August 24, 2021 • 37 mins
Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat, represents the 80th Assembly District in her hometown of San Diego. Raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse, Lorena learned the value of service early. She went to Stanford, Georgetown, and UCLA Law and dedicated her career to labor organizing before taking office in 2013. Her impressive list of wins includes: paid sick leave, overtime for farmworkers, protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault, automatic voter registration at the DMV, diaper tax relief…the list goes on and on. She talks with Alec about her controversial “gig worker bill,” which required companies to reclassify independent contractors as employees, her sharp words for Elon Musk, and why it’s time for California to elect a Latina to statewide office.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from my Heart Radio. My guest today falls into one
of my favorite categories, politicians to keep an eye on,
because they're doing amazing things. Lorraina Gonzalez represents California's eightieth
Assembly district in southern San Diego. She was first elected
(00:25):
in two thousand thirteen and got into politics after years
of working as a labor leader. She's a progressive Democrat
who supports working in middle class Californians with an impressive
list of wins, including paid sick leave, overtime for farm workers,
protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault, automatic voter registration at
(00:48):
the d m V diaper tax relief. The list goes
on and on. Growing up, Assemblywoman Gonzalez saw first hand
what government can do or not do to help working
class families. She was raised by a single mom who
put in long hours as a nurse to support Gonzalez
(01:09):
and her two older brothers. Today, Lorraina Gonzalez has five
kids in a blended family with her husband, Nathan Fletcher.
He's also in San Diego politics as a county supervisor.
Gonzalez and Fletcher are both Democrats, but that wasn't always
the case. He was a Republican. He was actually a
Republican assembly member, and at the time I was the
(01:33):
head of the a f l c I O in
San Diego, and he was always a much more moderate Republican.
But through the process when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayror,
we had a ton of discussions. This is before we
started dating or anything, and he saw the light. He
became a Democrat. Then we started dating, then we got married.
That makes sense to me. The first thing I think
(01:55):
about when I look at your biography and so forth,
beyond your family, the thing that strikes me most is
my goodness. You have the trifecta of academic credentials here
Stanford undergrad, Georgetown Masters, u c l A. Law school.
You have the credentials to have done a lot of
things for yourself. You know, you're certainly the whole Goldman
(02:20):
Sacks material academically and everything, and yet labor organizer, state Assembly.
What is it? What was the calling for you that
you wanted to forego taking care of yourself in order
to take care of other people. I put a lot
of that on my mom. So my mom for most
of my life was a single mom. She just worked
(02:40):
her ass off. I don't know else to put it.
I don't ever remember her having a forty hour work week.
She worked fifty sixty seventy hours a week, multiple jobs
at times, all to make life better, not just for
me and my brothers, to give us an opportunity to
go to college and do things, but also to make
life better for her patients, for people she was serving.
She taught me that in life, what actually matters isn't
(03:04):
how much money you have in your bank account or
how many trips you get to go on, but how
much you do to save the world. And we laugh now,
my husband and I, and it's it's a question do
you want to savor the world or save the world.
We're still on the save the world trajectory. At some point,
you know, it's everybody's right to take a step back
and savor the world a little bit. There's just so
much work to do, and I think that I saw that,
(03:26):
and I saw hard working people and saw what they
go through, and just wanted to ensure that I could
try to make other folks lives a little easier. I
moved to l A three for the first time, to work.
I lived in l A. I remember coming to California
then and it was very much a dialogue and very
much a part of the culture was migrant workers, and
(03:48):
the California was the great state of the migrant worker
in Chavez and all that legacy in the central California thing.
Now in northern San Diego County, you have a migrant
worker a labor community. Correct. We have small family farms
in San Diego. When I say small family farms, they
have somewhere between twenty five and fifty maybe up to
a hundred farm workers. So it's not like the massive
(04:09):
farms that you have in the central Valley. But we
do have small strawberry fields, flower fields, um in farm
workers where your father worked, Correct, your father worked in
the strawberry was it a migrant worker community by and large.
There it's less migratory, if you will. Um, it's more
farm workers who stay there, but they're immigrants primarily from Mexico,
and they often stopped in me their homes. In North
(04:31):
San Diego County and San Diego County, we have avocado
groves as well. So my father, like like most of
the workers even today, his father was Brasseto so it
was part of a program during the World War two
to ensure we had enough farm workers. They brought individuals
up from Mexico to work the farms at substandard wages
and sent them back home. And so my grandfather's Brasseto.
(04:53):
So my father, after hearing the stories, also wanted to
come to the United States. Uh, so he came. He
started in the straw fields in north San Diego County. Yeah,
I asked, because and you say the preferred world is
migratory workers, not migrants. Correct, Well, there's different. They're considered
immigrants or migrant workers. But I sometimes people think of
probably in the eighties, and there was a time when
(05:14):
we had workers who would come and they might work
in the fields and Imperial during certain seasons and then
migrate north and work other seasons in the pistachio or
almond fields, you know. And so they would travel throughout
California and all the way up to Washington for the
apple season. And that was a little bit different than
what we're seeing today when a lot of immigrants come
in and work one farm. Now, my friend Christina since Soon,
(05:38):
who once ran and I think co founded the Workers
Defense Fund. She mean for the Senate in Texas this
last election, and Christina since soon has run organizations to
protect migrant workers in Texas. In the construction industry, people
would would they would lose a limb, they would have
their their hand chopped off in an accident, and if
(05:59):
no benefits and nobody sources to help them deal with
their unemployment or whatever or workers compensation. So she worked
very hard and very successfully to address that. Is that
still a problem in California, whether it's in northern San
Diego County or up north of there, that these workers
lacked the protections that other workers have. It is and there.
So you brought up construction. So let's take it in
(06:20):
two different ways. And I think it's important for people
to understand this. Farm workers in the United States don't
have the same rights as other workers. There are two
sets of workers. Way back in the FDR days, right
when they pass a Fair Labor Standards Act, there are
two sets of workers that were taken out of that.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is what gives us minimum wage,
overtime protections, what we assume is kind of workplace protections
(06:41):
we have today. They took out farm workers and domestic
workers and if you think why, at the time, it
was a vestige of slavery. So the work that was
being done at that time by rural Southern African Americans
and then later by an influx of immigrants, was taken
out of basic protections, not even the right to organize
(07:02):
and so um in California, we've done a lot to
put those rights back in. So uh five years ago
we create the ail Er B which allows farm workers
to organize. We had minimum wage requirements, and just a
few years ago, in fact, I passed the bill to
ensure that farm workers also get over time. We're the
only state in the nation that has passed that. There's
(07:24):
only a couple that allow farm workers to organize or
pay minimum wage even to this day. The construction trades,
they have those protections. But what happens with a lot
of our immigrant workforce in construction, in particular janitorial work,
is employers just cheat the system. So they pay them
under the table, they don't pay them the right benefits,
they don't sign them up for workers comp so they're
(07:46):
violating the law. But when it comes to farm workers
and domestic workers, they don't even have to violate the
law because there are so few laws for most of
the country. Now there's a variety of bills and so
forth that you've authored or co authored, and I wanted
you to hopped through a couple of those, because I
find all this stuff very fascinating. Assembly Build five requiring
workers classified as employees rather than independent contractors for more
(08:09):
labor protection. Take me through that. What's the difference. Well,
over the last maybe decade, a lot of employers have
taken advantage of loopholes in the law and classified what
would be traditional employees as independent contractors. And yes, it's
cheaper for the employer, but the cost that it puts
on both the employee and society is a large has
(08:30):
to be taken accounts. So when you're an independent contractor,
the employer does not pay their person of your Social
Security or Medicare that's seven point five percent. You're responsible
for the full fiftent of those two things. They're not
required to provide healthcare. They're not required to give you
paid sick leave, paid family leave that we have in California.
