Santa Clara County supervisors have chosen to give their 16,000
county employees another day off
– 12 now with pay – to honor Cesar Chavez on March 31. Morgan
Hill’s City Hall – with 12 holidays also – will be shut down that
day, too, for the first time.
Santa Clara County supervisors have chosen to give their 16,000 county employees another day off – 12 now with pay – to honor Cesar Chavez on March 31. Morgan Hill’s City Hall – with 12 holidays also – will be shut down that day, too, for the first time.
The county holiday – which Supervisors Don Gage and Jim Beall voted against – will cost the county upwards of $650,000, during a time of considerable budget shortfalls. Naturally, some county workers will be on the job but they will be paid double time.
“It has nothing to do with the individual and whether he’s deserving or not, it’s the wrong time to do it,” said Gage, our South Valley representative by way of explaining his vote against the holiday proposal.
“We’re trying to tell people about our woes in county government and that they have to believe us when we have to cut services to them, and then we give a county holiday at the cost of a million dollars … I just have a difficult time trying to rationalize that at this time.”
Too bad the rest of the county supervisors can’t demonstrate the same common sense.
Chavez was an important man – a working man – who fought for important rights for beleaguered farmworkers. But surely the hard-working Chavez wouldn’t want his life remembered by yet another holiday. We believe he’d prefer that holiday pay to go toward health care for the poor, for example.
It’s ironic that the people whose welfare he championed – farmworkers – won’t benefit a whit from the paid holiday.
Chavez labored for decades to bring fair and just treatment to farmworkers. He fought for their protection from pesticides, for a reasonable rate of pay and for humane living conditions.
He did not labor so thousands of people have one day less access to the courts, to social workers, public health nurses and free legal representation.
He did not labor so some government employees can have yet another day to play golf or shop or go to the beach. He did not labor so working people – including many of his Latino constituents – have to find alternative child care for yet another school day.
Even in this time of economic trouble, there are ways of getting us all to think about who Chavez was and what he stood for without spending the county’s disappearing funds.
A Cesar Chavez Day is a fine idea if we all celebrate it by going about our business, running into thought-provoking Chavez posters at every turn, for the power of graphic art is real.
If the schools focus their diversity components on Chavez for the day; if libraries circle the wagons around Cesar’s history and bring it out for us all to see, perhaps we could all gain some valuable understanding.
But another holiday? According to 1996 statistics from the US Department of Labor, the average employee of a small private establishment has between 7 and 8.5 paid holidays per year. Even federal employees only get 10 paid holidays a year. County workers should be on the job March 31.
Residents will have an opportunity to hear about the farmworker experience – in English and Spanish – from Francisco Jiménez, author of “Breaking Through,” Saturday, Feb. 22, 10 a.m. to noon at the Morgan Hill Community Center, Monterey Road and East Dunne Avenue.
