To keep chaos at bay, volunteer Bill Walker hands out yellow plastic cards with numbers from 1 to 200.  A second set of numbered cards is soon cracked open as people continued to arrive.

The dip in the economy may have caused a decrease in patronage for other businesses, but the Alameda Food Bank has seen a 37 percent increase in clients compared to this time last year according to spokesperson Brian Higgins.

“We serve 40,000 people a week and 14,000 of them are children,” said Higgins.

A truck from the food bank warehouse backs up the drive way and 20 volunteers quickly unload the seven tons of the day’s produce offerings:  yams, carrots, white onions, and packaged bags of shredded ice berg lettuce, hearts of romaine and cole slaw mix.

“On Fridays there were at least eighty to one hundred people, now we run 175 to 200,” said Bill Walker, a retiree who has volunteered at Columbian Gardens for five years.

Fifty-pound bags of vegetables are placed behind the tables next to palettes of boxes stacked six feet tall.  The contents are divvied up into smaller shopping bags that the recipients will pick up as they walk by each station.

A few clients pick through clothing on a give away table while the volunteers continue their work.

Columbian Gardens is one of 275 distribution centers in Alameda County, but one of only ten that has food available five days a week.

Emergency food drop in hours are from noon to 1:30 p.m. every weekday. Volunteers set aside some produce for the emergency food boxes they will construct after the morning distribution is done. The boxes often contain a mix of produce and canned and dry goods.

The protocol requires clients to call the food bank head quarters to make an appointment before they go to Columbian Gardens to pick up emergency food, but if they show up unannounced it’s okay.

“No one is turned away,” said Walker.

Lurleen Jackson, also known as Mom by the volunteers, has run the distribution at Columbian Gardens since 1974.

When asked why she started to work with the poor, she said, simply,

“Because they need it. That would be the only answer.”

Jackson is a devoted Christian and serves as an usher at Community Reform church where she can be found walking the aisles every Sunday morning.

“People are so appreciative,” she gushes.  “They tell me all about their recipes.”

Her volunteers return this love in spades.  Her operation runs so smoothly she has to do little more than wander around and watch as they take care of everything.

The volunteers have bagged enough produce so it’s time to start the processional.  Walker explains how the line will work and another volunteer translates his words into Spanish for the primarily Latino crowd.

Alicia Williams, a geriatric nurse, is all smiles handing off bags bursting full of white onions.

“I just got off work and came to pick up my mother-in-law to eat and go shopping.  I always stop and lend a hand.  The reward is greater than pay.  Knowing someone will not go hungry is a plus,” said Alicia.

Iome has volunteered at Columbian Gardens for 10 years.  She feels volunteering can be as rewarding for retirees like herself as it is for the recipients.

“It gives me something to do.  I love helping people, instead of being at home lonely and bored.   It keeps you young,” said Iome.

Odelia Sanchez, from Guatemala, pushes a cart with today’s bounty.  This is her third visit to pick up provisions for her husband and five children.  She heard about the distribution through friends.

“The economy is bad and I’m out of a job.  It helps a lot.  If you go to the store it’s expensive.  Here it is a gift,” she said.

Evelyn Rivas from El Salvador has visited the food bank for six months.  She already has plans for some of the produce.

“I’ll use it to make repollo,” she said referring to a slaw of cabbage, carrots, onions and vinegar that is eaten with pupusas, a Salvadorian style corn cake.

Through the translator Walker tells everyone they are welcome to have some cilantro, three additional bags of the packaged produce and an additional bag of anything else that is left on the tables.

Crinkly onion skins scatter across the parking lot and take flight in the breeze while the line goes through in the opposite direction.

The crew at Columbian Gardens supplements their offerings by visiting the food bank every Wednesday for additional produce and canned goods and dry goods.  Every fourth Tuesday is USDA day where they get canned food, milk, juice and meat.  They also keep an eye out for bread on Wednesdays, which is one of the most requested items.

“People who call the food bank for emergency food tell them they want to come to Columbian Gardens.  We never run out of food,” said Walker, taking pride in their work.  “We treat them like people.  We’ve got the service, so we provide it to them.

According to Walker, at this time last year they averaged five emergency food pickups a day. Now they average 35 a day.  Last month the average peaked at 45 emergency food pick up a day.

