Archive for category diversity
California nurses call for investigation of alleged discriminatory hiring practices against Filipinos at SF’s St.Luke’s hospital
If you don’t think racism and discrimination still exists in our era of diversity, consider this: A de facto ban against hiring Filipino nurses at the St.Luke’s Campus of Sutter Health’s Calif. Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) appears to be policy in San Francisco.
No Filipinos, as blatant as that.
Just like the old sign that the Filipino National Historical Society displays, the one from the 1920s that reads, “Positively No Filipinos Allowed.”
You can take that sign and stick it on the door at St.Luke’s, right now, says the California Nurses Association, the nurses union.
And now it wants to do something about it.
At a press conference on Thursday, the union will call for the San Francisco Human Rights Commission to investigate the hospital. The union will also announce its intention to file a class action grievance against Sutter and CPMC.
The union provided compelling evidence which included signed statements by former managers and current job stats, that suggests Filipinos are being unfairly discriminated at the St. Luke’s campus.
From numbers provided by CPMC, the numbers are revealing. Before the take-over of the hospital in 2007 the Filipino RNs at St.Luke’s were 66 percent of the nursing population.
Between 2007 and 2008, just 48 percent of new hires were Filipino.
From Feb. 2008, when the nurses union and the community organized to stop the closure of St.Luke’s, to the present, the percentage of new RN hires who were Filipino dropped dramatically to just 10 percent.
They didn’t all just give up their RN credentials and take jobs as Wal-Mart greeters.
Nato Green, the labor representative who works at St.Luke’s said it’s no coincidence. “I believe this reflects Sutter’s decision to use race to divide workers and stop collective bargaining activity,” Green told me. “ Going from 66 percent to 10 percent (of new hires) is a fairly remarkable coincidence.”
It all comes after the union forced Sutter to keep St.Luke’s open. The nurses union expected some push back, but not this.
“CPMC and Sutter have chosen to retaliate by carrying out a punitive, illegal and immoral campaign of discrimination,” said Zenei Cortz, the California Nurses Association president. “There is no excuse for racial or ethnic discrimination. A hospital should be a center of therapeutic healing for patients, not a model for bigotry.”
The union also produced affidavits signed under penalty of perjury. Ronald Rivera, a former nurse manager, who worked there from April 2006 to April 2010 when he resigned on good terms, provided his testimony.
“One day I spoke with Diana Karner (VP of nursing) on the phone about hiring new RNs,” he attested. “Diana said to me that we probably should not hire any more foreign graduate nurses. She explained that patients complain because “it is hard to understand them and be understood by them.”
Another signed affidavit came from Ronald Villanueva, who actually was sitting in and overheard the conversation between Karner and Rivera. “I was shocked and I wondered if she knew I was a foreign graduate nurse,” he wrote.
A third declaration came from from Chris Hanks, who was the Director of Critical Care from 2008 to 2009 and reported directly to Karner. Hanks was alarmed when told point blank “you are not to hire any Filipino nurses.” Hanks challenged Karner at their weekly meetings, until he was Karner told him, “The Filipinos are always related , or know each other, and that’s not good. You’re not to hire them.”
Karner the VP of nursing didn’t return my telephone call.
Kevin McCormack, of CPMC’s media relations said she was out of the office and unavailable. What did he think of a ban on hiring Filipino nurses? “That would be illegal,” he said. “You can’t ban hiring specific groups.”
He called it “ridiculous” and implied it was a stunt by C N A to fan the ongoing labor dispute with CPMC.
“We have a long history of hiring Filipino nurses on all our campuses, including St.Luke’s, and we are still hiring them,” McCormack read from CPMC’s official statement. “We have many RNs at our St. Luke’s campus who are Filipino and know how extraordinary they are. To say we are imposing quotas on them is outrageous.”
It is outrageous, but the numbers don’t lie.
The Filipino nursing staff at St.Luke’s is shrinking and it is such a precipitous drop that it can’t just be by accident or happenstance.
Note from Emil Guillermo: Help,I’m a pioneer!
AAJA, the Asian American Journalists Association has figured out the best way to get back at me after all my years of being a bickering member.
It’s honoring me.
On Wed., Aug. 4, I’m being honored among 150 others as an Asian American pioneer in U.S. journalism. (Yes, Tritia Toyota and Connie Chung are on the list too. But so ae lots of others who were founders and original members of AAJA).
How’d that happen?
