.: Enlace :: Enlace’s Year End Report 2006 :.

Enlace Year End Report for 2006

Enlace is a bi-national collaboration of low-wage worker organizations that are engaged in base-building through campaigns for economic justice. Enlace and its affiliate organizations seek to change the balance of power between the rich and the working poor by building a strong, vital and creative social and economic justice movement. We assist groups in building and stabilizing staff and leadership to continually advance and grow as an organization by providing technical support for organizing campaigns and organizational restructuring, training and practice in strategic planning and leadership skills, and recruitment and connections to allies around the world who participate in supporting our members’ campaigns. We aim to strengthen organizations so that they can do the long-term work necessary to build the movement for social and economic justice.

Since 1998, working with our affiliates on their campaigns and at our convenings and workshops, Enlace has developed a system of organizing that has begun to answer the question: How can a local community organization succeed in a campaign confronting a powerful entity? We have devised a method a grassroots organization can use to plan and carry out a campaign that finds a powerful institution’s vulnerable points and exploits those points so successfully that it is drawn to the bargaining table with a desire to settle. We call this system the Integrated Organizing Approach (IOA). It combines internal capacity building techniques with strategic campaign development and international mobilization to cultivate unique and effective campaigns.

Campaigns:
Currently we are using the IOA in two campaigns.

Workplace Project—Immigrant Inclusion Project, Long Island
We continue planning and conducting research for the campaign with the Workplace Project to shift the public and political will on Long Island to support the civic inclusion of immigrants. Workplace Project has begun identifying and giving presentations to recruit key allies, while Enlace is researching key players in the area. We are finalizing a power point presentation and have created fact sheets to accompany the presentation. The fact sheets cover Mexico’s economic crisis in the 1990s, how that was caused by the collusion of multinational financial corporations and Republican Congressmen, and how it led to the mass migration of Mexicans to the U.S. The presentation kits can be used to show commonalities between immigrant and non-immigrant communities and to begin to overcome the divisions between these groups.

The Workplace Project is preparing to contact media to share our research and to present pro-immigrant, anti-H.R. 4437 resolutions at the local level in various towns in Long Island.

If you are interested in obtaining one of these Presentation Kits, they are available for $50 at http://www.enlaceintl.org.

SINTTIM—Maquila Industry, Baja California Sur
Central to the plans of CISSLABORAL A.C., a workers’ resource center, and SINTTIM, an independent union, is support for workers in the seafood processing industry. The goal is to win respect for human and workers rights, principally for the workers who process squid, a natural resource that provides employment to more than 4,000 people just in the area of Santa Rosalía.
SINTTIM has filed a lawsuit on behalf of 92 workers who were fired unjustly at a squid processing plant owned by multinational corporation Han Jin México. We are continuing to work with SINTTIM on its campaign to organize the seafood processing industry by providing research support, training, and ally recruitment. Thank you to Peter Olney and Amy Willis from the ILWU Organizing Department; Jeff Fiedler from Research Associates of America; and Danny Park and the staff at KIWA for assisting with research for this campaign.

2007 Speaking Tour
Enlace along with SINTTIM is planning a speaking tour for the spring of 2007. The tour will go from Los Angeles up the coast to Portland and then fly to Massachusetts. We hope to be able to bring a maquila worker from Han Jin to speak on her experience in the seafood processing industry. If she cannot obtain a visa to come to the U.S., then a leader of SINTTIM will speak. If you would like to host one of these events, please write to us at

Trainings:
A vital part of the IOA is the internal capacity-building that we advance through our training programs.

Coach Program:
Enlace Photo
This year we met our goal of holding 3 trainings for the coach program. Our coach program, which is geared towards Enlace member groups, trains a member of an organization’s staff or a community leader to be an internal resource for the organization’s leadership, in terms of planning, strategy development, and evaluation. The trainings were in Portland in March and in Los Angeles in August and November. Participants came from Enlace member organizations Instituto De Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA, Los Angeles), Independent Union of Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SINTTIM, Baja California Sur), Young Workers United (San Francisco), Pilipino Workers Center (PWC, LA), Garment Worker Center (LA), Workplace Project (Long Island, NY), SEIU Local 1877 (California), and Service, Development, and Peace (SEDEPAC, Coahuila, Mexico). Long-time coach Lorene Scheer (formerly with the Teamsters, now with SEIU Local 503 in Portland) also participated in the summer session.

