WINNERS
Bread lines
On Sunday, May 4, Cloud Cliff Bakery, Café and Artspace will shut its doors because of revenue shortfalls due in part to increased overhead caused by the city's $9.50 living wage law and soaring wheat prices, Journal Santa Fe***image1*** reported over the weekend. Owner Willem Malten tells SFR it's not that he's against the living wage, but that it needs to be extended to at least a 100-mile radius to ensure Santa Fe businesses can remain competitive. The good news, Malten says, is the bakery will reopen in another form by summertime.
Missile defense
The White Sands Missile Range would have been brought to a standstill (and along with it, Holloman and Cannon Air Force bases, Fort Bliss and Johnson Space Center) if members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers labor union hadn't changed their minds about striking last week. The union had been engaged in heated negotiations with NewTec over renewal of a US military contractor's three-year contract. Initially, the 900-member union voted 92.5 percent in favor of a strike, the Alamagordo Daily News reported, but accepted NewTec's second offer.
Las Vegas nurses
For May 1, otherwise known as "May Day" or "International Workers Day," several busloads of nurses will descend on Las Vegas, NM, to protest what they characterize as anti-union practices at the Alta Vista Regional Hospital. President of the National Hospital and Health Care Employees Union, AFSCME Local 1199 and Board of County Commissoners District 4 candidate Elizabeth "Dolly" Lujan [Pop Quiz, page 17] tells SFR that buses will be leaving from Santa Fe and Albuquerque for a picket line that will begin at approximately 11 am.
LOSERS
CD3 candidates who aren't Ben Ray Luján
Candidates for New Mexico's third congressional district are complaining that at a recent forum with AFSCME, the union of government employees seemed ready to endorse Public Regulation Commissioner Ben Ray Luján before the debate had even begun. Lujan was allowed to go first during the three-hour, one-candidate-at-a-time forum, while his father, House Speaker Ben Luján Sr., sat jovially in the back row. So far, Ben Ray has picked up the lion's share of union endorsements, including the American Federation of Teachers, the Communication Workers of America, the New Mexico Professional Fire Fighters Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 611, leaving a very small pool for the other candidates to court.
Socialist voters
Marxist voters, remember how to spell this name: Brian Moore, Socialist Party candidate for president. Moore failed to collect the requisite signatures for his party to make it on the New Mexico ballot. Moore tells SFR that it was in part due to mixed signals from the Secretary of State's Office regarding petition requirements and the relatively miniscule body of Socialist voters in the state. The good news, he says, is that he's confident he'll qualify as a write-in candidate in New Mexico for the November general election.
Unemployment line
In early April, the number of out-of-work people claiming unemployment insurance hit a three-year high. Slightly less than 14,000 people had ongoing claims in the first week of April, according to US Department of Labor statistics, with 1,655 new claims filed in the final week of March. That may not represent a disproportionate jump considering that a total of 789,096 New Mexicans are covered by unemployment insurance, an increase of more than 60,000 compared to 2005 numbers.
