As a member of Senior Class Council, I've been planning Senior Week, the week-long celebration prior to graduation that officially begins tomorrow. I'm going on literally no sleep today since a fellow perfectionist and I stayed up all night fine-tuning the design of the program for the week. As my younger and less high-strung brother (who flew in from California yesterday for the week) put it last night, Stephanie and I suffer from "the older sibling disease."

What can I say? I obsess with the details of life and Peter chooses not to bother with them.

Have a great week, and keep that feedback coming!

-Gabe

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Formed by the tumult of the organizing efforts of the late Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers union, the ALRB was perhaps the premier creation of former Gov. Jerry Brown's administration. Not only was the UFW the nation's first union for farm laborers, the ALRB was the nation's first farm union sanctioning body. For farm workers, the ALRB offered the promise, for the first time, of union contracts with the growers who formed the backbone of the nation's largest agricultural economy.

But after Brown left office in 1983, the ALRB was eviscerated by the back-to-back two-term administrations of former Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, both of whom strongly favored growers over unionized farm workers. The ALRB slid into dormancy, its clout blunted by a succession of appointees to the agency's powerful general counsel position, which decided enforcement actions.

In part, the ALRB's ineffectiveness was due to its odd bureaucratic makeup: The agency, by design, was created in two virtually autonomous pieces. On one side, there is the board, which decides policy. On the other, there is the general counsel, who enforces that policy. The bifurcated system offered Deukmjian and Wilson ample opportunity to pack the agency with appointees sympathetic to growers, who contributed heavily to the governors' political campaigns.

But the election for Democrat Gray Davis, Brown's former chief of staff, to the governorship, has dramatically changed the ALRB's dynamic.

The first indication of that was the board's decision last week to throw out a long-disputed election at a Watsonville strawberry farm won by a union backed by the company's supervisors. The board, agreeing with the UFW, ruled that the election was invalid, in part because insufficient notice had been given to workers that the election was going to be held.

It is debatable whether the board's decision will have a lasting statewide impact. But the ALRB sent a clear signal that it is now far more amenable to the UFW than it was during the Deukmejian and Wilson years.

That means that the UFW, which fell on difficult times in recent years, particularly following Chavez's death, will now find a sympathetic ear at the highest levels of Davis' administration.

It also means that resolution is likely to begin on a backlog of ALRB cases involving the UFW, and that those cases may be resolved in the UFW's favor.

Chavez, the son of a migrant worker who was present at the late-night signing in Brown's office of the law that created the ALRB, didn't live to see the changes that Davis is making in the ALRB's operations.

But he may be smiling in his grave.

I have been involved with the CHSRA for a number of years. While I agree with Mr. Aceti [refer to the letters section of last week's CAW: http://www.capenq.com/newsletter/archives/1999/may99/0244.html] regarding the lack of need for a redundant system that duplicates the airline service, I find fault with his analysis because it does not include the factor of replacement of trucks on the highways.

The simple fact is that anything that can go on the highways in a truck is a candidate for HSR. Imagine farmers in Fresno loading their trucks onto flatbeds early in the morning and off-loading them in L.A. or San Diego, delivering wares and back onto the flatbeds to come home in the evening. The amount of trucks off the highways, the reduction of pollutants, and the resultant longevity of our highways are major factors in the success of HSR.

When the HSR goes to the voters to fund, if they have not concentrated on serving markets not served by airlines presently, they will feel the might of the airline industry lobbies; HSR will never get to the people to vote upon, or if it does, millions will be spent to defeat it. Therefore, think of the economics of freight, and short haul passengers not served now by air.

Forget the San Francisco to L.A. passenger stuff. It sounds great, but will never get off the ground in a major way.

Incidentally, it will be wonderful to connect the future Palmdale Airport with LAX and the Union Station.

- Sheldon Sloan

To the Editor,

Thank you for your response to a recent letter [refer to last week's issue, whose URL is noted in the above letter] regarding the use of the term "Latino." I would like to add to your comments a major reason why "Hispanic" is unacceptable to many of us. First of all, "Hispanic" was a government-assigned term following the 1980 census to a population that is very broad and diverse. I for one am offended by the term because it is not a name that we as a community chose to name ourselves. Secondly, "Hispanic" only speaks to Spanish origin and neglects that many of us who would fall in this category have Indian and African blood.

- Anita De Lucio-Brock San Francisco, CA

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