During each training session, we share some of Enlace’s unique step-by-step processes called frameworks. This year’s program covered Proactive Planning, Four Sages (a process for dealing with a crisis, an unanticipated barrier to a group’s strategy, or a lack of focus), the Organizing Cycle (a detailed process to plan an event or an action), and Plan Improvement.

The sessions also provided time for the coaches to get to know each other and to develop stronger relationships with each other—this is central to the network within Enlace. Mirna Verdugo from SINTTIM and Jacinto Lopez (Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance—KIWA) both spoke about the history and the campaigns of their respective organizations.

The next training will take place in San Francisco March 9-11, 2007.

Supervisors and Leadership Training Series
This year we held our new two-part Supervisors and Leadership Training Series twice, in Los Angeles and in New York. We also held Part I of this series in Portland and will finish the series January 18-19 (it’s not too late to sign up! Go to: http://www.enlaceintl.org/wa/enlace/ei/1228/)

Part I of this series covers techniques for improving supervisory skills including: holding effective one-on-one meetings with supervisees, facilitating useful team meetings, and managing conflict among staff. Part II of this series trains participants in proactive planning and evaluation of an event, a program, or the organization as a whole.

Organizations that sent leaders to these trainings include Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (LA), IDEPSCA, UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health program, Multi-ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON, LA), KIWA, June Jordan School for Equity/Small Schools for Equity (SF), Day Laborer Program of La Raza Centro Legal (SF), SEIU Local 1877, SEIU Local 49 (Portland), Domestic Workers United (NY), Western North Carolina Workers Center, the Women’s & Children’s Shelter of the Salvation Army (Portland), and the Portland Schools Uniting Neighborhoods Program.

Stored Value Card Project
As part of our goal to strengthen the worker center movement, Enlace has joined the Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the Center for Community Change (CCC), and Community Financial Resources (CFR) in a national collaboration to develop a pilot project with six worker centers to provide financial services needed by people who are excluded from holding bank accounts. Joann Lo, Enlace co-director, is the lead staff person on the project. The Workplace Project (Long Island), an Enlace member organization, is participating in the project. Enlace members the Pilipino Workers Center and el Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) are participating through other national partners.

In January, as a follow-up to a survey of 60 workers, Enlace staff assisted Workplace Project and other project partners in conducting a focus group with 12 workers in Long Island. A majority of the workers said they would purchase the prepaid debit card and use it especially to send remittances to their families and to buy necessities in stores.

Since then, Joann has supported the Workplace Project (WP) in developing plans to build its membership using the stored value card and preparing the organization to begin using the card in December. In September Joann assisted CCC and CFR in providing a training for key WP staff and member leaders on how the card works, how to explain its features, how to open new card accounts, and ideas to market the card. In October Joann trained and gave an orientation to WP’s new half-time staff person hired to work on the project, and she will provide ongoing support for this staff person. Core members of WP have now signed up for the card. These members will act as a test group for one month, after which WP will begin a wider distribution of the card with the assistance of these members.

Member Support:
This year Enlace provided support in terms of training and advice to the following members’ campaigns.

SEDEPAC—Hanesbrands/Sara Lee, Coahuila
The company Hanesbrands Inc. (formerly Sara Lee) announced back in September that it would close its factory in Monclova, Coahuila, leaving more than 1,700 workers without employment. This was a very hard blow for SEDEPAC and the workers. First the company lowered the salary of workers at the same time that it demanded an increase in production from 114 dozen per hour to 144 dozen. Now it has officially closed the plant. Hanesbrands has been slowly laying people off since September, and the last group of 250 was laid off on December 14, 2006. Hanesbrands has said that it will move this production to Central America to save costs.

Mexican law requires that a company that closes must pay a severance pay to its employees. SEDEPAC is assisting the workers to fight for their severance pay based on the higher salary they were paid before Hanesbrands lowered their pay while requiring higher production levels. Twelve workers previously fired have a lawsuit against the company, and as a precautionary step so that Hanesbrands doesn’t cut and run, workers filed a petition for an injunction. The court granted it, so now Hanesbrands cannot sell the factory, the equipment within, and the land they sit on until the severance pay issue is resolved.

