Life sciences industry sweeps low-paid workers under the rug

By | May 15, 2012 |

Report: Janitors’ low wages a blotch on biotech’s shining reputation

Janitors who clean the offices and laboratories of San Diego’s highly profitable biotech companies generally aren’t paid enough to live on, while their low wages are excluded from the industry’s claims of creating good jobs.

A new report from the Center on Policy Initiatives examined the pay scales and financial health of large local life sciences firms, including biotech and related companies. While the industry claims its salaries average more than $100,000 locally, that doesn’t count many essential support jobs that often are contracted out – such as janitors, security guards and food service workers.

Janitors at San Diego’s largest life sciences firm, Illumina, are paid an average of $8.84 an hour – $18,387 for a year of full-time work – while the company nets $125 million a year and CEO Jay T. Flately makes $9.9 million.

“These service workers are the invisible part of an industry that receives substantial public subsidy and is considered the best hope for our local economy,” said Corinne Wilson, lead author of the report. “The corporations are thriving and should be responsible employers for all the workers who make that success possible.”

The report, Swept under the Rug: Low Pay in San Diego’s Life Sciences Industry, also found that janitors’ wages in San Diego have consistently lagged behind the statewide average over the past decade, despite the region’s high cost of living.

One janitor profiled in the report, Martha Gómez, is paid $8.40 an hour after four years cleaning Illumina’s offices. She must work two jobs, leaving virtually no time with her 9- and 14-year-old daughters. Another janitor, Arturo Morales, makes $9.78 an hour after seven years at Gen-Probe, and has no health coverage for his wife Maria, who is deteriorating from the potentially fatal disease scleroderma.

Six San Diego janitors are starting a hunger strike today as part of a week-long demonstration of their need for higher wages and health coverage. They are hoping to gain an improved contract through the Service Employees International Union – United Service Workers West.

CPI recommends a Responsible Industry Code of Conduct for life sciences companies that would require service contactors to provide decent jobs with healthcare for local workers.

70% of San Diego voters favor fining banks for blighted foreclosures

By | May 9, 2012 |

Poll shows overwhelming support for proposed ordinance

San Diego voters – across the city and across the political spectrum – favor fining banks to cover cleanup costs for foreclosed properties that are not maintained.

In a poll conducted last month, 70% of voters who expect to vote in November said they support $1,000-a-day fines for banks that let foreclosed homes become rundown. The opinion research firm Grove Insight surveyed 600 voters in the city by telephone, and found only 14% opposed the idea.

“San Diegans are fed up with the blight in their neighborhoods, the hazards to their children and the damage to their property values,” said Clare Crawford, executive director of the Center on Policy Initiatives, which commissioned the poll. “And as taxpayers they’re footing the bill for police and fire calls, inspections, maintenance and other services the city must provide bank-owned homes.”

The Property Value Protection Ordinance, proposed by CPI and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), would require banks to register foreclosed properties and pay fines of $1,000 a day when they don’t maintain a home after complaints are received. The money would recover city costs.

The poll found more than 60% support the idea in every geographic region of the city, with 78% support among Democrats and 66% among Republicans and Independents. Overall, 70% of voters support the proposal, including 42% who “strongly” support it. Only 14% were opposed and 16% undecided.

“Foreclosure blight continues to be a serious problem in neighborhoods across our city,” said Councilmember David Alvarez, who is introducing the ordinance. “It’s time San Diego takes action, as many other cities have done, to recover the costs created by foreclosures and force banks to clean up their mess.”

Chula Vista and more than 70 other cities throughout California already have adopted similar ordinances.

ACCE member Rafael Bautista sent letters today to all candidates for San Diego Mayor and Council, asking them to take a stand on the issue publicly before the June 5 election.

CPI and ACCE issued a report last year that estimated foreclosures since 2008 have caused a combined home value loss of $19 billion for homeowners in the City of San Diego and cost taxpayers between $134 million and $855 million.

At today’s Land Use and Housing hearing, San Diego Councilmember Lorie Zapf, who chairs the Land Use and Housing Committee, announced that she has scheduled the first hearing of the proposed ordinance for July 11^th, at 2pm. The public is invited to attend this hearing to ensure that the ordinance continues to move forward. Please contact Norma Rodriguez, nrodriguez@onlinecpi.org, 619-584-5744 ext. 62 for any further questions.

Why San Diego must hold banks accountable for foreclosures

By | April 11, 2012 |

When a bank forecloses on a home and then doesn’t maintain the property, it can become a hazard to the community, a drag on property values in the neighborhood and a drain on city resources.

Norma Rodriguez, a CPI organizer, explained on KUSI TV today how blighted properties owned by banks are costing local governments in San Diego hundreds of millions of dollars for inspections, cleaning up broken glass and other hazards, police and fire calls.

Watch the video here

CPI, along with our partner ACCE, has proposed a Property Value Protection Ordinance to hold banks accountable for the properties they foreclose. It would create a registry and fine banks $1000 a day for every property they fail to maintain.

Click here for more information and to read our report on foreclosures in the City of San Diego.

