© PHOTO: WILLIAM ALATRISTE © PHOTO: E RO MAKE TH AD NEW YO RK 2009 OCTOBER-DECEMBER IN THE NEWS MAKE THE ROAD NEW YORK 301 GROVE STREET 92-10 ROOSEVELT AVENUE 479 PORT RICHMOND AVENUE BROOKLYN, NY 11237 JACKSON HEIGHTS, NY 11372 STATEN ISLAND, NY 10302 tel 718 418 7690 tel 718 565 8500 tel 718 727 1222 fax 718 418 9635 fax 718 565 0646 fax 718 981 8077 VISIT WWW.MAKETHEROADNY.ORG FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF MRNY’S WORK THIS QUARTER. Health Care? Not if You Can’t Leave Work to Get It October 2, 2009 Friday in September, sick as a dog, he had to leave the diner. He called his wife at 7 a.m. to pick him up. He ended Jim Dwyer up at Woodhull hospital for three days with a thyroid problem. Adela Valdez** made lamps in a factory at the back of a lighting store on Canal Street in Manhattan. The job paid “The boss yelled,” Mr. Barrera recalled. “She said, minimum wage and no benefits. Last month, she got sick ‘Don’t come back. You’re fired. You don’t take this but went to work. On her third day of coughing and feeling job seriously.’ ” generally crummy, she was feverish. In an interview, the owner of the diner, Athena Skermo, “I asked the boss for permission to go to the said Mr. Barrera’s account was a “total lie.” She said she hospital,” said Ms. Valdez, 39, a mother of four. “She paid her employees when they got sick. said, ‘It’s fine, go — but you don’t have a job anymore.’ ” “He left me flat,” she said. “He was gone three days; I never heard from him. Someone told me he said, ‘I’m not going to Now Ms. Valdez works three days a week taking care of work as a grill man anymore,’ because the doctor told him an elderly woman. he got sick from the grill. I had to take someone else.” To questions of cost and coverage, add one more detail to THERE are plenty of employers who do give their the national debate about health care: time. In New York, employees time off when they are sick, because it’s good for time may be more important than cost. The city’s empire of business. “You get more committed people if you public hospitals finds ways to serve hundreds of thousands stick with them when they have their crisis,” said of people who don’t have enough money or lack private Freddy Castiblanco**, owner of the Terraza 7 Train insurance. But people who have no health insurance Cafe in Elmhurst, Queens, just down the block from the through their jobs are not likely to have paid sick days, 82nd Street stop of the No. 7 train. either. By some estimates, 765,000 workers in the city do not get paid when they stay home sick. Mr. Castiblanco, who has five full-time employees, said that he had given his people time off when they were sick That would change under a bill before the City Council, and that he supported the legislation to make it mandatory. known as Intro 1059, which is backed by unions and some health organizations. It would require all businesses in the “I’m at a disadvantage with other small-business city to provide paid sick time. Companies with fewer than owners who are not responsible,” Mr. Castiblanco 10 employees would have to give five days a year; larger said. “If we had a law, it would be equal.” businesses would be required to provide nine. Fines for not complying would be as much as $1,000. Business groups There are other reasons, he said, for such a law: the costs like the Chambers of Commerce in the five boroughs that society has to take on when sick people go to work. oppose the bill, arguing that the added costs might force Mr. Castiblanco, who was a doctor in Colombia before some businesses to cut back on hiring. moving to the United States and hopes to pass qualifying tests this year to return to practicing medicine, said sick Whatever its economic and social merits, the bill, if it people should not be in a workplace where others might becomes law, would bring the city into the workplace catch their ailments. “It’s a matter of public health equivalent of the domestic dispute: intimate, furious, with that you don’t have contagious people in the the truth tied up in tangles. workplace,” he said. For nearly seven years, Guillermo Barrera** said, he And does he provide insurance to his employees? arrived daily at 3:30 a.m. to work at the grill of a little diner in Bushwick. He peeled the potatoes and chopped the “I tried,” he said. “It was $700 a month for each one. That onions for the home fries. He mixed batter for the would be more than my rent.” pancakes, loaded the coffee maker, brought in the bread, sliced tomatoes and diced lettuce. He worked 11 hours a Does he have insurance for himself and his family? day, seven days a week, and never took a vacation. “I can’t afford it now,” he said. A few