SITESABES—Independent Teachers’ Union, Guanajuato
As many of you know, last year Enlace supported the independent union SITESABES in its efforts to organize teachers in the state of Guanajuato. These teachers work for a state program called SABES. Due to international pressure, SITESABES won the right to the first-ever secret ballot union election in Mexico, and now all union elections in Guanajuato are held by secret ballot. The election was held in May 2005.

Due to the government maneuvers against the union, SITESABES did not win a majority of the votes in the election; the “company” union won a majority. Under Mexican law, while the “company” union won the right to negotiate the contract with the employer, SITESABES has the right to enforce the union contract and represent workers in grievances and other workplace issues. SITESABES also continued to organize the workers to ensure a good contract.

In January of 2006, Mary Mendez, Enlace’s Mexico program coordinator, went to Guanajuato and facilitated an evaluation and planning session for SITESABES leaders. Mary was also able to provide mentoring for Veronica Raigosa, a key leader of SITESABES, who attended the Enlace coaches training in Portland in July 2005.

Since then, SITESABES has won 5 cases out of 27 filed by union leaders fired for organizing. The 5 leaders, including Veronica, will receive a payment between US$50,000 and 60,000 as well as regain their employment. Due to international pressure from many of you, from Enlace, and from other allies on the local labor board to fulfill its duties, SITESABES is confident that the other 22 workers will also win their claims.

Due to SITESABES’ organizing efforts and its pressure on the “company” union during contract negotiations, the teachers now have more benefits, such as the right to an honorarium to pay for trainings and a bonus for punctuality. Previously the government would hire the teachers for 6-month contracts so that they would not have any seniority rights and would not receive certain benefits required by law. SITESABES has been able to get rid of this practice, and the teachers now have seniority rights and vacation days. These are great improvements in a short period of time, considering that SITESABES is not the legal representative of the workers in contract negotiations.

The SITESABES members continue organizing their co-workers with the hope of filing for a new union election so that SITESABES will have the right to negotiate the collective bargaining agreement.

Consultant Work
This year we have taken on more work as consultants to share Enlace’s experience and the frameworks that we have developed over the past 9 years. Early in the year we provided strategy development training for ILWU staff and rank and file leaders engaged in the struggle to win justice for Blue Diamond almond workers in Sacramento, and also for the Teamsters Puget Sound garbage workers team in their successful campaign for affordable health care. Our contract with SEIU’s Institute for Change finished this summer. Our co-director Peter Cervantes-Gautschi has been working with member SEIU Local 1877 to assist the leadership with planning and facilitation. In August Small Schools for Equity, a non-profit organization that works with the June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco, contracted us to provide a two-day supervisors training. This summer we were also contracted by the UC Berkeley Labor Center to train and supervise garment workers to survey 200 workers about any changes in their working conditions, their family, and their community since the elimination of textile quotas on imports to the U.S. on January 1, 2005. The surveys were finished by mid-August. The Berkeley Labor Center received funding to conduct these surveys in China and Los Angeles and is still seeking funds to do the same in El Salvador.

Staff Changes:
Earlier in the spring, in order to better position Enlace to address how our work has evolved and grown, particularly for campaigns and fundraising, we opened a new office in Los Angeles. Enlace coordinator Joann Lo became co-director of Enlace. She assumes supervision of Enlace’ fundraising efforts and continues her work in the trainings, the stored value card project, and the Workplace Project campaign. Peter Cervantes-Gautschi is the co-director based in Portland in charge of Enlace’s methodology and research as well as working on trainings and the SINTTIM campaign.

In September new Enlace staff member Melissa Khamvongsa started. Melissa took over for Emily Weisbard, who left in July, as our administrative/communications coordinator and works part-time in our Los Angeles office. Melissa’s family immigrated to Los Angeles from Guadalajara, Jalisco in the early seventies and she graduated this past May from Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) with a double degree in Spanish and Chicana/o Studies. Melissa was a student leader in the struggle to assist the university’s subcontracted janitors in organizing to become university employees with better pay and full benefits, including free tuition for the university for their children.

Special Thanks:
We would like to give thanks to all those who have generously donated to Enlace! Whether you gave $5 or $1000, your support has allowed us to continue forward in our work.