It’s just a citation for being old and one of the first Asian Americans to consider journalism instead of medicine, the law, restaurant ownership, or investment banking for a career.
At this point in time, I’d have to say, choosing journalism may not have been the best choice.
But it was my choice. And I’m gratified that someone noticed that I was the first Asian American male and first Filipino American to host a national news program when I was senior host of “All Things Considered” in 1989.
I hope that doesn’t become the headline in my obituary someday. It’s not over yet. (I can’t even withdraw from my IRA without a 10 percent penalty).
I’m still a pioneer who hasn’t quite reached the promised land.
A Sunday Fourth: Freedom as religion to all good patriots
I love it when the Fourth of July is on a Sunday. On a day that is considered by many a holy day, a Sunday Fourth makes it pretty clear to me what this day is about. It is a religious day, for what is America’s religion but freedom itself?
In America, of course, you can be part of some organized religion, whatever you choose, or not. You can believe in God, gods, or just in yourself.
“USA, USA, USA.”
But mostly we believe in your right to say, “No, thank you.”
You can even drop the “thank you,” and be as vigorous in your dissent, alone or all together, however you wish.
When you’re an American that’s what we understand to be true and what we fight to protect.
We have faith in this freedom. It’s called patriotism.
Patriotism isn’t a blind allegiance to folks in Washington, and the policies of the elected.
To be a patriot is to be one who knows that freedom is beyond debate. The Founding Fathers may be dead, but the founding principles are still alive.
A patriot is there to make sure it stays that way. Who are these “patriots”? They aren’t all from a particular gender, ethnicity, or income group. Nor are they the rabid folk who call conservative talk shows and waste good tea. Indeed, immigrants tend to be the best patriots, fighters and rebels to the core. Many are here because they believed and fought for the same things we believed in, only in their own homelands. Ask the Southeast Asian who fought with the U.S. in the Vietnam War. Ask a Filipino veteran of WWII. They are no less American than the descendents of the Mayflower.
And here we are all together this Sunday, celebrating our freedoms without question.
That’s what we Americans believe in, religiously.
Emil Guillermo on the California primary vote: Does anyone have time for democracy anymore? Plus: The GOP’s Twin Towers of Estrogen
We just had an election in California, and once again, in my humble polling place, we had more poll workers than voters.
If Justin Bieber were there, then we’d have a crowd. And then the state’s future would be dictated by the tastes of 12-year olds—which might be an improvement. They know what it’s like to live on an allowance.
Still, just 23.4 percent voted in San Francisco. Los Angeles County was lower yet at 19.6. Maybe if we could jump up those numbers by allowing voting while texting AND driving the state’s numbers would go up. Voting by IPhone? There’s got to be an app for that.
Who voted the most? Little Sierra County, northeast of Sacramento, population around 4,000, had a turnout of 73.3 percent! (I’m checking if a few goats weren’t allowed to cast ballots to pad those numbers).
I imagine there’s not much to do in Sierra County but wait for an election to have an excuse to get out of the house. Does that mean those of us in slightly less rural areas have too much to do to value democracy?
We show up when it counts, of course. Like for a general election when the presidency is at stake. But all politics is local, remember. This is the stuff that hits home. And not many showed up.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
The big lesson in California is that money is still everything in politics—if you have more than $30 million. That’s roughly what Steve Poizner spent on his campaign and he didn’t win one county. So let’s revise the adage. You need almost $100 million to be victorious like Meg Whitman, the GOP’s first female standard bearer to run for governor of the state. She along with Carly Fiorina, who won the GOPs senate race, are the party’s new public face: The twin towers of estrogen. You can talk about diversity if you’d like, but Democrats have had women, gays, lesbians, Asians, Latinos, blacks for years. Why praise the GOP for something it should have embraced a long time ago?
But here’s why you should be suspicious: Anytime you hear someone say they want to run “California like a business,” run away. Fast.
That’s not what we need in this state. Arnold’s already tried and look what he’s done.
After Tuesday, the state finds itself with two failed CEOs who have used their parachute money to enter politics (remember, they’d still be CEOs if they were really successful).They now want to do something useful with their lives besides make money. They think because they ran a business, they can run a government.
As Arnold found out, it’s trickier than it looks, mostly because government isn’t about dollars and sense nor bottom lines and profits. It’s still about people and services that make up a community.