months ago, Mr. Barrera began to lose weight from a frame that was already slim, dropping 14 pounds. One ** Make the Road New York member Immigration Rally Draws Thousands October 14, 2009 By IAN URBINA WASHINGTON — Thousands of immigrants came to Capitol “I worked for eight months cleaning the dust and Hill on Tuesday for a day of lobbying and an afternoon rally debris surrounding the World Trade Center,” said calling for comprehensive immigration reform. Ms. Arias, who cleans offices in Manhattan and was dressed in a light-blue T-shirt with a sticker reading, The event was timed to the unveiling of an immigration bill “Reform Immigration for America.” “There was no by Representative Luis V. Gutierrez, Democrat of Illinois and question about immigration status. We were all New chairman of the Immigration Task Force of the Yorkers; we were all Americans.” Congressional Hispanic Caucus. In June, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New With President Obama’s stated commitment to immigration York, announced what he called seven principles that would reform, advocates for immigrants said they hoped to revive a give form to his own reform proposal. Among them were the debate that has been overshadowed by other priorities, like need to “curtail future illegal immigration,” to have the economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As “operational control of our borders” and a “biometric-based deportations continue to rise, immigration reform is needed employer verification system.” Mr. Schumer, who has been now, they said, to allow illegal immigrants to obtain legal working with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South status and to stop families from being torn apart. Carolina, said he would introduce a bill by Labor Day but missed that deadline. “We need a bill that says if you come here to hurt our communities, we will not support you; but if you are here to Mr. Gutierrez’s bill, which is likely to propose less restrictive work hard and to make a better life for your family, you will terms than Mr. Schumer’s plan for allowing illegal have the opportunity to earn your citizenship,” Mr. Gutierrez immigrants to become citizens, is partly meant to pressure said in a prepared statement. “We need a law that says it is his Congressional colleagues. un-American for a mother to be torn from her child, and it is unacceptable to undermine our work force by driving the A main purpose of the rally was to highlight the way current most vulnerable among us further into the shadows.” immigration law splits families. Immigration overhaul faces a difficult road. President “Families deserve better than this from our government,” George W. Bush twice failed to get Congress to pass similar said Peter Derezinski, a 17-year-old high school senior and a legislation. Mr. Obama recently said his administration United States citizen whose father was deported to Poland in would pursue reform this year but expected no action on April 2008 after 18 years as a truck driver and an air- legislation before 2010. conditioning repairman in Chicago. “We need to fix our broken immigration system so our parents who have Tuesday’s event was sponsored by various immigrant contributed to this nation’s economy in a positive way have a advocacy groups, including the Reform Immigration for chance of reuniting with their children.” America campaign, the National Capital Immigration Coalition and Families United/Familias Unidas. It attracted Robin Ferschke, who was traveling from Maryville, Tenn., convoys of buses, vans and cars carrying more than 3,000 said she planned to talk to lawmakers about changing the demonstrators from at least 17 states. law so that her daughter-in-law and grandson could live legally in the United States. Ms. Ferschke’s son, Sgt. Michael Immigrants, religious leaders, members of Congress and Ferschke, a 22-year-old Marine radio operator, was killed in immigrant advocates planned to gather on the West Lawn Iraq in 2008, leaving his Japanese widow and their infant for speeches and a prayer vigil at 3 p.m. Similar rallies were son in immigration limbo. being held in at least 20 cities around the nation, including Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Denver and Albany. While Sergeant Ferschke was deployed to Iraq, he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant. They decided to get married “I’m here representing the undocumented workers by proxy, a method that has a long history in the military who cleaned ground zero and its surrounding area when the bride and groom cannot be in the same place for a after the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” said Rubiela Arias, ceremony.