Enlace would like to give special thanks to all of the co-hosts of very successful fundraiser house parties in Portland, Los Angeles, and New York: Danny Park of KIWA (also an Enlace board member), Victor Narro, Lizette Hernández, Abel Valenzuela, Kate Pfordresher, Edna Iriarte, Tony Perlstein, and Lorene Scheer.

Thank you to the following coaches and member leaders who sold raffle tickets: Evelyn Urrutia (Tenants and Workers Support Committee), Lupe Hernandez (formerly of the Garment Worker Center), Marisol Rivera (SEIU Local 1877), Veronica Carrizales, and Vy Nguyen (KIWA). We also thank Jeri Williams, president of the board of Communities United for People (our fiscal agent), for selling raffle tickets.

Special thanks also to our major donors ($500 or more): Harriet Denison, Lois Kern, Laborers International Local 300, Wan-Chen Lo, John Mayer, Roger Miller, Alan Rabinowitz, Research Associates of America, SEIU Local 503 (Portland), and SEIU UHW (California)!

Enlace would also like to give special thanks to our summer interns Kenia Rivera (UCLA), Eden Essicke (Whitman College), and Isabel Cervantes Gautschi (Bard College).

A big thanks to SEIU Local 1877 for much in-kind support!

Last, but not least, thank you to our funders: Common Counsel’s Grassroots Exchange Fund, Liberty Hill Foundation, Lawson Valentine Foundation, Lenore Barry Fund, Needmor Foundation, New World Foundation, Norman Foundation, and Ralph Smith Foundation.


