LETTERS
Labor, Privacy
According to his Web site, State Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana), is championing SB 1724, a bill designed to ensure confidentiality of tax records provided to lenders. Many of us would agree with Dunn’s assertion that our tax records should be confidential. However Dunn’s Web site does not tout the fact that another of his pending bills, SB 868, is intended to destroy the privacy of California’s merit shop (non-union) workers when they are assigned to public works projects.
Current state law prohibits the release of these worker’s names and Social Security numbers to the joint labor-management committees that peruse payroll records ostensibly to ascertain that employers are paying prevailing wages to workers engaged in public works. Dunn would like to change the law so that the workers’ names and addresses will be revealed to the union bosses who participate in the joint labor-management committees.
Why would Dunn take a position that is contradictory to his findings on confidentiality as expressed in SB 1274? Simply put, he, like most Democrats in our state Legislature, is beholden to labor unions.
Only 20% of today’s workforce is affiliated with labor unions. While prevailing wages (union scale) are mandatory for public works projects in California, union membership is not, unless a project labor agreement (PLA) is in place. Unions have often asserted that merit shop contractors do not apply prevailing wages correctly, even though many of the unions themselves have a spotty record in this regard.
If SB 868 becomes the law in California, likely scenarios that will develop include the specter of a knock on the door of a non-union household by a union recruiter who has been given the name and address of the construction worker who is trying to enjoy dinner with his family. Workers’ wives and families will be targeted by incessant phone calls from union organizers, and they might wake up in the morning to find pro-union bumper stickers slapped on their vehicles.
Dunn should be urged to stand for privacy all the time, not just when it is convenient to him.
Art Pedroza
(Pedroza represents the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction, in Orange County.)
Terror, Freedom
My family arrived in the U.S. in September 1976 after fleeing Tanzania, whose government identified my father as a pawn of the U.S. government. Nearly three decades later, we see similar circumstances within our own borders.
Today, people of Middle Eastern descent are being targeted as potential threats because they may be affiliated with sleeper cells of fundamentalist groups who would wish harm to our country. Unfortunately, because of race and religion, they and others who look like them are now targets of hate crimes and increased tensions within our population.
I was 5 when we fled Africa. My father was employed by the U.S. Consulate General in Dar es Salaam because he was fluent in both Swahili and English. His responsibilities were mainly dealing with customs. But Tanzanian authorities decided he was an agent acting on behalf of the U.S. Without any evidence or warning, they arrested him and put him in a detention camp, where he was ridiculed, beaten and tortured. My family struggled with the fact that he might not return, but after 14 months he was given amnesty and set free.
Things had changed, but our lives were still at risk. With the help of embassy personnel, we left our birthplace for the states, never looking back.
Did the Tanzanian government have the right to detain my father without any cause? Obviously, as a son, I would say no. But then I ask myself, if the Tanzanian government had any reason to suspect that he was conspiring against it, did national security justify its action?
Every nation has to do what it must to ensure that it is not being undermined. Government has to look beyond just the individual. Does it not have to be concerned with the general welfare?
The 1990s and the new millennium have shown us that we are not free of threats, foreign or domestic. The U.S. government is taking the necessary steps to protect our way of life, to keep us secure so that we may continue to prosper and achieve the American dream.
The principles of the Declaration of Independence still apply. We still have freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But these freedoms are being adjusted to mirror the world in which we live.
Pranesh Bhatt
Marketing Manager
Future Computing Solutions
Yorba Linda
