Chavez Holiday

Re “Legislature Clears Way for Chavez Holiday,” Aug. 11: If Cesar Chavez were alive today he would be fasting to stop Gov. Gray Davis from throwing money out of the window. The $46-million price tag for letting government workers celebrate a new holiday--Chavez’s own birthday--could have funded over 460 new positions in the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, tripling its capacity to weed out the bad agricultural employers from the good and its ability to protect farm workers from abuses, which was Chavez’s foremost goal.

Instead, we will continue to see farm workers toiling in the fields on March 31, while state bureaucrats are home hoisting beers. The farm workers will get nothing out of this holiday and the taxpayers and growers who want to see conditions improve will lose as well, funding $46 million for their civil servants to stay home. This is window dressing at its best by a clever politician. Unfortunately, it is also governance at its very worst.

RICK RICE

Upland

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* Instead of honoring Chavez by giving 210,000 state workers a paid holiday, a far more fitting tribute would be to require these public servants to put in extra hours of work on that day--an exhausting, back-breaking mass effort of seemingly endless toil. And to do it without any overtime credits or financial remuneration whatsoever . . . a gift to the taxpayers of California not only in honor of the great man but in the spirit of the way he led his life. Any takers?

DAVID STOUGHTON

Santa Monica