They don't have to provide you with workers compensation. You
(08:52):
don't have the right to a lot of civil rights
and and sexual harassment laws. As an independent contractor, you're
viewed as an individual small business, not a worker of
the company. So obviously there's a number of benefits and
most important during COVID, which we found is nobody's paying
into unemployment insurance for you. So if you lose your job,
you're on your own. So it is this idea and
(09:13):
I can imagine and for some people it's an important
piece to be an independent contractor, to be a true
small sole proprietor small business, and we have those. You know,
you may be a plumber, you might be a doctor
that has your own business and you're on your own.
So for example, a doctor as an independent contractor, he
would then become whose employee to qualify for the benefits
(09:35):
you're enumerating here. Well, in doing a B five, we
took what was called in California a decision by the
California State Supreme Court dynamics, and we applied that it
was going to be presidential basically, and so we applied
it to our entire labor code, and we said, but
there will be exceptions, and we took the reasoning and
the decision that said, if you have the ability to
bargain for yourself, if you truly require a certain certificate education,
(09:59):
you have the ability to provide these things for yourself.
Were less concerned, right, because what happens is a doctor
doesn't need these benefits necessarily, they self ensure they self
provide them, and then if something goes wrong, society is
not on the hook, right, It's not like some taxpayer
funded program. They can actually take care of themselves. If
a janitor is classified as an independent contractor and doesn't
(10:21):
have those benefits and they lose their job, they're going
to end up on state sponsored support. We we don't
want people to to be homeless or go hungary, so
we do provide a safety net, but they don't have
somebody paying into the system. There's no social contract that
was established. And those companies who are misclassifying workers are
at a competitive advantage over companies who are biding by
(10:42):
the law. So this is just strengthening the existing law.
And a lot of this came about because of the
upswing of all these tech companies that think if you're
hired through an app, you're an independent contract or your
own business, right, And that's what I'm curious about is
that is that let's say I have a building an
office building, but you're telling me that they will hire
janitorial staff and call them independent contractors and not call
(11:05):
them employees. So usually what would happen if you hired
a building is you hire janitorial company and you don't
know you have the building. You hire a company. That's
all fine, But the people working for the company, they
would be independent contractors when they're actually just employees who
have been misclassified. Give us the most vivid example of
who the bill was aimed to help. The bill was
(11:26):
aimed to help delivery drivers for Uber. For example, right yep,
I carry my Uber Eats bag. I'm being told where
to go, when to go. I can't negotiate with Uber
over my pay I can't negotiate with Uber over whether
or not I want to take a certain job. And
uh Uber says, I'm a small business and I have
to pay for my own expenses, for my own insurance. UM,
(11:47):
I have to pay my own taxes. There's no payroll
taxes taken out. Uber investors and Uber owners get very
very very wealthy and billionaires and the workers making submimum wage.
Another area is in two thou in seventeen. This one
was very sensitive to me because I was involved tangentially,
but I was part of drafting and circulating petitions in
(12:08):
terms of lead paint in the schools of New York
and in two thousands seventeen, you would have be requiring
all K through twelve schools to test their drinking water
for lead. Did your concern for this issue in was
the trigger that you're a mother? What was the genesis
of that? Obviously A lot of what I do is
the fact that I am a mom, and I'm a
(12:28):
mom first, right, So I approach a lot of issues
that we're facing as any mother would. Yes, you send
your kids, I send my kids public school. I hope
and pray um that they're safe, that nobody's going to
gun them down, that nobody is going to um poison them,
that nobody's gonna sexually abuse them, and that they'll get
a good education at the same time, So there's a
(12:49):
lot of trust we put into our schools. And we
had a situation in my district where it was a
really odd situation. A dog, they put water out and
the all that reacted to it, and so they end
up testing the water and um, the water had lead
in it. And this is like New York City. We've
we fought for years in my community in particular, which
(13:10):
is a Latino working class community, to replace lead paint
in the houses. We took lead out of candy. We
know that it poisons children and disproportionately poor children, and
so when we found it in the water fountain at school,
it was a shell shock for me because the one
thing you sent your kid to school and you're like,
(13:31):
don't drink the sugary drinks. Go have some water, Go
drink some water, drink for the water fown, drink more,
you know, and like how many times drink diet code exactly?
And I thought, oh my gosh, for my own kids,
you think of that thought, like how many times do
I say, okay, after pe make sure you drink some
water from the water fountain, you know, hydrate? Well a
little did I know We're sending kids to poison themselves.
(13:52):
So what we did is in some of these schools
are very, very old, and we said it's time to
test it for lead. And we got a lot of pushback.
Everybody's like, well, is it makes sense to test? I'm like,
how can we not test when we know that there's
lead in the water. Who on earth would be opposed
to testing the drinking border of your children in the school?
(14:12):
Who people who know that if it's positive, they're going
to have to pay to replace the pipe? Right? What
was the upshot of that in two thousand and seventeen,
Did the testing lead to any remediation of the problem
that they ripped the pipes at a certain schools? Or
what happened? They filter? It was filtration the answer filtration um.
They replaced, they brought in water stations to some And
what happened is there there had already been a number
(14:35):
of school bonds that had passed, both statewide school bonds
as well as local school bonds. And what happened as
soon as they started finding this then you know, when
you pass the school bond, there's a lot of things
you can spend it on. In in San Diego Unified,
for example, had well, we had some football fields and
some lighting that needed done, and we wanted, you know,
some hvac um done in the classrooms, all important things.
(14:57):
But if you find lead in the water, guess what
replacing the as water fountains gets to the top of
the list in money that was already going to be
spent it becomes prioritized. So the world didn't end. The
waters has been tested, and now it's being fixed. California
Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez. If listening to interviews with up and
(15:18):
coming politicians gives you a sense of hope, be sure
to check out my conversation with Texan Christina since Soon,
who co founded the Workers Defense Project. I think that
there's an image of Texas that people have that is
not the true Texas story. When people think about Texas,
they usually think about us in a singular way of
people like my white grandfather, which was a cowboy. And
(15:41):
the truth is that the state is you know, you
have a city like Houston, it's one of the most
diversities in the entire country. You have one in three
Texans that are immigrants, were children of immigrants. The state's
population is Latino. It's majority people of color. At this point,
here more of my conversation with Christina since Soon in
our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
(16:05):
Lorena Gonzalez talks about cheerleaders and her fight to get
California's biggest sports teams to pay them like the professionals
they are. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
(16:30):
here's the thing. In two thousand eighteen, Lorena Gonzalez co
authored a bill which put California on a path to
generate of its electricity from clean, carbon neutral energy sources
by two thouty five. She says, the state is on
track to meet its goal even sooner. We're already almost there.
(16:52):
I gotta be honest, We're gonna get renewable quicker than
we had imagined or hoped. But that's because we required
it by way of what. By way of large scale
solar farms that you're seeing go up wind energy that
you're seeing. We're exploring other forms, biomass, pub stations, things
to provide renewable energy sources throughout California. Obviously rooftop solar
(17:15):
plays a role in that, but we have really adopted
in California an approach that is getting us on any
given Saturday, about of the energy coming through a grid
is now coming from renewable sources. Well, the reason I
mentioned this is because I was involved with a group
of people who were this was all theoretical, No, nothing
was getting to the legislative phase where we were saying
(17:37):
how we wanted the federal government to withhold you know,
the classic withholding of transportation dollars. And there's always the
threat of withholding those dollars if you don't this or
that or this or that. And what we wanted to
do was we wanted to demand that the states do
the two following things. That any construction over a certain size,
over a certain square footage of any public building, college, dormitory,
(18:01):
high school, airport, library, hospital, you name it, anything that
was funded by state or local or federal dollars, that
any refurbishment over a certain size, and any new construction
over a certain size, you would demand that they had
some photovoltaic element built into that construction where there was
solar panels on the grounds, solar panels on the skin
(18:22):
of the building or the roof of the building, something.
