Letters Big box stores are exploiting workers
at home with their families on Thanksgiving Day, due to leaving their homes earlier in Re: “Why I’m not shopping on the day for possible lengthy Thanksgiving Day,” opinion, commutes as well as getting Nov. 27 things set up in the store. For Odysseus Bostick made good retail workers, working until points about the powerlessness 11 p.m. would also require of underpaid retail workers, more time away their families, who are indeed moving toward especially if they commute by becoming what he termed bus. Then these workers must an underclass in light of the get up early to go to work again disappearing middle class and on Black Friday. So they do not growing inequality of wealth have a restful Thanksgiving. occurring in this country. If retail employees are going Although various retailers to work the Thanksgiving Day opened their doors on holiday, they should be paid Thanksgiving Day between 8 double their hourly pay for doing and 11 p.m., store employees still so, which would help them and had to arrive to work earlier to their families economically and prepare for opening their stores be the morally correct thing to for the onslaught of shoppers. do. Or, as in the case of people who work in the medical, police This meant missing more time VOL 43, NO 50 Local News & Culture
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and emergency fields (doctors, hospital workers, ambulance drivers, firemen, nurses and police officers), retail workers who work on family-oriented holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas should be able to have time off to schedule alternative holiday get-togethers with their families. Retail employees, however, are not in the same category of workers who are needed all the time, who tend to be professionals or skilled workers earning salaries many levels higher than retail workers. Big box retailers are simply exploiting their workers to get ahead of competitors by opening on Thanksgiving Day. Patricia Estes Westchester
The problem is polluted water, not the basin
Re: “County plans big makeover for Oxford Basin, news, Nov. 27, and subsequent letters to the editor I write this note regarding the proposed construction at the storm water basin as an architect licensed by the
state with a responsibility that includes considering the impact of construction on the health and welfare of its citizens. I am recipient of a consultant service grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, have published research in the Journal of the Association for Preservation Technology, and I have served as featured program speaker at international preservation conventions and as expert an witness. In regard to the contemplated Oxford project, Mr. Kay and Mr. Fay are squabbling over a non-issue; the restoration of the storm water runoff basin is a trivial matter, brushing aside the publicity that accompanies the proposal. The problem posed actually relates to the remediation of a poorly designed storm water system designed by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s, then called a “bird sanctuary.” People may disagree on how to fix it without inviting invective. The Corps is notorious for designing defective storm water control systems and this one is no exception. Because storm
water in Los Angeles contains raw sewerage, including human and animal waste among many other dangerous contaminants, it was clearly a poor idea to design the system to send the overflow into the Marina harbor. Furthermore, it was even a worse idea for the county to name this outlet Mother’s Beach and to invite generations of families with children to bathe in these contaminated waters. The public has yet to receive an explanation from county officials about this supposed public benefit. It isn’t clear why Mr. Kay, who presumably writes in the name of a public interest organization, objects to the idea of an EIR; but a sludge pit of the size contemplated by the proposal as a permanent feature of the landscape will certainly evoke memories of the infamous Love Canal disaster, and nearby residents, including Mr. Fay, have both a right and a reason to ask questions about the effect of the proposed project on aquifers, infiltration rates, cross connections, the level of air borne pollution, anticipated (Continued on page 7)
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December 12, 2013 THE ARGONAUT PAGE 3