The county court sends Jackson 6-10 volunteers a month who work to pay off their tickets.

“What the court does for me is such a big help,” said Jackson.

Volunteer Andrew Roddy chimes in, “They fall in love with Mom.  Then they come back and keep volunteering.”

Roddy has personal experience with this phenomenon.  One year and five months ago he was sent to Columbian Gardens to work off a ticket, and hasn’t stopped coming since. He even joined Jackson’s church.

While Roddy and a skeleton crew of three other volunteers assemble emergency boxes inside the building, Humberto Dueñas from San Leandro loads his truck.  In addition to his family of four he will share today’s catch with two of his brothers families, his sister’s family and their mother.

Dueñas is a construction worker that has been laid off for seven months, but has found alternate work at a Toyota factory in Hayward.

He is pleased with today’s produce, “It’s a big help.  In Mexican food we use these things all the time.”

The students enjoyed the story, but most wanted to talk about investigating Officer Michael Gebhardt’s police cruiser.

“I liked sitting in the back.  It was a hard seat,” said Gursharar, while snacking on a – bagel with a cream cheese and grape jam.

The afternoon was courtesy of Hoopoe Books Share Literacy Program, a non-profit that works with schools to encourage reading skills in students using a tradition from Afghanistan called teaching stories.

Earlier half of the students listened with rapt attention as teacher Joumana Mattar read The Clever Boy and the Terrible Dangerous Animal by Idries Shah.  Next door Brenda Bethancourt read the Spanish version of the book to the those in the bilingual class.

The story is about a boy in Afghanistan who discovers that the terrible, dangerous animal that is feared by villagers is nothing more than a gigantic watermelon.  The point of the story is to encourage children to be inquisitive and not be afraid of things that may be new to them.

While reading the story Mattar paused to ask the children questions.

“Have you ever been afraid of something you’ve never seen before?” she said.

One girl said she’d never seen a snake, a boy said he’d never seen a dragon.

“Have you ever been attacked by a watermelon?” said Mattar.

“Nooooooooooooooo!” chimed the class in unison.

Two weeks prior to the event the teachers went through professional literacy strategy training to learn how to read and teach the story more effectively.

“We get the kids to know the story through questions that are factual, and others than ask them to drawn on reason and experience. Then we expose them to what an author and an illustrator does,” said Beverly Taub, director of preschool programs for Fremont United School District.

The students had pre-event preparation as well.  They were treated to a watermelon party where they got to see one cut up and were able to taste it.  They were invited to experience the texture of watermelon and count the seeds. Then they were taught how new watermelons can be grown using seeds.

The watermelon party introduced the students to “the terrible, dangerous, animal” the villagers were afraid before they heard the story.

“That made it more real,” said Taub.

This is the second year the pre-school has worked with Hoopoe Books, which is funded by a grant from the Kaiser foundation, but this was the first time it was paired with a visit from a police officer.

“We wanted to make it a more special event and tie reading into what we do in every day life,” said Taub

Gebhardt was present during the read-along and ready to take the stage when both classes were combined in the playroom.

“We’re going to show you a helper of the community,” said one of the assistants introducing Gebhardt.”  He is going to become your friend too.”

Gebhardt had not received any training but quickly got into the spirit of things.

“Why is reading important?” he asked the class. “One of the reasons it’s good is you have to read signs. Like the big red sign that says…”

“Stop!” the students shouted.

He asked the students to think about what happens when they are riding in a car with a grown up and what they do when they see signs.  Then he broke it down further to colored signal lights.

“What do they do when they see a yellow light?”

“Slow down,” shouted a boy.

Gebhardt appeared very pleased by that answer.

At the end he asked,  “Who wants to be a police officer?”

Half of the hands in the room shot up high.

“If you want to be a police officer you have to know how to read and write.  We spend a lot of time reading and writing things down,” he said.

Each child was given a copy of the book paired with an audio CD of the story. Then Gebhardt and the students went outside to explore his car.  The students took turns flashing the lights and turning on different sirens.  Some climbed into the back seat and peered through the bars like suspects.

As the grand finale Gebhardt gave each child a police badge sticker and a hi-five.