And the second thing we wanted to demand was that
any purchase of or any maintenance of fleet vehicles over
a certain size, and exempting emergency vehicles like fire and
ambulance and police because you can't have them have to
plug in. You have to have hybrids there at best,
but any of the fleet vehicles you had to go
fully electric, fully plugged in by a certain year or
(18:44):
you were going to get the transportation dollars. Is there
anything like that on the drawing board in California? I
love that, But we're moving towards that naturally in California,
not with withholding funds. Under our previous governor, Jerry Brown,
he mandated that all new construction of houses have to
have roof top solar private homes, private homes, new construction
and private homes have to have rooftop solar. Unfortunately, there's
(19:06):
not a lot of new homes being built. You have
that now in California, yeah, yea through executive order, through
the governor, and so we we naturally have some requirements
that were put in. Tom Steyer did an initiative a
few years ago, Prop thirty nine, which provided for schools
to be able to put solar on their rooftop. You know,
it's good green jobs, and it's good for the environment,
(19:28):
and it pulls down the cost of their energy bills.
So it really did work. We had money available for that.
We are going towards a gasless society. We have goals
um hopefully we'll be codified. I think in the next
few years that will say, by by this year, we're
going to have all electric vehicles, but we have to
do the hard work with that. It's not enough to
(19:48):
say that we've got to have more charging stations. I
always give example my husband. I. We have an electric
vehicle and we live in my district. It's one of
the poorest districts in California. It's a porst coastal district
in California, and there aren't charging stations. You know. Luckily,
we can charge at work. He works at the county
building and work at the State building. Um, we we
have rooftop solar and we can charge at home. But
(20:10):
a lot of apartments in multifamily complexes and working class
communities don't have charging stations. And so as we moved
electric vehicles, we really have to think about that piece
as well, the infrastructure necessary to get us off of
fossil fuels. How did you get involved with the cause
of the cheerleaders in the NFL as you lost I
(20:30):
guess you lost your box seats at the Chargers game.
I was not a popular person at the Chargers I'll
tell you that. Uh what happened, to be honest, is
you got a figure. I was actually a Stanford cheerleader,
so I was a cheerleader and a labor leader, right,
I know how to use a bullhorn and a megaphone. Um,
it's it's a rare combination. So when I had read
(20:52):
at the time the raider at the cheerleaders for the
Raiders had started a couple of them start a lawsuit
against the Raiders for not paying the minimum wage because
they were classified actually as independent contractors. And so I
talked to the attorneys, and I'm an attorney, so I
talked to their attorneys and I was like, this is outrageous.
They're basically almost pain to do this fantastic job. Yes,
(21:14):
it's a job women want, it's a job that that
is respected to a certain extent, but it's still a
job everybody else on the football field. It doesn't matter
if you're the physical trainer. It doesn't matter if you're
the person picking up the trash. It doesn't matter if
you're selling the peanuts, if you're the coach, if you're
the player. You're all being paid like an employee. And
these cheerleaders were being given a stipend, being penalized. They
(21:36):
signed an employment contract with the NFL. So I said,
this is easy. We're going to make them by code
employees so that they have basic labor protections in California.
And so I remember the first time I introduced it,
and of course a lot of journalists were more fascinated
with fact that I was a cheerleader at Stanford and
one of those pictures, and so we're like, all right,
here's a picture, now can we talk about this really
important issue? And and then my favorite part of the
(22:00):
story is having to go to then Governor Jerry Brown.
And he's anyone who knows he's a little I don't
want to say crotchety. You just never quite know what
you would get with a no nonsense guy. No nonsense,
and I mean, I'm like, God, I got to talk
to him about cheerleaders, like this is gonna And so
I said, um, we were at a dinner together, and
(22:20):
I said, Governor, when you have a chancel and talk
to you about this bill I'm working on. It has
to do with professional cheerleaders. And he said I was
a cheerleader, and I was like, are you kidding me?
He apparently he was a cheerleader in college or high school.
And so I was like, oh, I think I'm going
to get this one. But we did. I'm very proud
of that. So what was that path? Was it directed
(22:42):
at an individual team or was this league why you
wanted the NFL to recognize. Was the situation in San
Diego duplicated at all the NFL teams, Well, none of
them were getting paid. None of the NFL cheerleaders to
this day, only in California do they have rights as
an employee. There was a bill actually introduced in New
York as well, but it never made it through. So
(23:02):
it was any professional sports teams in California, the dancers
or cheerleaders have to be treated and have the basic
labor protections of an employee. So that includes, of course
the Chargers, the Rams, the Lakers. It was basketball and football.
So I was going to ask about that because I
go to Knicks games where I used to and those
(23:23):
women were out there not getting paid either now and
a lot of them, but they are now only in California.
There's a national fight still against the NFL. There's been
a lot of lawsuits, a lot of the teams have
lost lawsuits, and there's been a lot more attention to it.
There's a couple of documentaries and issues pertained to it.
We'd like to see it, of course, on the national level.
So I had the lawsuit work in California and not
(23:43):
in the other states. Well, it was settled, and so
in other states it's been settled as well. But so
often when you settled these lawsuits on worker issues, the
judge accepts a settlement, so it makes whole the workers
who were suing, but it doesn't force companies to fix
the problem. So it's kind of like an ongoing invitation
(24:04):
to sue without fixing the problem. And that's why sometimes
you need legislation to come in and say, all right,
nobody can do this, this is enough. Now, in two
thousand nineteen, you passed legislation that extends the statute of
limitations for survivors of sexual abuse who are seeking justice
in court. Now, I think most of our listeners know
what a statute of limitations is, but I want you
(24:26):
to explain, as an attorney, the reason for a statute
of limitations In most cases, and there are some crimes
I believe, like murder, where there is no statute of limitations.
But where there is a statute of limitations in place,
why is there one? There's often a statute for a
variety of reasons. One, um, you can't preserve evidence. So
you know, I could say, hey, when twenty years ago
(24:46):
you stole this TV from me, Well, that TV doesn't exist.
Witnesses probably don't exist. It's hard to pin that down.
People die, they move away exactly, or or they forget
I mean quite frankly, you know, I can't remember ty
years ago probably, So to have integrity in the trial
of the witnesses, you need to do it in a
certain time frame. But childhood sexual assault is unique. So
(25:08):
there's some things that made it unique and made the
Statute of limitations very damaging. Number one. So often the
primary witness, the child themselves, uh, suppresses it, basically doesn't
think about it, doesn't come to terms with it, and
until later in life when they're dealing with a failed
marriage or depression that it comes out. And so sometimes
you know that's the primary witness is a person who
(25:29):
was assaulted, if you will. And what we had with
childhood sexual assault is actually a lot of people knew
what was happening. We actually have official documents, like the church,
the Boy Scouts, they actually had complaints that were filed
that were put away that there still exist and you
still need all of this proof if you will, to
establish a case, but it allows time to have passed
and yet still victims to get some sort of justice.
(25:53):
I want to go back to you as a mom
because you do have five kids, correct five. We we
have five together. It's a blended family. But our two
youngests are adopted. And then I have an eighteen year
old who is just graduated and headed to college. I'm
a stepmother to a twenty two year old who's deployed
in the Marines. And then I have a twenty five
year old and she works in the industry, a little
(26:15):
kind of working her way, clawing her way up from
I think she's an art coordinator. Now what does she
want to do? She's on the production side. She works
for Netflix. Well, what do you want for your kids
in this world? You know, my children, probably like yours.
I feel, in some ways, are really lucky. They were
born into a privilege I could have never imagined. They
will never know for want. They will always have healthcare,
(26:36):
and that's a good thing. I want them to continue
to have the basics in life that allow them to
be happy. So for me, I think what would make
my kids happy and I don't know. I have a
ten year old, a thirteen year old, and eighteen year old.
I want them to be able to love and marry
whoever they want to love and marry. I want them
to be able to work hard and get paid a
(26:58):
decent living. I want them to be able to have
help care. I want them to have air to breathe.
I want them to be able to choose a life
for themselves that brings them joy. And that's all it
comes down to. My mom expected and she's past, but
you know what, she expected so much out of me.
She expected me to make the world better for other people.
(27:19):
I think I'm to a point where I want them
to contribute positively the world, and I think they'll do
that if they're happy, and all the things that we
work on is to get them a society where they
can live and let live and enjoy life and hopefully
put a hand out and help other people as well.