Español \| Newsletter \| Calendar \| e-Action Alerts \| Links \| Donate
About Us : Sobre Nosotros Reports : Reportes History : Historia Coaches : Consejeros Members : Miembros Board : Mesa Directiva Staff : Personal Donate Trainings : Entrenamientos Testimonials : Testimonios Current Trainings : Entrenamientos Actuales Individualized Series : Serie Individualizada Coaches : Consejeros Supervisors : Supervisores News : Noticias Campaigns : Luchas Action Alerts : Alertas de Acción Seafood Workers Justice : Justicia para Trabajadores de Mariscos Previous Campaigns : Luchas Anterioras Sara Lee SABES SERPAPROSA - Brink's Pung Kook Convention : Convención Music : Música Credits : Créditos Inspiration : Inspiración Orders : Pedidos Press : Prensa Songs : Canciones Publications : Publicaciones Events : Eventos Contact : Contacto Home : Principal Enlace 320 SW Stark #427 Portland, OR 97204 Ph (503) 295-6466 1247 W. 7th Street Los Angeles, CA 90017 Ph (213) 673-2224 Fax (213) 624-7280 Support Enlace and buy great apparel NOT made in sweatshops! A portion of your sales goes directly to Enlace.	Enlace’s Year End Report 2006 Enlace Year End Report for 2006 Enlace is a bi-national collaboration of low-wage worker organizations that are engaged in base-building through campaigns for economic justice. Enlace and its affiliate organizations seek to change the balance of power between the rich and the working poor by building a strong, vital and creative social and economic justice movement. We assist groups in building and stabilizing staff and leadership to continually advance and grow as an organization by providing technical support for organizing campaigns and organizational restructuring, training and practice in strategic planning and leadership skills, and recruitment and connections to allies around the world who participate in supporting our members’ campaigns. We aim to strengthen organizations so that they can do the long-term work necessary to build the movement for social and economic justice. Since 1998, working with our affiliates on their campaigns and at our convenings and workshops, Enlace has developed a system of organizing that has begun to answer the question: How can a local community organization succeed in a campaign confronting a powerful entity? We have devised a method a grassroots organization can use to plan and carry out a campaign that finds a powerful institution’s vulnerable points and exploits those points so successfully that it is drawn to the bargaining table with a desire to settle. We call this system the Integrated Organizing Approach (IOA). It combines internal capacity building techniques with strategic campaign development and international mobilization to cultivate unique and effective campaigns. Campaigns: Currently we are using the IOA in two campaigns. Workplace Project—Immigrant Inclusion Project, Long Island We continue planning and conducting research for the campaign with the Workplace Project to shift the public and political will on Long Island to support the civic inclusion of immigrants. Workplace Project has begun identifying and giving presentations to recruit key allies, while Enlace is researching key players in the area. We are finalizing a power point presentation and have created fact sheets to accompany the presentation. The fact sheets cover Mexico’s economic crisis in the 1990s, how that was caused by the collusion of multinational financial corporations and Republican Congressmen, and how it led to the mass migration of Mexicans to the U.S. The presentation kits can be used to show commonalities between immigrant and non-immigrant communities and to begin to overcome the divisions between these groups. The Workplace Project is preparing to contact media to share our research and to present pro-immigrant, anti-H.R. 4437 resolutions at the local level in various towns in Long Island. If you are interested in obtaining one of these Presentation Kits, they are available for $50 at http://www.enlaceintl.org. SINTTIM—Maquila Industry, Baja California Sur Central to the plans of CISSLABORAL A.C., a workers’ resource center, and SINTTIM, an independent union, is support for workers in the seafood processing industry. The goal is to win respect for human and workers rights, principally for the workers who process squid, a natural resource that provides employment to more than 4,000 people just in the area of Santa Rosalía. SINTTIM has filed a lawsuit on behalf of 92 workers who were fired unjustly at a squid processing plant owned by multinational corporation Han Jin México. We are continuing to work with SINTTIM on its campaign to organize the seafood processing industry by providing research support, training, and ally recruitment. Thank you to Peter Olney and Amy Willis from the ILWU Organizing Department; Jeff Fiedler from Research Associates of America; and Danny Park and the staff at KIWA for assisting with research for this campaign. 2007 Speaking Tour Enlace along with SINTTIM is planning a speaking tour for the spring of 2007. The tour will go from Los Angeles up the coast to Portland and then fly to Massachusetts. We hope to be able to bring a maquila worker from Han Jin to speak on her experience in the seafood processing industry. If she cannot obtain a visa to come to the U.S., then a leader of SINTTIM will speak. If you would like to host one of these events, please write to us at Trainings: A vital part of the IOA is the internal capacity-building that we advance through our training programs. Coach Program: This year we met our goal of holding 3 trainings for the coach program. Our coach program, which is geared towards Enlace member groups, trains a member of an organization’s staff or a community leader to be an internal resource for the organization’s leadership, in terms of planning, strategy development, and evaluation. The trainings were in Portland in March and in Los Angeles in August and November. Participants came from Enlace member organizations Instituto De Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA, Los Angeles), Independent Union of Workers of the Maquiladora Industry (SINTTIM, Baja California Sur), Young Workers United (San Francisco), Pilipino Workers Center (PWC, LA), Garment Worker Center (LA), Workplace Project (Long Island, NY), SEIU Local 1877 (California), and Service, Development, and Peace (SEDEPAC, Coahuila, Mexico). Long-time coach Lorene Scheer (formerly with the Teamsters, now with SEIU Local 503 in Portland) also participated in the summer session. During each training session, we share some of Enlace’s unique step-by-step processes called frameworks. This year’s program covered Proactive Planning, Four Sages (a process for dealing with a crisis, an unanticipated barrier to a group’s strategy, or a lack of focus), the Organizing Cycle (a detailed process to plan an event or an action), and Plan Improvement. The sessions also provided time for the coaches to get to know each other and to develop stronger relationships with each other—this is central to the network within Enlace. Mirna Verdugo from SINTTIM and Jacinto Lopez (Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance—KIWA) both spoke about the history and the campaigns of their respective organizations. The next training will take place in San Francisco March 9-11, 2007. Supervisors and Leadership Training Series This year we held our new two-part Supervisors and Leadership Training Series twice, in Los Angeles and in New York. We also held Part I of this series in Portland and will finish the series January 18-19 (it’s not too late to sign up! Go to: http://www.enlaceintl.org/wa/enlace/ei/1228/) Part I of this series covers techniques for improving supervisory skills including: holding effective one-on-one meetings with supervisees, facilitating useful team meetings, and managing conflict among staff. Part II of this series trains participants in proactive planning and evaluation of an event, a program, or the organization as a whole. Organizations that sent leaders to these trainings include Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (LA), IDEPSCA, UCLA Labor Occupational Safety and Health program, Multi-ethnic Immigrant Workers Organizing Network (MIWON, LA), KIWA, June Jordan School for Equity/Small Schools for Equity (SF), Day Laborer Program of La Raza Centro Legal (SF), SEIU Local 1877, SEIU Local 49 (Portland), Domestic Workers United (NY), Western North Carolina Workers Center, the Women’s & Children’s Shelter of the Salvation Army (Portland), and the Portland Schools Uniting Neighborhoods Program. Stored Value Card Project As part of our goal to strengthen the worker center movement, Enlace has joined the Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), the Center for Community Change (CCC), and Community Financial Resources (CFR) in a national collaboration to develop a pilot project with six worker centers to provide financial services needed by people who are excluded from holding bank accounts. Joann Lo, Enlace co-director, is the lead staff person on the project. The Workplace Project (Long Island), an Enlace member organization, is participating in the project. Enlace members the Pilipino Workers Center and el Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) are participating through other national partners. In January, as a follow-up to a survey of 60 workers, Enlace staff assisted Workplace Project and other project partners in conducting a focus group with 12 workers in Long Island. A majority of the workers said they would purchase the prepaid debit card and use it especially to send remittances to their families and to buy necessities in stores. Since then, Joann has supported the Workplace Project (WP) in developing plans to build its membership using the stored value card and preparing the organization to begin using the card in December. In September Joann assisted CCC and CFR in providing a training for key WP staff and member leaders on how the card works, how to explain its features, how to open new card accounts, and ideas to market the card. In October Joann trained and gave an orientation to WP’s new half-time staff person hired to work on the project, and she will provide ongoing support for this staff person. Core members of WP have now signed up for the card. These members will act as a test group for one month, after which WP will begin a wider distribution of the card with the assistance of these members. Member Support: This year Enlace provided support in terms of training and advice to the following members’ campaigns. SEDEPAC—Hanesbrands/Sara Lee, Coahuila The company Hanesbrands Inc. (formerly Sara Lee) announced back in September that it would close its factory in Monclova, Coahuila, leaving more than 1,700 workers without employment. This was a very hard blow for SEDEPAC and the workers. First the company lowered the salary of workers at the same time that it demanded an increase in production from 114 dozen per hour to 144 dozen. Now it has officially closed the plant. Hanesbrands has been slowly laying people off since September, and the last group of 250 was laid off on December 14, 2006. Hanesbrands has said that it will move this production to Central America to save costs. Mexican law requires that a company that closes must pay a severance pay to its employees. SEDEPAC is assisting the workers to fight for their severance pay based on the higher salary they were paid before Hanesbrands lowered their pay while requiring higher production levels. Twelve workers previously fired have a lawsuit against the company, and as a precautionary step so that Hanesbrands doesn’t cut and run, workers filed a petition for an injunction. The court granted it, so now Hanesbrands cannot sell the factory, the equipment within, and the land they sit on until the severance pay issue is resolved. SITESABES—Independent Teachers’ Union, Guanajuato As many of you know, last year Enlace supported the independent union SITESABES in its efforts to organize teachers in the state of Guanajuato. These teachers work for a state program called SABES. Due to international pressure, SITESABES won the right to the first-ever secret ballot union election in Mexico, and now all union elections in Guanajuato are held by secret ballot. The election was held in May 2005. Due to the government maneuvers against the union, SITESABES did not win a majority of the votes in the election; the “company” union