A CEO of a major corporation, whose trick to raise revenue include off-shoring, laying off older workers, and generally trimming human beings to show profit, just doesn’t have the skill set for the kind of government that fosters community. But whose to stop the vanity of Whitman and Fiorina who have the money to put their business skills to the test. You want to be the guinea pig?
Tell me how smart it is to spend nearly $100 million for a 4-year job? Where’s the fiscal responsibility in that?
PUBLIC FINANCING and MCLEOD
The only way to get good people to run is to eliminate money as a factor. And unfortunately, Prop.15, which called for a public funding experiment failed.
Money is the reason why American Filipino Rod McLeod’s run for Superior Court judge in San Francisco was notable. Spending less than $2,000, he was trying to buck the trend in an office that should be above money. His opponents , however, spent about $100,000 each.
McLeod took the high road and finished third.
It counts. But what does it mean with just a 23% turnout?
Emil Guillermo on campaign finance: Rod McLeod’s run for SF judge a political experiment that tries to be above it all by spending practically nothing
Rod McLeod–an accomplished trial lawyer and partner at one of the world’s biggest firms–is running on Tuesday for a Superior Court judgeship in the City and County of San Francisco.
But he doesn’t want to be bought and sold like a common politician.
To McLeod, that would be unseemly.
A vote for him is a vote against the same old same old in politics where money trumps all. Isn’t that refreshing.
He felt that way when I first wrote about him. Now with days before the election he still feels confident he’s done the right thing.
“I want to put a stake in the idea you have to have money to run,” McLeod told me this week.
McLeod has been outspent in the campaign by about 100-1 so far. Compared to two of his opponents who have raised in excess of $100,000, McLeod has spent about $1,250 his own money in the race.
He’s decided to take zero campaign contributions in order to run as a truly objective and impartial individual, beholden to no one, especially those who might expect that donations come with strings attached.
“I don’t want to be the best judge money can buy,” said McLeod, a native San Franciscan and American Filipino, who went to Saint Ignatius High School, and earned his law degree at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law.
Personally, I’ve been good friends with McLeod for nearly 30 years, and I can say he never takes the easy way out. I’ve known him as a man of uncompromised principle who stands up for what he believes in—even if it could hurt him.
And it has.
At one time, McLeod was considered a rising star in local San Francisco politics after his appointment to a vacant spot on the city’s Board of Education in the ‘80s. Winning the seat outright in an open election should have been a cinch, except for his unwavering decision to keep his children in Catholic schools.
That glitch was enough to send McLeod back into the private sector to focus on his stellar legal career (he’s currently a partner at Jones and Day). Not exactly a hard fall. But definitely, it was the public’s loss. McLeod, who was in the Army for over a dozen years as a paratrooper, has always been ready to serve. But when I last saw him, the plan was for an early retirement.
So in a way, McLeod’s last minute decision to run for the position of retired Judge Wallace Douglas was a real surprise. It’s also a pay cut.
What wasn’t a surprise was McLeod’s campaign approach.
“Judges shouldn’t be for sale,” McLeod said.
San Francisco is different from other counties where races for judge can cost just a few thousand dollars.
McLeod questions his big bucks opponents? What do their thousands of dollars buy? A bit more than cardboard signs.
When politicians like Barack Obama fly in with their hand out to raise cash, donors give mightily because they believe money buys access and influence. Want to get your pet issues on the radar? Write a check, get an advocate.
What should be a donor’s expectation in a judges’ race? What equates to access to justice? We all should have access already. That’s equality, right?
But if someone gives more to a judge do you get more justice, better service? When you go before him, will the new judge quickly bang the gavel and say, “Not guilty”? (It may save in court time, but let’s hope the judge recuses himself before that happens).
Normally in hotly contested judgeship races, the victor need only promise to be tough on crime.
But Superior Court judges do civil as well as criminal cases. McLeod’s two main opponents (an assistant public defender, and an assistant D.A.), may not be as broadly experienced as McLeod, an accomplished civil litigator.
Ironically, McLeod’s experience as a downtown lawyer is hurting him. People don’t even see him as an Asian American candidate.
Race isn’t an issue here. But class is.
McLeod’s actually received backlash for being a successful trial attorney who’s running against some good, but limited, government bureaucrat lawyers. They can claim class as an issue, but they’re the ones outspending McLeod 100-fold.
When you t think of it, voting for judges in the first place is just a strange way for the public to pick a competent, fair and impartial judge. Campaign money here is really a waste.
Appointing judges on merit would make better sense. Elections tend to get away from merit, and focus on money.