California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. If you're enjoying this conversation, be
(27:42):
sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I
Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, please leave us a review when we
come back. Lorena Gonzalez pushes back against rumors of an
exodus among California's wealth East two states with lower income taxes.
(28:03):
Gonzalez makes the case for why they should stay. I'm
Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. California Assemblywoman
Lorraina Gonzalez speaks her mind. In a tweet from May.
(28:25):
She had some choice words for Elon Musk after she
found out he was moving his Tesla plant from California
to Texas. Look, my mouth gets me in trouble. I'd
lie if I said otherwise. I say exactly what I
think and what I mean. But you have to look
in context. Elon Musk has made a crapload of money
off of California taxpayers. And if people don't understand why,
(28:47):
it's because everything he makes is subsidized by taxpayers. So
the Tesla's that flew off the market, those all had
taxpayer rebates on a hundred thousand dollar cards. I mean,
people who didn't need the rebates were given them because
we want to encourage electric NICs. His solar panels and
solar storage had been highly subsidized by the state California,
so taxpayers have helped make him a billionaire. In California.
(29:09):
We have really supported Elon Musk, and coming from the
labor movement, he hasn't really been too good on worker issues,
so he's been slapped down by the n l r B.
He's he's anti worker. He's had really some big safety
problems in his facility. So I've always been a little irked, like,
here we are giving you taxpayer dollars and you can't
even abide by the law when it comes to union organizing.
That upsets me. Well, during the pandemic, he decided, forget it,
(29:33):
I don't like these orders. I'm going to open up
my factory in Fremont. It doesn't matter what the county
public health officer is saying. And you're talking about an
area where we had tons of Latinos dying from COVID.
We had the spread. It was at roaring at the time.
So he brings back his workers and he says, if
anyone stops him, he's going to take his jobs to Texas.
I mean, at some point, look, every elected official in
(29:55):
California should be saying I won't say it here, but
go go away. Elon mus There is a point where
where as elected officials. And this kills me. It doesn't
matter who it is who is getting things from us, right,
Leadership is also being able to make those tough decisions
and say, hey, al right, we like your product, we
(30:16):
like what you're doing for the environment. But by the way,
we've got rules and we're going it doesn't matter who
you are, you're going to stick by the rules too.
And it it irks me that so many of our
rules in California, in this nation, we apply them disproportionately
to communities like mine and not to billionaires like Elon Musk.
And I think we have to be stronger about that.
He has a lot of fans on Twitter, and I
(30:38):
got a lot of lush comes with the territory. It does.
I'm assuming that California is similar to New York, where
the COVID has driven some measurable amount of businesses out
of the state. Correct, it's a high tech state. New
York is really struck. I got friends of mine who
I mean, people that I never dreamed I mean in
the EBB and flow of the fiscal health of New York.
(31:00):
Now when the city most needs the money, they're gonna
have the lowest income tax revenue. They're raising taxes and everybody.
It's really really painful, but a very very measurable and
healthy number of people, at least from my optics, who
I never dreamed they would leave New York as their home.
They might keep a little piano tear there, but who
New York was their home. New York City was their home,
and they were willing, maybe not happy, but willing to
(31:22):
pay the taxes because New York was They're gone. They
sold their homes huge apart, moved to Florida. Moved, they moved.
Then they figured, while I'm gonna move, I'm gonna go
all the way. I'm gonna move to a no tax state.
So they mean people who would say they'd rather die
than live in Florida, they're going to Florida. The same
problem in California, people leaving. Well, I think that that's
a storyline. I think if you look at the numbers
(31:43):
that that doesn't quite add up. And I don't know
exactly what's happening in New York, but I will say
California had its best budget year ever because we have
created more billionaires during this pandemic than ever before. And
so unfortunately, what we're facing in California. There's a lot
of talk about the exodus, but it's not quite as
real as as people like to say when you look
at the actual numbers, and in fact, our income tax
(32:05):
revenues are out of control. They're so healthy because of
the very rich that we have, good for you, But
income inequality has become a real threat. So as we
continue to build billionaires in California and Silicon Valley continues
to create new billionaires, we've got to figure out how
we take care of people who just work for a living, right,
the people who service the tourism industry, the people who
(32:28):
serve people fast food, the folks who really are just
struggling gift by, like I always say, the people who
inspired me. The reason I am in politics is because
you have folks who are on their feet, working forty
sixty hours a week, multiple jobs, especially in immigrant communities
like mine, and and the fact that they cannot afford
housing or to put a little money away from retirement
or to send their kid to college is is something
(32:50):
we've got to address. So, yeah, I get it. Moved
to a no tax state, Go ahead, and you get
what you pay for. Look, I don't want to be
in Florida, where building codes are and in their approach
to climate change is so bad that that we have
a mass catastrophe happening. You know, I'll pay my property taxes.
I just I want to make sure that we have
an equitable society for everybody, not just those at the top.
(33:13):
I want to live in the state and its good
building codes. Yeah. God, it's just devastating. Just a brief question,
Why Secretary of State, have you announced or you don't
want to say that on the air. I did announce
with then we had a little bit. I actually it's
on hold because I announced a few years ago early.
There have there's never been a Latina in statewide office,
and so it is the only demographic in California that
(33:36):
has never achieved statewide office. So we announced, we raised money,
and then our Secretary State, Alex Paedia, was appointed by
the governor to be a U S Senator, and the
governor appointed Dr Shirley Weber, an African American icon, to
the position of Secretary State. So my plans are a
little on hold, and until she finishes up now it
won't be an open seat in two like I had hoped.
(33:58):
But the reason I am interested in Scretaria State and
I've done a lot of work on voting. In fact,
I authored the bill to have automatic registration and we
are now at eight percent registered voters. I think the
more people who vote, the more we open up democracy
in in California. In the world, you have elected officials
who reflect real people. You have people who remember what
(34:19):
it's like to have a mom who works sixty hours
a week. You elect people who remember what it's like
to talk to to the workers at the bus stop
on the way to school. You know, remember what it's
like to have a father who immigrated here in whose
papers um don't quite match things the way they should.
So when you have a broader electorate, you having more
diverse elected officials, and then you have better policy. So
(34:42):
that's that's why I want to be Secretary State eventually
and UH and continue to push the idea of having
as many people participating elections as possible. Well, thank you
for the update. Are you going to go back to
the Assembly and run again next year? You're gonna run
for another office? I'm running for re election in two
and we're seen what's out there. I mean, there's congressional
(35:02):
seats are in the future. I don't know we're redistricting
right now. There's statewide seats. The bottom line is this,
and I talked about this a lot. Latinas are of
the population California, right Latino's overall ourt but Latina's female
Latinos are of the population, and we are the most
underrepresented in every form of life, including elected office. And
so my job and my goal is to continue to
(35:25):
push for regular folks and to also service hopefully a
time when when I won't be the first Latina to
do or serve as something, but we've got to continue
to push that. Well, let me just say this because
we wrap up, and I really mean this, Jenemy, you
were such an amazing woman and all your credentials and
your accomplishments and your passion, you're somebody who it's still
your task to save the world, I'm afraid, and not
(35:47):
savor the world. You have to have to postpone the
saving of the world a little bit longer. You and
your husband. You have to keep going. There's no turning back.
You've got to keep running and keep doing this great
work you're doing. You've been doing a amazing work and
you were such a role model. We wanted you on
because people spoke so highly of you. Andrew Day, the actress,
(36:08):
was talking about the work you did with that school
down there. Robert E. Lee. Yeah, in San Diego, you
can imagine, Yes, because we care about our history, you
had the name of the school changed. You and other
people were working on that cause I did. And this
was before we kind of started attacking the Confederate name issue,
so I got to see what people said before they
(36:28):
realized it was politically incorrect. But you don't have a
school in San Diego named after Robert E. Lee in
the nineteen fifties, the same year that we ended segregation
in the schools, and it not be tied to racism.
So that school today is over kids of color and
they finally don't have to go to school that is
named after not just the biggest traitor in our in
(36:49):
our history, but somebody who was fighting to keep people segregated,
in keep people enslaved. Well, what an honor it is
to get to meet you. I know your time is valuable.