AC Transit and UC Berkeley are considering changes to the bus shuttle that serves the campus, which could result in the layoffs of several drivers employed by the university.

Under an existing agreement, the university offers the service and leases the buses from AC Transit. But the long-term lease expired in June 2008 and has been month-to-month since then. The transit agency elected not to continue the deal past December of this year, said Seamus Wilmot, UC Berkeley’s acting director of parking and transportation. 

Perimter bus driver Bob Mayer talks to a passenger.

But AC Transit spokesman Clarence Johnson would not confirm the end of the relationship with UC Berkeley, and said that the lease was not terminated and talks still continuing. “Anything is possible, and there is no way to know what will happen because the talks are still on and there is no timetable to get something out,” Johnson said.

Wilmot, though, met with the drivers in mid-April to tell them that the lease would not continue and they would likely lose their jobs by August.

Bob Mayer has been working as a driver on the campus for almost 16 years. He said he’d be disappointed to stop driving the campus routes, where he’s come to know the area inch by inch and has developed a good relationship with the passengers. Mayer talked as he drove the perimeter bus, which skirts the campus from Shattuck up the north side of the university, south past the Haas School of Business, and then down Bancroft to Shattuck again.

Anita Ross has used the bus for 30 years and said there’s a community connection between the drivers and the campus. “It is a big loss,” she said. “I’m a staff employee here and I get free transit, and I don’t know if I will have to pay for the bus in the future. The drivers are very generous and gentle and they wait for us when wave at them, unlike AC Transit.”

The university is looking for options to make sure the campus is still served by bus service. One solution might be to give AC Transit access to campus, and allowing the transit agency to provide the sole service to the campus area, although that would likely mean an increase in student and staff fees. Another option might be for the university to purchase its own vehicles, fuel and insurance, and also do its own maintenance, but this would also lead to higher fees and probably cost the university more than an agreement with AC Transit.

Currently the bus service costs more than $2 million, which the university pays to AC Transit. Student and staff fees cover about $1.2 million of that. Students pay $58.50 for an unlimited ride pass, while Berkeley staff members pay $37 per month.

The 17 drivers who drive the campus routes, meanwhile, are worried that if AC Transit takes over, they’ll lose their driving jobs because AC Transit will staff the routes with its own drivers, and does not have to budget to hire more. Wilmot said the university could try to find jobs elsewhere on campus for the displaced drivers. “Unfortunately,” he said, “this is the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Mayer said he’s thinking of seeking an alternative job with the Berkeley campus if he loses his driving job. “I would have to seek my options if there is another department job on the campus I can go to and work on my benefits and years of service in Berkeley,” Mayer said. “If I start with AC Transit I will have to stop everything I learned here and start all over again and it will be different. I will have to make a decision if I want to make that change.”

Linda Jerkins started driving one of the buses two years ago, and said she loves her job. She actively passes out fliers to passengers, whether at a bus stop or while she waits for her shift. “I want to stay here and I was thinking to keep working here until I retire,” Jerkins said.

The decision will be finalized in the next two weeks to a month, according to Wilmot, who said that they are still looking for options to solve the problem.

By Shaleece Haas/Special to 510 Report

Biofuel Oasis, a worker-owned biodiesel company, is moving from their one-pump garage to a new drive-through station on a busy corner in southwest Berkeley, Calif.

UPDATE: On April 30, 2009, Biofuel Oasis made the move to their new station.

In what has become a years-long saga pitting the Woodfin Hotel in Emeryville against its workers, the hotel has again defied an Emeryville City Council order to pay back wages, workers’ advocates say.

In 2006, hotel employees first charged the Woodfin with defying a city-wide living wage ordinance. Measure C, approved by Emeryville voters in November 2005 and put into effect that December, set guidelines for low wage work in the city. Among these guidelines was a limit to the workloads assigned to hotel attendants, or housekeepers. According to the ordinance, these workers were to be paid time-and-a-half were they to clean more than 5,000 square feet of room space in an 8-hour work day. At the Woodfin, this square footage would have been equal to nine or ten hotel suites.

But workers have charged that for nearly a year, the hotel did not comply, and they continued to clean around 17 suites per day. They are now demanding back wages for the work they say exceeded the ordinance’s limits.