won a majority. Under Mexican law, while the “company” union won the right to negotiate the contract with the employer, SITESABES has the right to enforce the union contract and represent workers in grievances and other workplace issues. SITESABES also continued to organize the workers to ensure a good contract. In January of 2006, Mary Mendez, Enlace’s Mexico program coordinator, went to Guanajuato and facilitated an evaluation and planning session for SITESABES leaders. Mary was also able to provide mentoring for Veronica Raigosa, a key leader of SITESABES, who attended the Enlace coaches training in Portland in July 2005. Since then, SITESABES has won 5 cases out of 27 filed by union leaders fired for organizing. The 5 leaders, including Veronica, will receive a payment between US$50,000 and 60,000 as well as regain their employment. Due to international pressure from many of you, from Enlace, and from other allies on the local labor board to fulfill its duties, SITESABES is confident that the other 22 workers will also win their claims. Due to SITESABES’ organizing efforts and its pressure on the “company” union during contract negotiations, the teachers now have more benefits, such as the right to an honorarium to pay for trainings and a bonus for punctuality. Previously the government would hire the teachers for 6-month contracts so that they would not have any seniority rights and would not receive certain benefits required by law. SITESABES has been able to get rid of this practice, and the teachers now have seniority rights and vacation days. These are great improvements in a short period of time, considering that SITESABES is not the legal representative of the workers in contract negotiations. The SITESABES members continue organizing their co-workers with the hope of filing for a new union election so that SITESABES will have the right to negotiate the collective bargaining agreement. Consultant Work This year we have taken on more work as consultants to share Enlace’s experience and the frameworks that we have developed over the past 9 years. Early in the year we provided strategy development training for ILWU staff and rank and file leaders engaged in the struggle to win justice for Blue Diamond almond workers in Sacramento, and also for the Teamsters Puget Sound garbage workers team in their successful campaign for affordable health care. Our contract with SEIU’s Institute for Change finished this summer. Our co-director Peter Cervantes-Gautschi has been working with member SEIU Local 1877 to assist the leadership with planning and facilitation. In August Small Schools for Equity, a non-profit organization that works with the June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco, contracted us to provide a two-day supervisors training. This summer we were also contracted by the UC Berkeley Labor Center to train and supervise garment workers to survey 200 workers about any changes in their working conditions, their family, and their community since the elimination of textile quotas on imports to the U.S. on January 1, 2005. The surveys were finished by mid-August. The Berkeley Labor Center received funding to conduct these surveys in China and Los Angeles and is still seeking funds to do the same in El Salvador. Staff Changes: Earlier in the spring, in order to better position Enlace to address how our work has evolved and grown, particularly for campaigns and fundraising, we opened a new office in Los Angeles. Enlace coordinator Joann Lo became co-director of Enlace. She assumes supervision of Enlace’ fundraising efforts and continues her work in the trainings, the stored value card project, and the Workplace Project campaign. Peter Cervantes-Gautschi is the co-director based in Portland in charge of Enlace’s methodology and research as well as working on trainings and the SINTTIM campaign. In September new Enlace staff member Melissa Khamvongsa started. Melissa took over for Emily Weisbard, who left in July, as our administrative/communications coordinator and works part-time in our Los Angeles office. Melissa’s family immigrated to Los Angeles from Guadalajara, Jalisco in the early seventies and she graduated this past May from Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) with a double degree in Spanish and Chicana/o Studies. Melissa was a student leader in the struggle to assist the university’s subcontracted janitors in organizing to become university employees with better pay and full benefits, including free tuition for the university for their children. Special Thanks: We would like to give thanks to all those who have generously donated to Enlace! Whether you gave $5 or $1000, your support has allowed us to continue forward in our work. Enlace would like to give special thanks to all of the co-hosts of very successful fundraiser house parties in Portland, Los Angeles, and New York: Danny Park of KIWA (also an Enlace board member), Victor Narro, Lizette Hernández, Abel Valenzuela, Kate Pfordresher, Edna Iriarte, Tony Perlstein, and Lorene Scheer. Thank you to the following coaches and member leaders who sold raffle tickets: Evelyn Urrutia (Tenants and Workers Support Committee), Lupe Hernandez (formerly of the Garment Worker Center), Marisol Rivera (SEIU Local 1877), Veronica Carrizales, and Vy Nguyen (KIWA). We also thank Jeri Williams, president of the board of Communities United for People (our fiscal agent), for selling raffle tickets. Special thanks also to our major donors ($500 or more): Harriet Denison, Lois Kern, Laborers International Local 300, Wan-Chen Lo, John Mayer, Roger Miller, Alan Rabinowitz, Research Associates of America, SEIU Local 503 (Portland), and SEIU UHW (California)! Enlace would also like to give special thanks to our summer interns Kenia Rivera (UCLA), Eden Essicke (Whitman College), and Isabel Cervantes Gautschi (Bard College). A big thanks to SEIU Local 1877 for much in-kind support! Last, but not least, thank you to our funders: Common Counsel’s Grassroots Exchange Fund, Liberty Hill Foundation, Lawson Valentine Foundation, Lenore Barry Fund, Needmor Foundation, New World Foundation, Norman Foundation, and Ralph Smith Foundation.
© 1998 - 2008 Enlace \| site by NetRaising