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. California Assemblywoman
Lorreina Gonzalez. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
(37:10):
to you by iHeart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Carrie donohue, and Zach McNeese. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing
from my Heart Radio. My guest today falls into one
of my favorite categories, politicians to keep an eye on,
because they're doing amazing things. Lorraina Gonzalez represents California's eightieth
Assembly district in southern San Diego. She was first elected
(00:25):
in two thousand thirteen and got into politics after years
of working as a labor leader. She's a progressive Democrat
who supports working in middle class Californians with an impressive
list of wins, including paid sick leave, overtime for farm workers,
protecting janitorial workers against sexual assault, automatic voter registration at
(00:48):
the d m V diaper tax relief. The list goes
on and on. Growing up, Assemblywoman Gonzalez saw first hand
what government can do or not do to help working
class families. She was raised by a single mom who
put in long hours as a nurse to support Gonzalez
(01:09):
and her two older brothers. Today, Lorraina Gonzalez has five
kids in a blended family with her husband, Nathan Fletcher.
He's also in San Diego politics as a county supervisor.
Gonzalez and Fletcher are both Democrats, but that wasn't always
the case. He was a Republican. He was actually a
Republican assembly member, and at the time I was the
(01:33):
head of the a f l c I O in
San Diego, and he was always a much more moderate Republican.
But through the process when he ran unsuccessfully for Mayror,
we had a ton of discussions. This is before we
started dating or anything, and he saw the light. He
became a Democrat. Then we started dating, then we got married.
That makes sense to me. The first thing I think
(01:55):
about when I look at your biography and so forth,
beyond your family, the thing that strikes me most is
my goodness. You have the trifecta of academic credentials here
Stanford undergrad, Georgetown Masters, u c l A. Law school.
You have the credentials to have done a lot of
things for yourself. You know, you're certainly the whole Goldman
(02:20):
Sacks material academically and everything, and yet labor organizer, state Assembly.
What is it? What was the calling for you that
you wanted to forego taking care of yourself in order
to take care of other people. I put a lot
of that on my mom. So my mom for most
of my life was a single mom. She just worked
(02:40):
her ass off. I don't know else to put it.
I don't ever remember her having a forty hour work week.
She worked fifty sixty seventy hours a week, multiple jobs
at times, all to make life better, not just for
me and my brothers, to give us an opportunity to
go to college and do things, but also to make
life better for her patients, for people she was serving.
She taught me that in life, what actually matters isn't
(03:04):
how much money you have in your bank account or
how many trips you get to go on, but how
much you do to save the world. And we laugh now,
my husband and I, and it's it's a question do
you want to savor the world or save the world.
We're still on the save the world trajectory. At some point,
you know, it's everybody's right to take a step back
and savor the world a little bit. There's just so
much work to do, and I think that I saw that,
(03:26):
and I saw hard working people and saw what they
go through, and just wanted to ensure that I could
try to make other folks lives a little easier. I
moved to l A three for the first time, to work.
I lived in l A. I remember coming to California
then and it was very much a dialogue and very
much a part of the culture was migrant workers, and
(03:48):
the California was the great state of the migrant worker
in Chavez and all that legacy in the central California thing.
Now in northern San Diego County, you have a migrant
worker a labor community. Correct. We have small family farms
in San Diego. When I say small family farms, they
have somewhere between twenty five and fifty maybe up to
a hundred farm workers. So it's not like the massive
(04:09):
farms that you have in the central Valley. But we
do have small strawberry fields, flower fields, um in farm
workers where your father worked, Correct, your father worked in
the strawberry was it a migrant worker community by and large.
There it's less migratory, if you will. Um, it's more
farm workers who stay there, but they're immigrants primarily from Mexico,
and they often stopped in me their homes. In North
(04:31):
San Diego County and San Diego County, we have avocado
groves as well. So my father, like like most of
the workers even today, his father was Brasseto so it
was part of a program during the World War two
to ensure we had enough farm workers. They brought individuals
up from Mexico to work the farms at substandard wages
and sent them back home. And so my grandfather's Brasseto.
(04:53):
So my father, after hearing the stories, also wanted to
come to the United States. Uh, so he came. He
started in the straw fields in north San Diego County. Yeah,
I asked, because and you say the preferred world is
migratory workers, not migrants. Correct, Well, there's different. They're considered
immigrants or migrant workers. But I sometimes people think of
probably in the eighties, and there was a time when
(05:14):
we had workers who would come and they might work
in the fields and Imperial during certain seasons and then
migrate north and work other seasons in the pistachio or
almond fields, you know. And so they would travel throughout
California and all the way up to Washington for the
apple season. And that was a little bit different than
what we're seeing today when a lot of immigrants come
in and work one farm. Now, my friend Christina since Soon,
(05:38):
who once ran and I think co founded the Workers
Defense Fund. She mean for the Senate in Texas this
last election, and Christina since soon has run organizations to
protect migrant workers in Texas. In the construction industry, people
would would they would lose a limb, they would have
their their hand chopped off in an accident, and if
(05:59):
no benefits and nobody sources to help them deal with
their unemployment or whatever or workers compensation. So she worked
very hard and very successfully to address that. Is that
still a problem in California, whether it's in northern San
Diego County or up north of there, that these workers
lacked the protections that other workers have. It is and there.
So you brought up construction. So let's take it in
(06:20):
two different ways. And I think it's important for people
to understand this. Farm workers in the United States don't
have the same rights as other workers. There are two
sets of workers. Way back in the FDR days, right
when they pass a Fair Labor Standards Act, there are
two sets of workers that were taken out of that.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is what gives us minimum wage,
overtime protections, what we assume is kind of workplace protections
(06:41):
we have today. They took out farm workers and domestic
workers and if you think why, at the time, it
was a vestige of slavery. So the work that was
being done at that time by rural Southern African Americans
and then later by an influx of immigrants, was taken
out of basic protections, not even the right to organize
(07:02):
and so um in California, we've done a lot to
put those rights back in. So uh five years ago
we create the ail Er B which allows farm workers
to organize. We had minimum wage requirements, and just a
few years ago, in fact, I passed the bill to
ensure that farm workers also get over time. We're the
only state in the nation that has passed that. There's
(07:24):
only a couple that allow farm workers to organize or
pay minimum wage even to this day. The construction trades,
they have those protections. But what happens with a lot
of our immigrant workforce in construction, in particular janitorial work,
is employers just cheat the system. So they pay them
under the table, they don't pay them the right benefits,
they don't sign them up for workers comp so they're
(07:46):
violating the law. But when it comes to farm workers
and domestic workers, they don't even have to violate the
law because there are so few laws for most of
the country. Now there's a variety of bills and so
forth that you've authored or co authored, and I wanted
you to hopped through a couple of those, because I
find all this stuff very fascinating. Assembly Build five requiring
workers classified as employees rather than independent contractors for more
(08:09):
labor protection. Take me through that. What's the difference. Well,
over the last maybe decade, a lot of employers have
taken advantage of loopholes in the law and classified what
would be traditional employees as independent contractors. And yes, it's
cheaper for the employer, but the cost that it puts
on both the employee and society is a large has
(08:30):
to be taken accounts. So when you're an independent contractor,
the employer does not pay their person of your Social
Security or Medicare that's seven point five percent. You're responsible
for the full fiftent of those two things. They're not
required to provide healthcare. They're not required to give you
paid sick leave, paid family leave that we have in California.
They don't have to provide you with workers compensation. You
(08:52):
don't have the right to a lot of civil rights
and and sexual harassment laws. As an independent contractor, you're
viewed as an individual small business, not a worker of
the company. So obviously there's a number of benefits and
most important during COVID, which we found is nobody's paying
into unemployment insurance for you. So if you lose your job,
you're on your own. So it is this idea and
(09:13):
I can imagine and for some people it's an important
piece to be an independent contractor, to be a true
small sole proprietor small business, and we have those. You know,
you may be a plumber, you might be a doctor
that has your own business and you're on your own.