“We didn’t know about the law,” says Maria Martinez, who has worked at the Woodfin for eight years. All the workers involved, she says, are immigrant women. “Nobody told us. Only when people from EBASE came to tell us, that’s when we found out.”

The East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, an Oakland-based community organization advocating for low-wage workers in the area, has taken on the case.

“This isn’t charity; it’s not a gift,” says Brooke Anderson, the deputy director of EBASE, “It’s money earned by their own sweat and their own backache.”

With the support of EBASE and other community and legal aid groups, the workers approached the City Council and simultaneously filed a lawsuit for back wages against the hotel chain in September of 2006.

After investigating, the City Council ordered the hotel to pay $200,000 in back wages in 2007. The hotel  challenged the Council’s order in Alameda County Superior Court. In 2008, the court upheld the validity of Measure C, while ordering the City Council to redo the hearing process in order to guarantee the hotel its right to due process.

In the latest turn of events following the court decision, the City Council revisited the case, holding a series of hearings between November and January. At these hearings, the hotel challenged the order on several grounds, including the argument that room inspectors, or supervisors, conducted room cleaning as part of their jobs, and that therefore the hotel’s “team approach” rendered the Councils’ calculations of housekeepers’ workload, and corresponding back wages, inaccurate.

After an in-depth audit of the hotel’s records and workers’ time sheets, the Council rejected the hotel’s argument. At the last hearing on January 15, the Council issued its second order to the hotel to pay up.  Hotel officials were told to pay workers by March 31, and to provide the city with proof that the back wages had been paid by April 15.

April 15 came and went, and the hotel did neither.

Tim Rosales, spokesperson for Woodfin, says that the hotel has not complied because it continues to disagree with the Council’s decision and will be appealing the order again through the courts. The City Council, says Rosales, is in no place to judge the hotel’s cleaning practices, nor the measurement of square footage, since they are not specialists in the industry.

The hotel was also not satisfied with the fairness of the second round of hearings. “It was a huge waste of taxpayer money,” says Rosales, explaining that the hotel saw no difference between these hearings and the previous ones that the court had ruled inadequate.

But workers and their advocates are getting increasingly frustrated with the hotel’s defiance. “This is the second time the City Council has ordered Woodfin to pay,” Anderson says. “We know for a fact that they’ve thrown twice as much money into lawsuits than they would have had to pay workers.”

While the hotel is currently in compliance with Measure C, Rosales says that there is cause for broader concern arising from the living wage ordinance, saying that with increased operating costs such as bookkeeping called for by the law’s regulations, the measure is seen by many in the local hotel industry as a “hinderance to development.”

“With the economy now,” says Rosales, “Businesses are leaving the city. As long as the measure is on the books, hotels will be very reluctant to do business in Emeryville.” And when they see another business such as the Woodfin “dragged through the mud,” he says, hotels will think twice about doing business in the city.

But for Martinez, a mother of four who lives in Richmond, the $12,000 she says Woodfin owes her trumps considerations of a city’s economic development. At times, she says, the fight for back wages has turned ugly for these immigrant workers.

“They said that because there was a lot of people working illegally, that they didn’t have any rights,” says Martinez, speaking of some of the hotel managers’ references to the workers’ immigration status. According to Martinez, many workers have been fired since the conflict erupted, and their immigration status has been the primary excuse. “If someone defended themselves, or stood up for their rights,” she says, “they looked for an excuse to get rid of them. A lot of people have been fired for defending themselves.”

A month after the initial lawsuit was filed in 2006, workers received “no match” letters from the Social Security Administration informing them that the social security number and name they had provided did not match. Ordinarily sent out as courtesy to workers in the case of an administrative error or typo, the letter states that receiving the notice is not an indication of immigration status and that taking action against a worker would put the company in legal liability. Regardless, Anderson, of EBASE, says that 10 days before Christmas, 12 workers were fired and were only rehired after an injunction was put into place by a judge.

In spite of these challenges, Martinez is hopeful.

“We will win,” she says, adding that she is grateful for the community support the workers have received.

“We have to know how to defend ourselves. And they have to know that just because someone’s an immigrant, they can’t do with them what they want.”

Wheel Estate from Shaleece Haas on Vimeo.

