are not diverted from the
Texas Education Agency.
That loophole, though, must have been cold comfort to school choice cheerleaders who had made vouchers a legislative priority. Adding insult to injury, Herrero introduced the bill with a shrug. His
Frustrated by attempts to morph his limited school voucher program into a full-fledged platform for parental school choice, Gov. Bill Haslam pulled his proposal (Senate Bill 0196) on Wednesday, leaving proponents for the school choice movement contemplating — their options.
Haslam’s educational reform agenda has been a mixture of aggressive changes and experimental solutions, and Tennessee has seen progress with this approach, with student performance improving more rapidly than under previous administrations. For this year, the governor was pushing one of the experimental solutions, a school voucher program targeting families with children in failing schools. So, pulling this bill is a big blow to his legislative agenda, which reinforces how important it is to this governor to control the educational reform movement he has advocated.
Haslam proposed offering next fall as many as 5,000 vouchers to low
This is how we started an editorial in September:
“State Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine, asked the right question when he heard that three charter schools, two based in Miami and the other in Orlando, have applied to come to St. Johns County.
“‘Why fix or try to fix something that’s not broken,’ he asked. People in St. Johns County are ‘happy with their schools, they’re performing well and they do a good job.’
“He’s right, of course. The St. Johns County School District is the best in the state four years in a row for a reason. The schools are high performing and the educators are highly motivated and talented.
“And, most important, the students get a good education as they consistently show with their outstanding test scores.
“So, why would those downstate charter schools want to come here?
“The answer, we think, rests in a law that went into effect this year.
“That law, called the High-Performing Charter Schools law, gives special rights to charter
by Lillian Mongeau
LONG BEACH – When California school districts were required by state law to start a new early kindergarten class for some 4-year-olds for the first time this year, Long Beach Unified had an easier task than most: to simply expand the existing “preppy kindergarten” program it started five years ago. The Long Beach program, originally the brainchild of kindergarten teachers Kris Damon and Michelle...
