The State of Labor: A Conversation (xpost from California group)
May 22, 2015 (San Diego) Reporting San Diego sat down with Mickey Kasparian, the President of Local 135 of the United Food and Commercial Workers of America. We had a wide conversation ranging from the Chargers, to the Transpacific Partnership and the future of labor.
If the TPP passes “labor is going to be disappointed, certainly.” He added, that the problem is that Labor does not have a seat at the table. “You look back at NAFTA, a million jobs lost; 60,000 factories closed down and they screwed it up. And now they are saying, trust us. They are going to have conversations with large corporations but they are not going to have conversations with people who represent workers.”
He compared it to the Chargers Taskforce. In Carson they have a broad coalition, representing workers, faith leaders, community leaders and the teams of course. Here in San Diego all we have is a small group of corporate guys with good ties to City Hall.
Kasparian added, “we are very fearful that we could lose a lot of jobs.” Even in the best of scenarios. We might be taking of another million jobs. As far as the process itself, he added, that to those who say “trust the President,” you can trust people when the process is transparent. “Right now there is no transparency in the bargaining process.”
http://reportingsandiego.com/2015/05/22/the-state-of-labor-a-conversation/
Labor is growing, slowly.
h/t nadinbrzezinski 