So for example, a doctor as an independent contractor, he
would then become whose employee to qualify for the benefits
(09:35):
you're enumerating here. Well, in doing a B five, we
took what was called in California a decision by the
California State Supreme Court dynamics, and we applied that it
was going to be presidential basically, and so we applied
it to our entire labor code, and we said, but
there will be exceptions, and we took the reasoning and
the decision that said, if you have the ability to
bargain for yourself, if you truly require a certain certificate education,
(09:59):
you have the ability to provide these things for yourself.
Were less concerned, right, because what happens is a doctor
doesn't need these benefits necessarily, they self ensure they self
provide them, and then if something goes wrong, society is
not on the hook, right, It's not like some taxpayer
funded program. They can actually take care of themselves. If
a janitor is classified as an independent contractor and doesn't
(10:21):
have those benefits and they lose their job, they're going
to end up on state sponsored support. We we don't
want people to to be homeless or go hungary, so
we do provide a safety net, but they don't have
somebody paying into the system. There's no social contract that
was established. And those companies who are misclassifying workers are
at a competitive advantage over companies who are biding by
(10:42):
the law. So this is just strengthening the existing law.
And a lot of this came about because of the
upswing of all these tech companies that think if you're
hired through an app, you're an independent contract or your
own business, right, And that's what I'm curious about is
that is that let's say I have a building an
office building, but you're telling me that they will hire
janitorial staff and call them independent contractors and not call
(11:05):
them employees. So usually what would happen if you hired
a building is you hire janitorial company and you don't
know you have the building. You hire a company. That's
all fine, But the people working for the company, they
would be independent contractors when they're actually just employees who
have been misclassified. Give us the most vivid example of
who the bill was aimed to help. The bill was
(11:26):
aimed to help delivery drivers for Uber. For example, right yep,
I carry my Uber Eats bag. I'm being told where
to go, when to go. I can't negotiate with Uber
over my pay I can't negotiate with Uber over whether
or not I want to take a certain job. And
uh Uber says, I'm a small business and I have
to pay for my own expenses, for my own insurance. UM,
(11:47):
I have to pay my own taxes. There's no payroll
taxes taken out. Uber investors and Uber owners get very
very very wealthy and billionaires and the workers making submimum wage.
Another area is in two thou in seventeen. This one
was very sensitive to me because I was involved tangentially,
but I was part of drafting and circulating petitions in
(12:08):
terms of lead paint in the schools of New York
and in two thousands seventeen, you would have be requiring
all K through twelve schools to test their drinking water
for lead. Did your concern for this issue in was
the trigger that you're a mother? What was the genesis
of that? Obviously A lot of what I do is
the fact that I am a mom, and I'm a
(12:28):
mom first, right, So I approach a lot of issues
that we're facing as any mother would. Yes, you send
your kids, I send my kids public school. I hope
and pray um that they're safe, that nobody's going to
gun them down, that nobody is going to um poison them,
that nobody's gonna sexually abuse them, and that they'll get
a good education at the same time, So there's a
(12:49):
lot of trust we put into our schools. And we
had a situation in my district where it was a
really odd situation. A dog, they put water out and
the all that reacted to it, and so they end
up testing the water and um, the water had lead
in it. And this is like New York City. We've
we fought for years in my community in particular, which
(13:10):
is a Latino working class community, to replace lead paint
in the houses. We took lead out of candy. We
know that it poisons children and disproportionately poor children, and
so when we found it in the water fountain at school,
it was a shell shock for me because the one
thing you sent your kid to school and you're like,
(13:31):
don't drink the sugary drinks. Go have some water, Go
drink some water, drink for the water fown, drink more,
you know, and like how many times drink diet code exactly?
And I thought, oh my gosh, for my own kids,
you think of that thought, like how many times do
I say, okay, after pe make sure you drink some
water from the water fountain, you know, hydrate? Well a
little did I know We're sending kids to poison themselves.
(13:52):
So what we did is in some of these schools
are very, very old, and we said it's time to
test it for lead. And we got a lot of pushback.
Everybody's like, well, is it makes sense to test? I'm like,
how can we not test when we know that there's
lead in the water. Who on earth would be opposed
to testing the drinking border of your children in the school?
(14:12):
Who people who know that if it's positive, they're going
to have to pay to replace the pipe? Right? What
was the upshot of that in two thousand and seventeen,
Did the testing lead to any remediation of the problem
that they ripped the pipes at a certain schools? Or
what happened? They filter? It was filtration the answer filtration um.
They replaced, they brought in water stations to some And
what happened is there there had already been a number
(14:35):
of school bonds that had passed, both statewide school bonds
as well as local school bonds. And what happened as
soon as they started finding this then you know, when
you pass the school bond, there's a lot of things
you can spend it on. In in San Diego Unified,
for example, had well, we had some football fields and
some lighting that needed done, and we wanted, you know,
some hvac um done in the classrooms, all important things.
(14:57):
But if you find lead in the water, guess what
replacing the as water fountains gets to the top of
the list in money that was already going to be
spent it becomes prioritized. So the world didn't end. The
waters has been tested, and now it's being fixed. California
Assemblywoman Lorraina Gonzalez. If listening to interviews with up and
(15:18):
coming politicians gives you a sense of hope, be sure
to check out my conversation with Texan Christina since Soon,
who co founded the Workers Defense Project. I think that
there's an image of Texas that people have that is
not the true Texas story. When people think about Texas,
they usually think about us in a singular way of
people like my white grandfather, which was a cowboy. And
(15:41):
the truth is that the state is you know, you
have a city like Houston, it's one of the most
diversities in the entire country. You have one in three
Texans that are immigrants, were children of immigrants. The state's
population is Latino. It's majority people of color. At this point,
here more of my conversation with Christina since Soon in
our archives at Here's the Thing dot org. After the break,
(16:05):
Lorena Gonzalez talks about cheerleaders and her fight to get
California's biggest sports teams to pay them like the professionals
they are. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
(16:30):
here's the thing. In two thousand eighteen, Lorena Gonzalez co
authored a bill which put California on a path to
generate of its electricity from clean, carbon neutral energy sources
by two thouty five. She says, the state is on
track to meet its goal even sooner. We're already almost there.
(16:52):
I gotta be honest, We're gonna get renewable quicker than
we had imagined or hoped. But that's because we required
it by way of what. By way of large scale
solar farms that you're seeing go up wind energy that
you're seeing. We're exploring other forms, biomass, pub stations, things
to provide renewable energy sources throughout California. Obviously rooftop solar
(17:15):
plays a role in that, but we have really adopted
in California an approach that is getting us on any
given Saturday, about of the energy coming through a grid
is now coming from renewable sources. Well, the reason I
mentioned this is because I was involved with a group
of people who were this was all theoretical, No, nothing
was getting to the legislative phase where we were saying
(17:37):
how we wanted the federal government to withhold you know,
the classic withholding of transportation dollars. And there's always the
threat of withholding those dollars if you don't this or
that or this or that. And what we wanted to
do was we wanted to demand that the states do
the two following things. That any construction over a certain size,
over a certain square footage of any public building, college, dormitory,
(18:01):
high school, airport, library, hospital, you name it, anything that
was funded by state or local or federal dollars, that
any refurbishment over a certain size, and any new construction
over a certain size, you would demand that they had
some photovoltaic element built into that construction where there was
solar panels on the grounds, solar panels on the skin
(18:22):
of the building or the roof of the building, something.
And the second thing we wanted to demand was that
any purchase of or any maintenance of fleet vehicles over
a certain size, and exempting emergency vehicles like fire and
ambulance and police because you can't have them have to
plug in. You have to have hybrids there at best,
but any of the fleet vehicles you had to go
fully electric, fully plugged in by a certain year or
(18:44):
you were going to get the transportation dollars. Is there
anything like that on the drawing board in California? I
love that, But we're moving towards that naturally in California,
not with withholding funds. Under our previous governor, Jerry Brown,
he mandated that all new construction of houses have to
have roof top solar private homes, private homes, new construction
and private homes have to have rooftop solar. Unfortunately, there's
(19:06):
not a lot of new homes being built. You have
that now in California, yeah, yea through executive order, through
the governor, and so we we naturally have some requirements
that were put in. Tom Steyer did an initiative a
few years ago, Prop thirty nine, which provided for schools
to be able to put solar on their rooftop. You know,
it's good green jobs, and it's good for the environment,
(19:28):
and it pulls down the cost of their energy bills.