Streamlining or steamrolling?

By Susan Duerksen | March 19, 2012 |

Under the guise of “streamlining,” Mayor Jerry Sanders is asking the San Diego City Council to steamroll community concerns and give him more power to make closed-door deals with contractors.

A vote is scheduled during the Council meeting that begins at 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 20.

The broad-based Community Budget Alliance, which includes CPI and more than 20 diverse community organizations in San Diego, objects that the change would allow the Mayor to award public works contracts of up to $30 million without any Council or public review, a substantial increase from the current limit of $1 million.

The Mayor’s proposal also would allow large contractors to choose subcontractors with no obligations to hire locally or pay wages that cover the cost of living in San Diego.

Read more in an op-ed published Friday by alliance members representing the League of Women Voters, NAACP and United African American Ministerial Action Council.

Please attend the Council meeting Tuesday afternoon or contact your Councilmember: Tell the Council to reject this deeply flawed proposal and develop a real streamlining plan that retains public control of our public works and benefits our neighborhoods rather than big contractors.

Issues: Accountable Government, City Services

Students for Economic Justice: Apply now for summer 2012

By Trinh Le | March 13, 2012 |

Students for Economic Justice (SEJ) is a CPI summer internship program that prepares future labor and community organizers and progressive leaders in San Diego.  Students participating in this intensive 8-week program receive organizing training, skills building, and in-the-field experience working on campaigns for economic and social justice.

SEJ is a paid internship for college students or recent graduates. Besides CPI staff, the trainers include various community and labor leaders from throughout San Diego.  SEJ alumni have gone on to become leaders in a broad range of community organizations and  unions in San Diego and beyond.

Applications are now available for the 2012 SEJ program, and are due on April 16. The program will take place June 18 through August 10.  For an application form, go to: SEJ 2012 Application.

Applicants should demonstrate a commitment to social and economic justice and to transferring the skills and knowledge gained through the internship to their local community or campus.

More information about the program is available at onlineCPI.org/about/sej.

SEJ 2012 Application Link

By Trinh Le | March 10, 2012 |

To submit your application, please save this word document to your hard drive and then fill it out. The link to the word document is below. Then email the document as an attachment, along with your essay answers, one letter of recommendation, and your resume to sej@onlinecpi.org.

Make banks clean up their mess: News coverage of foreclosure proposal

By Susan Duerksen | March 8, 2012 |

People whose neighborhoods have been left blighted by foreclosures joined with CPI and our ally ACCE yesterday to urge the San Diego City Council to consider our proposed ordinance to crack down on the banks.

Norma Rodriguez of CPI appeared on local TV news last night to explain the need and the solution. Watch her here and see an example in City Heights of the hazards created by abandoned foreclosures.

The Property Value Protection Ordinance would help clean up neighborhoods and recover taxpayer costs by fining banks $1000 a day when they fail to properly maintain a foreclosed property.

A report released last year by CPI and ACCE, Foreclosure: The Cost Communities Pay, found that besides lowering nearby property values, blighted properties cost local governments millions of dollars for maintenance, public safety calls, and other code enforcement.

Click here to contact the City Council’s Land Use and Housing committee and urge them to take up and approve this reasonable solution.

| Campaigns: Foreclosure | Research: Foreclosure: The Cost Communities Pay

The wealth gap and the Millionaires Tax

By Susan Duerksen | February 21, 2012 |

A UT story this morning on the Millionaires Tax proposal to fund California schools referred to “what some see as a wealth gap.”

That’s like saying “some see” the Grand Canyon as steep terrain.

The huge divide between the super-wealthy and the rest of us is a matter of arithmetic, not perception.

• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in December that the gap between the rich and the poor has hit its highest level in more than 30 years, and the US has the fourth-highest inequality level, after Chile, Mexico and Turkey.
• The top 1% wealthiest households now own almost 40% of our national wealth, while the median household income dropped by $10,000 over 25 years, the Economic Policy Institute reports.
• And in San Diego, Census data analyzed by CPI shows that the poverty rate rose to almost 15% in 2010, while the top 20% of households take almost half of all income in the region.

Those are hard facts.

The proposed Millionaires Tax is sensible and fair, and not just because of the injustice in the rampant wealth inequity.

People who earn more than $1,000,000 a year can easily afford to chip in a small fraction to preserve our schools. After all, they could not have achieved that wealth without an educated workforce – from attorneys and accountants to engineers and technicians. It’s time to pay it forward.

The Millionaires Tax would add a 3% tax only on income above the first $1 million, and an additional 2% on income over $2 million.

A coalition called Restoring California kicked off the signature drive last week to put the Millionaires Tax on the November ballot. It would restore up to $9 billion a year that has been cut from education, elder care, public safety and infrastructure.

To learn more and sign up to help, visit www.millionairestaxca.com.

CPI’s Corinne Wilson Shares Sobering Foreclosure Facts

By Xavier Leonard | February 21, 2012 |

Issues: City Services | Campaigns: Foreclosure |

Thank You & Happy New Year!

By Clare Crawford | January 2, 2012 |