It's Derby, Man....

During my youth, my best friend and I based our annual activity calendar on Kentucky Derby Day. Derby was the start of our outdoor party season. "Derby", as a word, also had an alternate meaning for us. "Derby" was an excuse, or rather an urge, to do something ridiculous. In the middle of September while camping in Butler County, Kentucky, someone had the bright idea to drink moonshine and go fishing in the middle of the night. While at first resisting, we relented after someone said, "It's Derby, man!". Regretful, yes, but true nonetheless.

Soon the Derby will be upon us once again, and with it, all that is good about being in Kentucky during the month of May. The Kentucky Derby Festival is cranking up the hype machine now. Tickets for Kentucky Derby Festival events can be purchased at their main office on 1001 South Third Street. Tickets for the Pegasus Parade and Wine Fest can be purchased online HERE. Get your seats now for the Great Steamboat Race, Thunder, and Pegasus Parade. Tickets for the AT&T Fashion Show, They’re Off Luncheon, Running Wild Pasta Dinner, and Wine Fest can also be purchased at the office. Office hours are Monday-Friday 9 am to 5 pm daily.

Thanks to The Local Weekly for the info. Buy some tickets. Get out of the house. Do something ridiculous. It's Derby, man.

2008 CAFR Released After Long Delay

The 2008 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for Louisville Metro Government has finally been released. It is a large .pdf file, so have patience. HERE is the report.

Here is the Mayor's introduction to the report:



Much more on this later.

Tuesday.

- The Mayor's Community Conversation for this month will be held Monday, March 16 at Iroquois High School gym, 4615 Taylor Boulevard. The event starts at 6:30pm

- The Southwest Dream Team’s next meeting is one week from today. It will be held on Tuesday, March 17th at the Sun Valley Community Center, 6505 Bethany Ln from 12:00-1:30 and lunch will be provided. The guest speaker will be the Executive Director of TARC, Barry Barker and Planning Dept Manager Carrie Butler. The Marketing Committee will give the latest details on the March 20th banner unveiling event.

-Legendary newsman Chuck Olmstead passed away overnight.

Making The Case For The Labor Standards Ordinance

From AFL-CIO Now:

Solis Investigating Guest Worker Visas on Florida Hotel Project
by James Perks

In one of her first official acts as labor secretary, Hilda Solis has asked for a review of how Mexican sheet metal workers were given visas to work on the St. Regis Hotel project in Bal Harbour, Fla., when more than 1,000 members of the Sheet Metal Workers union (SMWIA) are out of work in the same area.

The company hired to install the heating and air conditioning ducts, CYVSA International, received approval from the state of Florida and the Bush Labor Department for visas to bring in foreign workers for seasonal work. But the visas are supposed to be granted only if there are no Americans available to do the job.

Florida ranked second in the number of jobs certified for foreign workers under one of the visa programs known as H-2B. In 2008, a total of 22,195 jobs in the state were approved for H-2B foreign workers, including 1,145 construction workers, 119 roofers, 10 electricians and six bricklayers.

Many employers want to bring in more guest workers to keep wages low, experts say. Many companies pay less than a living wage, and some force the foreign workers to live in horrid conditions and work long hours.

Solis wants to know how CYVSA could hire foreign workers when there are sheet metal workers out of work in South Florida. At a town hall meeting earlier this week, as part of the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Miami, Solis said:

We are going to have to take a look at it and, hopefully, work closely with [Homeland Security Secretary Janet] Napolitano to see how we better focus so that these things don’t happen and that we avoid them [in the future]. There were before I came into my position visas that were permitted under the Bush administration that we will take a very, very close look at and [with] a very keen eye go through. But, rest assured, we will take a strong view on that.

Jim DeFede, an investigative reporter for Miami’s CBS4.com, describes how CYVSA, one of the largest construction companies in Mexico, manipulated the rules to ensure it could hire foreign workers. CYVSA’s action also show how the current immigration visa system favors employers, the SMWIA says.

DeFede reports that CYVSA applied to Florida for permission to use foreign labor on Sept. 30, 2008. The next day, Oct. 1 at 9:05 a.m., the state agency, following federal rules, opened a 10-day recruitment period to find U.S. workers. During those 10 days, CYVSA was required to contact the local union and place ads in the Miami Herald.

But CYVSA did not place the ads or call the union until it was near the end of the 10-day period and never said there was a deadline to apply.

The union sent resumes of unemployed sheet metal workers to the state by certified mail Oct. 10. But by the time they were mailed, the state had officially closed the recruitment period at 9:16 a.m. on Oct. 10. The state then notified the federal government that no American citizens applied for the jobs and the Department of Labor subsequently certified CYVSA’s request for foreign workers.

Larry Stewart, business manager for SMWIA Local 32, told DeFede this is not a union or nonunion issue. This is an issue that affects all workers, he said. And it is outrageous that the U.S. government and the state of Florida allowed the employer to profit by importing foreign workers when so many U.S. workers are out of work.

