Posted on 02/19/2008 9:18:04 AM PST by XR7
Striding onto a Seattle-area work site with a white hard hat, Jimmy Matta converses in Spanish with Latino laborers who carry paintbrushes, power drills or spackling tools.
How much are you getting paid?
How many hours are you working?
Matta gives them his business card, promises his help and drives off to the next site.
A decade of organizing Latino construction workers is paying off for Matta, 32, who recently became the first Latino organizing director of the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters.
Born in Idaho to illegal migrant farmworkers, Matta spent much of his early childhood in the Central Washington cities of Quincy, Wenatchee and Ephrata and began working summers in the fields at age 10.
He is now among the union's senior leadership, responsible for organizing efforts in Western Washington, which accounts for nearly half of the union's 23,500 members in five states.
His promotion "is a big step forward for the carpenters and for the Latino population," said Chris Elwell, executive secretary of the Seattle-King County Building and Construction Trades Council.
At the same time, Matta and the carpenters union have been criticized for aggressively recruiting and going to the defense of nonunion Latino workers, many of them undocumented.
Sunday in Everett, Matta distributed checks to Latino drywall tapers as part of a class-action lawsuit over wages and overtime he helped bring about against a large Snohomish County drywall contractor.
Critics also have complained that the carpenters union goes beyond recruiting Latino carpentry workers to also solicit Latinos working as drywall tapers, painters and others who typically would be organized by other trade unions.
The carpenters union says its only aim is to help those whose illegal status leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and also those whom other unions have neglected...
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Of course. Mark Levin put it exactly, given their education, dependence on government programs like food stamps, who will they follow? those who promise free college and health care and tax increases on rich, or capital gains tax cuts? McCain and Bush’s plan for capturing this group of voters is similar to original plan for Iraq’s occupation 2003 , if there is a plan , we cant see it
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Didn’t you get that memo? Our betters at the country club have decided that with their presumed family values, even if the 1st generation goes democrat, their children or maybe their grandchildren will grow up to be fine, outstanding republican voters.
Wakeup Bush, McCain, Kemp : you don't create conservatives by government handouts, even if it’s moving them to middle class. You create a religious belief and loyalty to government, which is seen as Mommy.
They don't risk it. They are only required by law to ask a potential hire to provide "proof" of being "legal." Any illegal can pick up a phoney SS card, drivers license, even a birth certificate - so well duplicated as to fool law enforcement - for about $400. That's all an employer needs to see. They don't run checks to verify, and they never check citizenship status - and the law does not require that they do. Even police officers are forbidden in most jurisdictions from doing so during stops for traffic violations (Recall the recent stir when an Arizona sheriff proposed doing that?). So, how many well-paid illegal alien construction workers are out there? Who knows? The unions don't care and they are signing 'em up!
The big, expensive construction jobs.
You said it.
And, you're right.
PING
it’s not JUST the prevailing wage but also the fact that being in a union makes you harder to fire or cast aside if you get hurt.
The whole reason you hire an illegal is that they toss these guys aside if they get hurt because they know La Migra is one step away if need be. They also are a more compliant workforce (wish they were so docile away from their jobs sites) than any American force would be and again, a union changes that.
I share your sentiments here, although I’d still rather try the Thompson plan of attrition.
The Terry Anderson Show...
Tonight Terry will ask, “Are they going to do it to us?”
If you don’t know what “IT” is, then you aint been paying attention ...
Listen tonight to find out what Terry thinks about “it”
Call Terry LIVE 9-10 PM PST at (866) 870-57521
LIVE stream at http://krla870.townhall.com/
http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenliv
http://freerepublic.com/focus/news/2133259/posts?page=1
The Terry Anderson Show...
Call Terry LIVE 9-10 PM PST at (866) 870-57521
LIVE stream at http://krla870.townhall.com/
http://www.republicbroadcasting.org/index.php?cmd=listenliv
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