On May 12, S.E.I.U. workers, students, labor organizers and other commmunity members demonstrated outside Sunshine Villa Assisted Living on Beach Hill in Santa Cruz. Sunshine Villa is owned by Regent Assisted Living which is based in Portland, Oregon. The owner is very worried that if Sunshine Villa is unionized, then the many other assited living facilities he owns in 7 other states will become unionized as well.

You can hear some raw audio from the rally which includes the voices of Yolanda, Robert, Jeffrey Smedberg, Joe Keffer, Julian Posadas and Cerise Ortiz. I very much regret that I made a mistake and some of the audio I recorded has been lost, which included words from Tim Fitzmaurice and Yolanda, a worker recently fired from Sunshine Villa. I'll learn from my mistake and like we told Sunshine Villa, "We'll be back."

(14:55 minutes / 5.1 MB)

On Tuesday, May 10, the Student & Worker Coalition for Justice will be holding a "Hoedown for Clerical Wage Parity!" to bring awareness to fact that UC pays clericals at UC Santa Cruz 8-20% LESS than at campuses with comparable cost of living (i.e. at UC Berkeley), as if Santa Cruz was still a "rural campus" as it once was, with a low cost of living.

Thursday, May 12, 2005
5:00PM -6:30 PM
80 Front Street, Santa Cruz