For one Berkeley man, an RV is more than just a recreational vehicle. It’s the home he turned to when his house went into foreclosure.

Photo courtesy of Maricopa County Environmental Services

As the California heat begins to usher in the summer, as well as usher water enthusiasts into the swimming pools, counties, including Alameda County, are integrating a new federal law that will further protect people from accidental drownings in public pools and spas. All hotels, community recreation centers, and high schools must install new federally-approved drain covers to prevent swimmers from being held down by the suction force of water ducts.

All swimming pool and hot tubs have drainage systems in order to clean the water, but the suction power of some drains is strong enough to trap swimmers at the bottom of pools and spas and drown them. While the suction created can be powerful enough to hold down an adult’s body, small children and swimmers with shoulder-length or longer hair are at the greatest of for entrapment.

According to a report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (UCPS) released in March 2005, between 1990 and 2004, there were 74 reported cases of body entrapment in pool and spa drainage systems. Thirteen of those cases resulted in deaths. The commission suggests that there may be many more unreported incidences of body entrapment.

In December, 2007, this safety hazard prompted Congress to pass the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool Spa and Safety Act. Named after former US Secretary of State James Baker’s granddaughter, who drowned in a hot tub, the law forces all public pools and spas to install drainage covers designed to prevent accidental deaths by making it harder for a swimmer to become entangled with the drain.

According to Ariu Levy, Director of Alameda County’s Environmental Health Department, the agency has notified roughly 1,500 local water facilities of the need to install these drain covers immediately, and the county’s 22 pool inspectors have received the necessary training in order to determine compliance. In an email, Levy explained that “sites found not to be in compliance will be given a period of time to submit plans and complete the necessary work to meet the new standards.”

The new law has affected some public pools more than others. “Our pool already meets the new regulation requirements, so we’re lucky,” said Michael Moran, Aquatic and Safety Director at the Oakland YMCA. “But I’ve heard from people working at other pools in the area … and they have to pay a lot of money for the improvements.” Some pools are even going to close because they can’t afford the total cost of repairs, which, according to Moran, can amount to tens of thousands of dollars. “If we had to pay several thousands of dollars,” he said, “we would have to close our pool too…we can’t afford that.”

But according to Don Atkinson-Adams, an environmental health specialist with the county, the drain cover replacements should be affordable. “The cost to install them don’t typically cost more than a thousand dollars,” he said, suggesting that the heftier bills somefacilities face are probably derived from other more drastic repairs they must make in order to meet other safety standards.

Atkinson-Adams said the county is taking a practical approach to enforcing the rules. “Yes, we’re going to shut down a pool that poses an immediate safety hazard,” he said. “But if a facility follows the rules and is trying to comply, we’ll work with them…we’re pushing to have all the pools in compliance by the end of the year.”

Some pool professionals say the new standards are worth the fuss. “I’ve worked on some hot tub drains where the suction is so strong, my arm gets glued to it,” said Dale Hiebing, owner of The Pool Doctor, a pool and spa repair and servicing company in El Sobrante. “And hot tubs can be especially dangerous because small kids can easily get to the bottom of them.”

According to Hiebing, powerful suction occurs when a body blocks most of the drainage hole. “It’s like when you put your hand over a vacuum, it sucks you in,” he said. But the new covers make blocking the water flow impossible—they either have jagged grooves or tiny holes that prevent a person from covering the whole drain, or they’re designed in a way that decentralizes water flow so the drain doesn’t gather the suction that makes it hazardous.

Although the new law only mandates the changes for public facilities, Hiebing recommends that private owners change their pool and spa drain covers as well. “A lot of the pools in Oakland homes are pretty old,” he said. “They normally have a single drainage pipe that’s so small in diameter that the suction it creates is incredibly strong…anyone who has a grandchild or a young kid around should get those drains covered.”

For more information about the VGB Act, visit the Alameda Environmental Health Department website. For more on pool safety, go to the National Swimming Pool Foundation.

For nearly 10 years, federally funded career centers in the East Bay have offered little in the way of job training. Last year, as the region lost 40,000 jobs, local career centers offered training to just 449 adults.

That is because about two thirds of the federal money pays to run the career centers, which also offer more basic services such as résumé workshops, English classes and free computer access to search for jobs. And when jobs were plentiful, career centers saw little need to increase more intensive training because most workers could find positions without it.