So it really did work. We had money available for that.
We are going towards a gasless society. We have goals
um hopefully we'll be codified. I think in the next
few years that will say, by by this year, we're
going to have all electric vehicles, but we have to
do the hard work with that. It's not enough to
(19:48):
say that we've got to have more charging stations. I
always give example my husband. I. We have an electric
vehicle and we live in my district. It's one of
the poorest districts in California. It's a porst coastal district
in California, and there aren't charging stations. You know. Luckily,
we can charge at work. He works at the county
building and work at the State building. Um, we we
have rooftop solar and we can charge at home. But
(20:10):
a lot of apartments in multifamily complexes and working class
communities don't have charging stations. And so as we moved
electric vehicles, we really have to think about that piece
as well, the infrastructure necessary to get us off of
fossil fuels. How did you get involved with the cause
of the cheerleaders in the NFL as you lost I
(20:30):
guess you lost your box seats at the Chargers game.
I was not a popular person at the Chargers I'll
tell you that. Uh what happened, to be honest, is
you got a figure. I was actually a Stanford cheerleader,
so I was a cheerleader and a labor leader, right,
I know how to use a bullhorn and a megaphone. Um,
it's it's a rare combination. So when I had read
(20:52):
at the time the raider at the cheerleaders for the
Raiders had started a couple of them start a lawsuit
against the Raiders for not paying the minimum wage because
they were classified actually as independent contractors. And so I
talked to the attorneys, and I'm an attorney, so I
talked to their attorneys and I was like, this is outrageous.
They're basically almost pain to do this fantastic job. Yes,
(21:14):
it's a job women want, it's a job that that
is respected to a certain extent, but it's still a
job everybody else on the football field. It doesn't matter
if you're the physical trainer. It doesn't matter if you're
the person picking up the trash. It doesn't matter if
you're selling the peanuts, if you're the coach, if you're
the player. You're all being paid like an employee. And
these cheerleaders were being given a stipend, being penalized. They
(21:36):
signed an employment contract with the NFL. So I said,
this is easy. We're going to make them by code
employees so that they have basic labor protections in California.
And so I remember the first time I introduced it,
and of course a lot of journalists were more fascinated
with fact that I was a cheerleader at Stanford and
one of those pictures, and so we're like, all right,
here's a picture, now can we talk about this really
important issue? And and then my favorite part of the
(22:00):
story is having to go to then Governor Jerry Brown.
And he's anyone who knows he's a little I don't
want to say crotchety. You just never quite know what
you would get with a no nonsense guy. No nonsense,
and I mean, I'm like, God, I got to talk
to him about cheerleaders, like this is gonna And so
I said, um, we were at a dinner together, and
(22:20):
I said, Governor, when you have a chancel and talk
to you about this bill I'm working on. It has
to do with professional cheerleaders. And he said I was
a cheerleader, and I was like, are you kidding me?
He apparently he was a cheerleader in college or high school.
And so I was like, oh, I think I'm going
to get this one. But we did. I'm very proud
of that. So what was that path? Was it directed
(22:42):
at an individual team or was this league why you
wanted the NFL to recognize. Was the situation in San
Diego duplicated at all the NFL teams, Well, none of
them were getting paid. None of the NFL cheerleaders to
this day, only in California do they have rights as
an employee. There was a bill actually introduced in New
York as well, but it never made it through. So
(23:02):
it was any professional sports teams in California, the dancers
or cheerleaders have to be treated and have the basic
labor protections of an employee. So that includes, of course
the Chargers, the Rams, the Lakers. It was basketball and football.
So I was going to ask about that because I
go to Knicks games where I used to and those
(23:23):
women were out there not getting paid either now and
a lot of them, but they are now only in California.
There's a national fight still against the NFL. There's been
a lot of lawsuits, a lot of the teams have
lost lawsuits, and there's been a lot more attention to it.
There's a couple of documentaries and issues pertained to it.
We'd like to see it, of course, on the national level.
So I had the lawsuit work in California and not
(23:43):
in the other states. Well, it was settled, and so
in other states it's been settled as well. But so
often when you settled these lawsuits on worker issues, the
judge accepts a settlement, so it makes whole the workers
who were suing, but it doesn't force companies to fix
the problem. So it's kind of like an ongoing invitation
(24:04):
to sue without fixing the problem. And that's why sometimes
you need legislation to come in and say, all right,
nobody can do this, this is enough. Now, in two
thousand nineteen, you passed legislation that extends the statute of
limitations for survivors of sexual abuse who are seeking justice
in court. Now, I think most of our listeners know
what a statute of limitations is, but I want you
(24:26):
to explain, as an attorney, the reason for a statute
of limitations In most cases, and there are some crimes
I believe, like murder, where there is no statute of limitations.
But where there is a statute of limitations in place,
why is there one? There's often a statute for a
variety of reasons. One, um, you can't preserve evidence. So
you know, I could say, hey, when twenty years ago
(24:46):
you stole this TV from me, Well, that TV doesn't exist.
Witnesses probably don't exist. It's hard to pin that down.
People die, they move away exactly, or or they forget
I mean quite frankly, you know, I can't remember ty
years ago probably, So to have integrity in the trial
of the witnesses, you need to do it in a
certain time frame. But childhood sexual assault is unique. So
(25:08):
there's some things that made it unique and made the
Statute of limitations very damaging. Number one. So often the
primary witness, the child themselves, uh, suppresses it, basically doesn't
think about it, doesn't come to terms with it, and
until later in life when they're dealing with a failed
marriage or depression that it comes out. And so sometimes
you know that's the primary witness is a person who
(25:29):
was assaulted, if you will. And what we had with
childhood sexual assault is actually a lot of people knew
what was happening. We actually have official documents, like the church,
the Boy Scouts, they actually had complaints that were filed
that were put away that there still exist and you
still need all of this proof if you will, to
establish a case, but it allows time to have passed
and yet still victims to get some sort of justice.
(25:53):
I want to go back to you as a mom
because you do have five kids, correct five. We we
have five together. It's a blended family. But our two
youngests are adopted. And then I have an eighteen year
old who is just graduated and headed to college. I'm
a stepmother to a twenty two year old who's deployed
in the Marines. And then I have a twenty five
year old and she works in the industry, a little
(26:15):
kind of working her way, clawing her way up from
I think she's an art coordinator. Now what does she
want to do? She's on the production side. She works
for Netflix. Well, what do you want for your kids
in this world? You know, my children, probably like yours.
I feel, in some ways, are really lucky. They were
born into a privilege I could have never imagined. They
will never know for want. They will always have healthcare,
(26:36):
and that's a good thing. I want them to continue
to have the basics in life that allow them to
be happy. So for me, I think what would make
my kids happy and I don't know. I have a
ten year old, a thirteen year old, and eighteen year old.
I want them to be able to love and marry
whoever they want to love and marry. I want them
to be able to work hard and get paid a
(26:58):
decent living. I want them to be able to have
help care. I want them to have air to breathe.
I want them to be able to choose a life
for themselves that brings them joy. And that's all it
comes down to. My mom expected and she's past, but
you know what, she expected so much out of me.
She expected me to make the world better for other people.
(27:19):
I think I'm to a point where I want them
to contribute positively the world, and I think they'll do
that if they're happy, and all the things that we
work on is to get them a society where they
can live and let live and enjoy life and hopefully
put a hand out and help other people as well.
California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez. If you're enjoying this conversation, be
(27:42):
sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I
Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
While you're there, please leave us a review when we
come back. Lorena Gonzalez pushes back against rumors of an
exodus among California's wealth East two states with lower income taxes.
