SQUID FRY 05.15.14 - Ghost Records…

GHOST RECORDS… While America gawks at the video of Solange Knowles attacking Jay-Z in an elevator – and Squid does care, since Knowles reportedly screamed at Seaside’s own Rachel Roy before jumping Hova – Squid’s digging into dorkier records. Like the Public Records Act request Monterey Peninsula Water Management District got from Public Record Strategies.

The public record company’s letterhead includes a Washington, D.C. address and a Google Voice number that didn’t return Squid’s message. But the specific salary info it got from the water district showed up in someCalifornia Am Water propaganda opposing Measure O, which led district GM David Stoldt to connect the dots. Stoldt’s agency is Switzerland on Measure O, but it’s been the subject of attack ads he says are exaggerated: “We’ve been gentlemen about it, but using a public records firm to do opposition research – it’s unseemly.”

Anti-O frontman Carlos Ramos confirms his campaign hired Public Records Strategies to make the request. (The anti-O campaign is funded entirely by Cal Am to the tune of $2.2 million, at Squid’s last check enough to pay for several Cal Am buyout studies).

Squid has Squid’s own treasure trove of PRA responses, so Squid has no problem with anti-O campaigners exercising their right to examine records. It just seems odd to use a ghost firm as middleman. And Squid can’t help but note the irony that Public Water Now, the Yes on O group, can’t do the same to Cal Am. Its executive salaries aren’t public record because the company is private, and it will stay that way if Measure O goes down.

SI SE PUEDE… Squid likes to engage in democracy from Squid’s well-worn armchair, with a shrimp-lined chavela at tentacle’s reach. But even Squid gets nostalgic for good protest songs, from Pete Seeger folk to Civil Rights-era gospel. Even the occasional United Farm Workers melody penned by Teatro Campesino’s Luis Valdez warms Squid’s stony heart.

So Squid wasn’t sure what to think when Squid learned one of the UFW’s own, former Salinas office employee Francisco Cerritos, is taking a page out of UFW’s playbook. Cerritos is resorting to union organizing and litigation to get fair treatment at work – work, in this case, being for the UFW.

Cerritos sued the union May 2, alleging it failed to pay him overtime or honor break times. Ironic, considering many of the lawsuits enabled by UFW’s activism are about the exact same things, by big agribiz against field workers.

Cerritos claims he was fired last year, after 15 years on the job, in retaliation for attempting to unionize. He helped found La Union es Para Todos Union: pretty meta, considering the UFW union is just for farmworkers, not for its office staff.