Now, heavy job losses and the Obama administration’s ambitious economic recovery program have prompted a dramatic change of course for federal workforce programs. The economic stimulus package signed by President Obama in February contains nearly $4 billion—more than last year’s entire budget—for employment and training services, at least $488 million of which is going to California. Local governments will be able to tap those funds later this month, and the Department of Labor wants them to use much of it for training.

But the money will flow to a system with little experience training large groups of workers. In fact, many local career centers say they have actually discouraged training  by requiring workers to wade through forms, testing, counseling and other requirements.

“Training is really the last resort,” said Monica Castrillo, a career counselor at the Richmond Works One-Stop Career Center in Richmond.

Richmond Works is one of 13 career centers in the East Bay, and 1,700 nationwide, that use federal funds to serve the unemployed. Funded under the 10-year-old Workforce Investment Act, the centers are overseen by workforce investment boards, which are appointed by cities and counties, and include representatives from business, labor and other groups. In the East Bay, there are boards representing Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and the cities of Richmond and Oakland. Federal money flows to the boards using formulas based on unemployment rates and other factors.

Together, the four East Bay boards expect to receive more than $16 million from the federal stimulus. That money will be welcomed by the career centers, which are being flooded with newly unemployed workers. Staff at Richmond Works say the center is serving more than 4,000 people per month, double the number they served last year.

Inside Richmond Works on a recent Thursday afternoon, about 20 job seekers were scanning the public computers for job listings. Alex Medrano, 46, of Richmond, looked over his resume. Two years ago, Medrano paid to attend the ITT Technical Institute to learn construction management, but that industry slumped before he could find a job.

“I chose the wrong class,” Medrano said.

Medrano knows he may have to “upgrade” his skills, but he is not sure whether he will look for more training. If he is eligible Medrano could receive a voucher for up to $3,500 for training at one of hundreds of schools. But first, he’ll have to attend an orientation and a workshop on resume writing, and do a preliminary job search. He’ll also have to pass a basic skills test showing a ninth grade education.

Medrano will also have to meet with a career counselor like Castrillo, who helps match workers with open jobs, and approves some of them for training. When Castrillo approves training, the government evaluates her based on whether or not the trainee gets hired.  That makes Castrillo cautious to approve only the most motivated workers for training.

“We have to make a judgment about whether they are do-ers,” Castrillo said. “It all boils down to numbers.”

But with a new mandate to train more workers, career centers are looking for ways to approve clients more quickly. The stimulus legislation allows centers to hire community colleges and others to train groups of workers, and the Department of Labor says it wants them to sign contracts with schools soon.

“These contracts are intended to provide a means of quickly ramping up much-needed training capacity,” Deputy Assistant Labor Secretary Douglas Small said in a March 18 letter to state workforce agencies.

Local workforce boards are talking to the Peralta and Chabot-Las Positas community college districts about potential training contracts, but it is still not clear what types of training colleges would provide. Typically, boards use economic data to target training toward growing industries, but they are scrambling to figure out where to focus when almost every sector of the local economy is losing jobs. Unemployment reached 9.6 percent in the East Bay in February, up 88 percent from the same month last year. In the past year, California as a whole lost more than 600,000 jobs.

“Everything has changed,” said Ed Kawahara, the top consultant for the California Economic Strategy Panel, a state commission that guides workforce policies.  “We’re in dire straits.”

Even when jobs were growing, training was scattered across dozens of fields ranging from truck driving to medical billing. Last year, the 449 trainees in the East Bay enrolled in more than 160 different programs. That makes it difficult to concentrate training resources on specific types of jobs, said Linda Chandler, strategic planner for the Contra Costa Workforce Investment Board.

“We haven’t typically had that many people at one time needing one kind of training,” Chandler said.

Once they receive the money later this month, the workforce investment boards say they will put it to work within months. That could mean starting with general programs like English and computer classes until they decide which industries to target, said Virginia Hamilton, spokeswoman for the California Workforce Association, which represents all of California’s 49 workforce boards.

“At the very least we can start investing in the basic skills of our workers,” Hamilton said. “We can do that right away before we know where the jobs are going.”