This story clearly illustrates why Louisville needs the Labor Standards Ordinance sponsored by Councilmen King and Blackwell. We need local jobs for local workers, not the exploitation of low-wage immigrants.

And Now, A Word From Cecil Roberts....

Cecil Roberts is the International President of the United Mine Workers of America and is one of my personal heroes. If you have ever heard him speak, you know why. You will never forget it. The following letter to the editor was printed in this morning's Courier-Journal:

It's open season on coal miners in the Kentucky legislature all of a sudden. Just two years ago, the state was among the leaders in the nation in upgrading state mine safety and health laws. But today, a concerted effort to roll back critical elements of those improvements is under way in Frankfort.

One bill would reduce the availability of fast medical care for injured miners. Another would allow dangerous levels of explosive methane to build up in mines. A third would virtually eliminate actual inspections of mines by real inspectors to ensure they are being operated safely.

Supporters of these attacks on miners' safety say they are taking these steps to help smaller mine operators, who apparently don't have the business acumen to sell coal in the current strong coal market and make money.

One thing you can say about these folks: at least they aren't trying to hide the truth of their greed. They are willing to be quite up front about their desire to put profits and production ahead of safety in Kentucky coal mines -- even if those extra profits amount to just a few bucks a month.

And those profits could come at the cost of miners' lives.

An argument in favor of these changes might be made if Kentucky mines had become completely safe all of a sudden. But that's not the case.

Despite the enhanced safety laws the state enacted in 2007 Kentucky is still among the nation's most deadly states for coal miners.

Last year, eight miners were killed on the job in Kentucky, tied for the most of any state in the nation. Since 2006, 25 miners have been killed in the state, including one this year. So far in this decade, 79 miners have died in Kentucky mines -- 26 percent of all the coal mine fatalities in the nation.

That's not a record to be proud of. You would think the state government would be doing all it could do to beef up mine safety even more than it did in 2007. Instead, some in the legislature would have the state slide backwards, and put more miners' lives at risk than even before 2007.

And that's just fine with the coal operators, who are loudly chafing at the new laws and regulations put in place at both the state and federal levels after the tragedies that struck coal mining in 2006 in Kentucky and West Virginia -- laws and regulations the UMWA was a leader in getting passed in Frankfort and Washington, D.C.

The head of the Kentucky Coal Operators Association, Bill Caylor, even went so far as to spout some nonsense about how the UMWA's insistence on safer mines means that the union somehow wants to put small mine operators out of business.

What a crock. The UMWA's only goal is to keep all miners alive and in one piece when they are at work. If a mine operator in this day and age can't or won't do that, then the truth is they shouldn't be in the coal business, whether they operate small mines or big mines.

Taking Mr. Caylor's statements to their logical conclusion, one could reason that he believes a miner working in a smaller mine doesn't deserve as much safety and health protection on the job as a miner in a larger mine. Mr. Caylor appears to be saying that putting miners' lives at greater risk in smaller mines is just another part of doing business. The UMWA rejects that view.

We have been and will remain the only voice miners have in the halls of power, standing up for better safety and health for all miners, whether they enjoy the benefits and protections of a UMWA contract or not. That's what we did after the Sago disaster in West Virginia and the Darby tragedy in Kentucky, even though the miners at both those mines were not UMWA members. We will continue to fulfill that role.

Kentucky took a bold and positive step when it upgraded mine safety and health in 2007. To roll back that legislation now will increase the risk to miners' lives and limbs. If that's a step the state's political leadership ultimately decides to take, then they must be prepared to live with the consequences. What's most scary about this is that some of them already are prepared to do just that.

CECIL E. ROBERTS

International President

United Mine Workers

of America

Fairfax, Va. 22031

Medical Experts, Housing Projects and A Retarded Senator

- Two medical "experts" disagree on a central fact of the Max Gilpin case, with one saying the prescription drug Adderall caused Max's heat stroke and another calling the link to the drug "tenuous". HERE is the link to the Courier-Journal article. The experts do agree on medical documentation that states Gilpin was not dehydrated upon his arrival to the hospital. Still no word on JCPS's "investigation". The drama continues...

- In a piece of good news, Fox41 is reporting some stimulus money will go toward finishing the demolishion job at Iroquois Homes. The housing project is one of the last remaining, and is a disgraceful mess. This area will prosper when the project is completed. The sooner, the better.

- WAVE3 has a story on Alabama Senator Richard Shelby's comments about the United States-based auto manufacturers. The Senator claims the UAW "will run those companies and run them into the ground." Yet another reason to be embarrassed to hail from Alabama. The outrageously ignorant statement came on a day when local UAW members working at Ford's two plants in Louisville voted on more contract concessions and wage giveaways to benefit the company. That's hardly "running them into the ground" if you ask me. Alabama is home to several non-union, foreign-owned auto plants.