Posted on 11/11/2006 5:44:56 PM PST by doug from upland
WATCH ON YOUTUBE AND SEND EVERYWHERE...let's cause her some grief
FROM SCHWEIZER'S ARTICLE:
I have another section I like to call, “Workers of the World Unite Somewhere Else.” This is where we find Nancy Pelosi—Democrat leader in the House, the best friend of labor unions you can imagine. She says that labor unions are vital to negotiating good wages and working conditions. She won the Cesar Chavez award from the United Farmworkers Union in 2003. Remember that, the United Farmworkers Union. She is the top recipient of PAC contributions from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.
What’s interesting about that is, there were several strikes a few years ago in San Francisco, where she came down strongly on the side of the hotel employees and restaurant employees union and campaigned aggressively for them against other hotels. Of course she is the most reliable vote in Congress for organized labor.
What’s interesting about Nancy Pelosi is that she and her husband not only are very influential in the Democrat Party, they’re very wealthy. With Nancy Pelosi, her commitment to organized labor essentially ends when it comes to her own businesses. Nancy Pelosi and her husband own a Napa Valley vineyard that’s worth about $25 million. They grow very expensive grapes for very expensive wines, and they don’t use members of the United Farm Workers to pick their grapes. This winner of the Cesar Chavez award hires only hire non-union contractors.
There are plenty of union contractors in Napa Valley and there are other wineries that use them, its’ just that the Pelosis don’t have happen to among them. They also sell their grapes to non-union wineries. They recently held investments in two other wine businesses that were also strictly non-union.
But it gets even worse than that. Nancy Pelosi and her husband also own a chain of restaurants and a hotel in Napa Valley, California. Despite her public commitment to the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union, you better not join that union and work for the Pelosis, because you will end up getting fired. For example, they are partners in a hotel with 250 employees, which is strictly non-union. They are among the very few owners of Piati, a chain of Italian restaurants with 900 employees. Again, if you try to join the union when you work for the Pelosis in their restaurant, you will be fired.
One other issue for Nancy Pelosi. I hate to pick on her, but it’s just so inviting. As they say in the military, it’s a target-rich environment. With Nancy Pelosi, another big issue is the environment. She always makes statements that, with us, the environment is not an issue, it’s an ethic, it’s a value. Which is a nice way of saying, “I love the environment, but not when it comes to our own businesses.” A lot of people don’t realize that, in 1996, Nancy Pelosi and her husband and fewer than 10 other partners wanted to build a golf course and country club outside of San Jose, California, called the CordeValle Country Club. In order to get approval to build on these 275 acres, they had to comply with some very stringent county environmental regulations. Now the California tiger salamander and the Western pond turtle are apparently endangered species and they’re very, very common on these 275 acres that the Pelosis wanted to develop.
So the agreement they struck with local regulators was, we’ll build the golf course, we’ll set up some holding ponds and we’ll create a natural habitat to make sure that these environmental endangered species survive.
Of course, they built the golf course. It opened in 2000. If you want to join, the membership is $250,000. But they never followed the environmental regulations. The ponds were never built for these endangered species. For seven years, they also failed to file any of the environmental reports required by the California Fish and Wildlife Commission. A 2004 County Environmental Compliance Report found all kinds of environmental problems on the Pelosis’ golf course.
Remember with Nancy Pelosi, her commitment to the environment is not just an issue, it’s an ethic and a value. What does that actually mean in practical terms? Did they turn around and build this habitat and comply? No, they solved the problem the old-fashioned way: they hired lobbyists and they got the environmental regulations changed. So if you go to the CordeValle Country Club today and play golf, it’s a wonderful course, but there will be no holding ponds. There will be no endangered species and the Pelosis seem to be quite happy with that.
Yep. We definitely need to know about that one.
She sells the grapes to many wineries that don't use union labor. San Fran Nan has plans to build a winery on her property.
I don't want to drink her swill, whatever label is used.
.
Long but very, very good article -- http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=46070&start=0
FROM THE ARTICLE ---
DAYS OF WINE AND RAISINS
An Associated Press (AP) report found that “Despite agriculture’s more relaxed labor standards, it was on farms that the AP most often found illegal child labor, including the most extreme cases: the youngest workers toiling the longest hours for the least pay,” according to AP’s David Foster and Farrell Kramer. “Reporters saw 104 children working illegally in agriculture in the last five months....and underage children’s grape-cutting knives flashed in the sunny vineyards of California,” they added.
While AP found countrywide incidences of forged documents, paycheck fraud, and outright lying to federal investigators regarding child labor, there is as yet no information as to whether Pelosi’s vineyards employ either illegal immigrants or child labor.
However, according to AP and other media, numerous examples of illegal child labor and illegal immigrant labor clearly exist in the California wine and raisin industries which contribute to Pelosi’s congressional campaigns. And much of the problem rests with open borders and the congresswoman’s soft and compliant advocacy for lawbreaking illegals.
We were able to contact a knowledgeable source who lives in the wine country of California’s Napa Valley. Our source talked to another individual who knows the manager handling a number of the local vineyards -- including those owned jointly by Nancy Pelosi and her husband.
The source told us that “this farm manager is notorious for telling people who apply for work that he will pay them ‘so much per hour’ which is competitive with other vineyards; but two weeks later when they get their checks, the amount received is far less that what was verbally negotiated -- but never below the minimum wage. Disgruntled, they just quit and he hires more.”
The Napa Valley source also said that “the grape pickers who quit have recounted their experiences with this manager to others who have hired them and paid appropriate and higher level wages,” further corroborating the information.
According to the source, however, it was not established whether the owners, the farm manager, or both benefited from cheap labor maneuverings surrounding the vineyard properties; moreover, in fairness, we were told that this manager does quality work for the Pelosis, so laborers may have come to him because of his reputation, without knowing that “he pays below the industry average wage.” But financial shenanigans exist, we were told.
According to our Napa Valley source, more often than not, however, when it comes to harvest season, Napa county finds itself with many entry level harvest laborers fresh from Mexico, who lack knowledge of the habits of some less principled farm managers.
Knowledgeable about Napa’s wine country machinations, our source told us “It sounds like the Pelosis to be running with who they run with,” adding that “those who own and operate their own farm properties appreciate their laborers and pay them well.”
“Those who own vineyards because it’s a ‘thing to do’ and are clueless about farming perpetuate this labor exploitation problem that otherwise wouldn’t exist. True farmers are land stewards and protectors of their work-hands,” the Napa Valley resident told us.
FROM THE ARTICLE:
More curiously however, our California wine country source revealed that “the AVERAGE cabernet price, however, is only $1,850 per ton x 4.5 acres x 9 acres = $75,000 total gross income for the Pelosi grapes from average quality fruit. So as you can see, the congresswoman may have some explaining to do about who buys their grapes and why they may be getting such an extraordinary price for them.”
Pelosi owns stock in the Chalone Wine Group
Chalone Wine Group --- http://www.winebusiness.com/specialsection/Top30Wineries.cfm?winery=21
The vineyard is on Zinfandel Lane. Let's get the exact location.
Loraine Stewart, a farmworker advocate with Napa Valley Community Housing, in a 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article estimated that half of the migrant labor force in the valley consisted of undocumented workers, without whom “not one bottle of wine would get made here.”
Napa Valley Community Housing -- http://www.nvch.org/
ERROR: It is St. Helena, not St. Martin.
Did you see H&C tonight? Melanie Morgan exposed Nancy Pelosi's use of illegal aliens for labor in her vineyard.
THANK YOU! Details???
Is there a thread for this yet? Give me details and I'll post one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.