If you live in San Francisco, this is a race that could send a message to other politicians brave enough to take a stand against money.
But with Meg Whitman spending millions, don’t expect change to come anytime soon. Not in big races, but maybe in the smaller district and regional races.
I asked McLeod would he spend the money if he followed conventional wisdom that believes spending money would mean victory?
“If you spent $200,000, you still wouldn’t have certainty,” McLeod said.’
Realistically, the micro-budgeted McLeod does has a chance in this race if he can finish in the top 2 and no one gets 50 percent of the vote—a real possibility for this judgeship.
And in a run-off? “I’d spend the same amount,” he said.
I wouldn’t expect any different from my old friend Rod, principled to the end.
That he can’t be bought and paid for makes him an appealing and refreshing choice as the best person for San Francisco’s Superior Court.
To Grads: The truth about journalism
Posted by Amok in blog, diversity, journalism, news on June 2nd, 2010
June is grad season, and globetrotting millionaire journalist Christiane Amanpour has graduated to the place for old journalists. No knock on Amanpour who left CNN and war zones to join Disney’s Sunday salon in D.C.
My quarrel with her is over what she said to the 2010 class at Harvard recently.
I’m not jealous of her. I spoke at Harvard’s Class Day in 1977 as class humorist. I told 3,000 mostly rich white people about being a Filipino at Harvard. I appeared as Marcos. It was a crack-up. For details, you’ll have to get my book “Amok.”
I don’t know if Amanpour channeled a dictator during her speech. In fact, I wouldn’t have known about it had she not used that new media technique known as Twitter, where she tweeted thusly: Delivered Harvard Class Day speech for seniors yesterday. Great honor for me! Urged them to pursue journalism, find passion and purpose. 6:08 AM May 27th
Twitter’s great isn’t it? But here I can respond in more than 140 characters.
I’m glad she’s honored. It was an honor for me. My first stand-up comedy routine. And then I went into journalism. Amanpour did the reverse. She spent years in the trenches covering wars and wearing Safari outfits, and then went to Harvard to deliver her biggest one-liner: She actually urged people to pursue journalism.
That’s a funny line. But easy for a multi-millionaire journalist to say.
The fact is many of the journalists I know are currently under or unemployed. Among them a few Pulitizer prize winners and a number of regional and local award winners who just can’t get a job because there aren’t any.
The journalism industry’s business model has disintegrated in the last five years, and the only way a news organization seems to stay in business is by cutting wages, people, and coverage.
It’s not pretty.
In Honolulu, the small paper bought the big paper making the city a one newspaper town with one too many staffs. Many of my old colleagues who have done nothing but journalism are now polishing up resumes to send where? The next newspaper that will go under?
In radio and TV, your best prospects of getting a job is not having done a hot story, but being hot and young (which means you have no kids, mortgage, nor a need for a high salary). Great. But it’s unlikely you’ll cover Watergate. Or even a City Hall scandal. Maybe you’ll get a murder. Is that your passion?
And if you’re a minority, the days when diversity was valued by the mainstream media are over. An industry loses compassion in survival mode.
You want the future of journalism? You’re seeing it. The niche market. Highly targeted audiences. Not the shotgun approach of the “mass media.” When was the last time your local mainstream paper even printed the word “Filipino” in the context of your life, your community? That’s why one of the outlets I write for, the Philippine News, the oldest Filipino newspaper in America, has real value.
Perhaps I’ve reacted to Amanpour more acutely because recently I gave a talk to 5th graders at the ACORN Woodland Academy in Oakland.
How can you tell 5th graders in the inner city with a straight face to go into a dying industry?
So I was honest. I told them you could make millions, or you can make ten cents a word. I told them they are already licensed to be journalists. The First Amendment (which they had just learned about) gives them that right.
Now the question is are you curious? Do you want to know–everything? And once you do know, are you burning to tell everyone the truth about it?
If so, you are cursed, but journalism will be both your blessing and reward.
That’s more honest than Amanpour’s message at Harvard.
(Oh, and I also told them to learn how to tweet).
Two Radicals: Times Square suspect Faisal Shahzad and Tea Party victor Rand Paul from Kentucky
While Rand Paul was marching to victory in Kentucky on Tuesday, Faisal Shahzad was arraigned in New York.
Much has been made about the story of Shahzad, mostly about his ineptitude as a terrorist.
His other story line is more common.