(28:03):
Gonzalez makes the case for why they should stay. I'm
Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing. California Assemblywoman
Lorraina Gonzalez speaks her mind. In a tweet from May.
(28:25):
She had some choice words for Elon Musk after she
found out he was moving his Tesla plant from California
to Texas. Look, my mouth gets me in trouble. I'd
lie if I said otherwise. I say exactly what I
think and what I mean. But you have to look
in context. Elon Musk has made a crapload of money
off of California taxpayers. And if people don't understand why,
(28:47):
it's because everything he makes is subsidized by taxpayers. So
the Tesla's that flew off the market, those all had
taxpayer rebates on a hundred thousand dollar cards. I mean,
people who didn't need the rebates were given them because
we want to encourage electric NICs. His solar panels and
solar storage had been highly subsidized by the state California,
so taxpayers have helped make him a billionaire. In California.
(29:09):
We have really supported Elon Musk, and coming from the
labor movement, he hasn't really been too good on worker issues,
so he's been slapped down by the n l r B.
He's he's anti worker. He's had really some big safety
problems in his facility. So I've always been a little irked, like,
here we are giving you taxpayer dollars and you can't
even abide by the law when it comes to union organizing.
That upsets me. Well, during the pandemic, he decided, forget it,
(29:33):
I don't like these orders. I'm going to open up
my factory in Fremont. It doesn't matter what the county
public health officer is saying. And you're talking about an
area where we had tons of Latinos dying from COVID.
We had the spread. It was at roaring at the time.
So he brings back his workers and he says, if
anyone stops him, he's going to take his jobs to Texas.
I mean, at some point, look, every elected official in
(29:55):
California should be saying I won't say it here, but
go go away. Elon mus There is a point where
where as elected officials. And this kills me. It doesn't
matter who it is who is getting things from us, right,
Leadership is also being able to make those tough decisions
and say, hey, al right, we like your product, we
(30:16):
like what you're doing for the environment. But by the way,
we've got rules and we're going it doesn't matter who
you are, you're going to stick by the rules too.
And it it irks me that so many of our
rules in California, in this nation, we apply them disproportionately
to communities like mine and not to billionaires like Elon Musk.
And I think we have to be stronger about that.
He has a lot of fans on Twitter, and I
(30:38):
got a lot of lush comes with the territory. It does.
I'm assuming that California is similar to New York, where
the COVID has driven some measurable amount of businesses out
of the state. Correct, it's a high tech state. New
York is really struck. I got friends of mine who
I mean, people that I never dreamed I mean in
the EBB and flow of the fiscal health of New York.
(31:00):
Now when the city most needs the money, they're gonna
have the lowest income tax revenue. They're raising taxes and everybody.
It's really really painful, but a very very measurable and
healthy number of people, at least from my optics, who
I never dreamed they would leave New York as their home.
They might keep a little piano tear there, but who
New York was their home. New York City was their home,
and they were willing, maybe not happy, but willing to
(31:22):
pay the taxes because New York was They're gone. They
sold their homes huge apart, moved to Florida. Moved, they moved.
Then they figured, while I'm gonna move, I'm gonna go
all the way. I'm gonna move to a no tax state.
So they mean people who would say they'd rather die
than live in Florida, they're going to Florida. The same
problem in California, people leaving. Well, I think that that's
a storyline. I think if you look at the numbers
(31:43):
that that doesn't quite add up. And I don't know
exactly what's happening in New York, but I will say
California had its best budget year ever because we have
created more billionaires during this pandemic than ever before. And
so unfortunately, what we're facing in California. There's a lot
of talk about the exodus, but it's not quite as
real as as people like to say when you look
at the actual numbers, and in fact, our income tax
(32:05):
revenues are out of control. They're so healthy because of
the very rich that we have, good for you, But
income inequality has become a real threat. So as we
continue to build billionaires in California and Silicon Valley continues
to create new billionaires, we've got to figure out how
we take care of people who just work for a living, right,
the people who service the tourism industry, the people who
(32:28):
serve people fast food, the folks who really are just
struggling gift by, like I always say, the people who
inspired me. The reason I am in politics is because
you have folks who are on their feet, working forty
sixty hours a week, multiple jobs, especially in immigrant communities
like mine, and and the fact that they cannot afford
housing or to put a little money away from retirement
or to send their kid to college is is something
(32:50):
we've got to address. So, yeah, I get it. Moved
to a no tax state, Go ahead, and you get
what you pay for. Look, I don't want to be
in Florida, where building codes are and in their approach
to climate change is so bad that that we have
a mass catastrophe happening. You know, I'll pay my property taxes.
I just I want to make sure that we have
an equitable society for everybody, not just those at the top.
(33:13):
I want to live in the state and its good
building codes. Yeah. God, it's just devastating. Just a brief question,
Why Secretary of State, have you announced or you don't
want to say that on the air. I did announce
with then we had a little bit. I actually it's
on hold because I announced a few years ago early.
There have there's never been a Latina in statewide office,
and so it is the only demographic in California that
(33:36):
has never achieved statewide office. So we announced, we raised money,
and then our Secretary State, Alex Paedia, was appointed by
the governor to be a U S Senator, and the
governor appointed Dr Shirley Weber, an African American icon, to
the position of Secretary State. So my plans are a
little on hold, and until she finishes up now it
won't be an open seat in two like I had hoped.
(33:58):
But the reason I am interested in Scretaria State and
I've done a lot of work on voting. In fact,
I authored the bill to have automatic registration and we
are now at eight percent registered voters. I think the
more people who vote, the more we open up democracy
in in California. In the world, you have elected officials
who reflect real people. You have people who remember what
(34:19):
it's like to have a mom who works sixty hours
a week. You elect people who remember what it's like
to talk to to the workers at the bus stop
on the way to school. You know, remember what it's
like to have a father who immigrated here in whose
papers um don't quite match things the way they should.
So when you have a broader electorate, you having more
diverse elected officials, and then you have better policy. So
(34:42):
that's that's why I want to be Secretary State eventually
and UH and continue to push the idea of having
as many people participating elections as possible. Well, thank you
for the update. Are you going to go back to
the Assembly and run again next year? You're gonna run
for another office? I'm running for re election in two
and we're seen what's out there. I mean, there's congressional
(35:02):
seats are in the future. I don't know we're redistricting
right now. There's statewide seats. The bottom line is this,
and I talked about this a lot. Latinas are of
the population California, right Latino's overall ourt but Latina's female
Latinos are of the population, and we are the most
underrepresented in every form of life, including elected office. And
so my job and my goal is to continue to
(35:25):
push for regular folks and to also service hopefully a
time when when I won't be the first Latina to
do or serve as something, but we've got to continue
to push that. Well, let me just say this because
we wrap up, and I really mean this, Jenemy, you
were such an amazing woman and all your credentials and
your accomplishments and your passion, you're somebody who it's still
your task to save the world, I'm afraid, and not
(35:47):
savor the world. You have to have to postpone the
saving of the world a little bit longer. You and
your husband. You have to keep going. There's no turning back.
You've got to keep running and keep doing this great
work you're doing. You've been doing a amazing work and
you were such a role model. We wanted you on
because people spoke so highly of you. Andrew Day, the actress,
(36:08):
was talking about the work you did with that school
down there. Robert E. Lee. Yeah, in San Diego, you
can imagine, Yes, because we care about our history, you
had the name of the school changed. You and other
people were working on that cause I did. And this
was before we kind of started attacking the Confederate name issue,
so I got to see what people said before they
(36:28):
realized it was politically incorrect. But you don't have a
school in San Diego named after Robert E. Lee in
the nineteen fifties, the same year that we ended segregation
in the schools, and it not be tied to racism.
So that school today is over kids of color and
they finally don't have to go to school that is
named after not just the biggest traitor in our in
(36:49):
our history, but somebody who was fighting to keep people segregated,
in keep people enslaved. Well, what an honor it is
to get to meet you. I know your time is valuable.
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you. California Assemblywoman
Lorreina Gonzalez. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
(37:10):
to you by iHeart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Carrie donohue, and Zach McNeese. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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