In these diverse times, Shahzad, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, was no different from many Americans and considered a normal suburbanite . But when the American dream slipped away due to foreclosure and money pressures, the radicalization of the “boy next door” began.
Darn it. If he were white, he could have joined the Tea Party.
But that group is so radical in a different way that a Shahzad wouldn’t have been welcome to pass out tea bags.
If there was a doubt about that, Rand Paul dispelled it this week.
Paul –a Tea Party devotee and as of this week, the newly minted Republican nominee from Kentucky to the Senate–showed his true colors when he made his victory speech for public office in a private country club.
Being elitist is one thing, but when you add his public denouncement of the Civil Rights Act, you have a true radical in public life in America.
It’s as radical a perspective from a different direction as the radical fundamentalism of Shahzad.
I won’t condemn Paul for having his views. That would be undemocratic. And our democracy allows for the freedom to have stupid opinions.
But I will condemn his vile beliefs as having no place in modern society.
To be a poltically-fundamentalist American is no less radical a belief to fear in a new diverse America.
Move over Rima Fakih: Miss USA doesn’t hold a candle to Mona Pasquil, American Filipino, and former acting Lieutenant Governor of California
Why is no one clamoring about Mona Pasquil, the highest ranking American Filipino ever in the most Filipino state in the U.S.?
Mona is making news as she steps down from her interim appointment as California’s Lieutenant Governor and helps with the transition.
Meanwhile the world is going gaga over Rima Fakih, the Arab American from Dearborn, Mich.,and newly crowned Miss USA, though who knows for how long.
Fakih’s propensity to strip in public may be too much for Donald Trump’s beauty contest. Once again photos have come up in post-mortem of a Trump contestants’ extra-curriculars. It’s a pattern to be expected among these types of gals, and now the Donald may strip Miss Fakih of her new tiara.
Instead, maybe he can put her on the next “Apprentice.” She’d be good for an episode on organizing a wet-T shirt contest.
I admit to being surprised at the reaction to Fakih’s victory. The Arab American community was filled with pride, as if to say “She’s a bimbo, but she’s our bimbo!”
My immediate reaction was, “Where are the Arab American feminists out there when we really need them?”
Fakih may seem like a liberated sort, shirking the burqa and showing off the goods. But is it progress shifting from one oppressor (the traditional Arab chauvinist) to the Western exploitation of Donald Trump?
False progress like fake boobs only go so far.
WE KNOW PAGEANTS
As you know, Filipinos are beauty pageant aficionados, and even taking Miss USA on its own terms, I was surprised by Fakih even being in the top 5.
Take the “Question” session. All the questions seemed to have a current events bent. Fakih was no great intellect here. No quoting from the Koran or anything like that. Her question was on whether birth control should be covered by health insurance.
Being the practical, western Arab American, what else could she say about birth control, the great enabler. She said, yes. It’s costly.
Winner, winner?
But there was Fakih (has a nice ring to it,no? ) standing next to the other finalists—4 blonde, toothy, leggy Amazons. It almost seemed like a set up for Trump.
Not to besmirch the integrity of the beauty contest, but my guess is that Trump saw the possibility of a media circus in having an Arab girl win. That’s like having a guy with a Turban win a NASCAR race. Woo-hoo, Allah! It’s just too surreal for a publicity-monger to pass up. At least for a while. As I said she may be stripped of her title by the time you read this for being too western for clothes.
REAL BEAUTY? MONA PASQUIL
As much as I was startled by Fakih, I was dazzled recently by Mona who was the key honoree at a special Asian American Heritage Month celebration in San Jose last week hosted by community leader Ben Menor.
I’ve known Mona and her parents for several years. As a political player, Mona’s no slouch, having served as political director for twice-elected Gov. Gray Davis, then as western political director for Bill Clinton. As chief of staff to former Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, the seas parted for Pasquil when Garamendi won a seat for Congress.
But would she run to keep her appointment? Mona told me she was asked, but she declined. “I would have had to raise the money in a short time,” she said, and with no campaign chest in the waiting, Mona did the prudent thing. She wouldn’t wage a one legged battle. She stepped aside, and let others, notably San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom step into the electoral picture.
But watch out for her. Mona assured me she will run when it’s right, and that time is coming soon.
Mona Pasquil. American Filipino. A political player. Now there’s a woman to celebrate during Asian American Heritage Month, or any other month.
-
-
You are currently browsing the archives for the diversity category.
Subscribe
