The endless assault on taxpaying businesses

Last fall, customers began complaining about the "day workers" -- mostly illegal aliens who have snuck across our borders from Mexico and points south -- who would gather by the dozens in and near the nurseries' parking lots, trampling the landscaping, relieving themselves in the bushes, leaving litter and other "waste" behind.

When Review-Journal reporters tried to interview the men, few would talk, and none would give their full names. The few who were willing to talk did so in Spanish.

Customers complained the men were so aggressive in offering their services as part-time lawn and garden workers that the customers felt harassed.

"They were standing in the parking lot, destroying property," explains Pat Chapin, an attorney for Star Nursery. "If a car slowed down, they would converge on it."

So last fall, the management put up temporary fences to keep the men out of their parking lots and off their property.

Seeing how serious the problem had become, city and county authorities decided to intervene, sending out enforcement agents to write citations and threaten fines.

Citations and fines against the illegal aliens, who have no right even to be in this country, let alone to mob the parking lot of a taxpaying business?

No! Are you nuts? That would happen only in a healthy country, where tax-paid government agents still see it as their duty to help and protect legal, taxpaying businesses.

Later today, I intend to find a way to email this guy.

It is Star Nursery from which I am laid off and I had a front row seat as to what they did to American, English-speaking employees last year.

First off, I’d been to 2 years of Christmas parties, held in Vegas, all expenses paid. Only half the employees spoke English, which made for a strange party.

When Craig Keough’s credit line was cut in January (along with every other business owner’s) he had to reduce costs. Without consulting with his local store managers as to their personnel needs, he established an arbitrary list of qualifications of people to be laid off. They were:

1. Full time and year round employees; non seasonal.
2. Anyone with the company long enough to be earning wages approaching the salaries of managers.
3. Anyone with the company with enough seniority to generate health insurance benefits and vacation time.

I met all three of those qualifications. In fact, I was scheduled to teach two weekends of classes when I learned this...customers had signed up and paid to take these classes. My own store manager had no role in the decision, it was financial only, right from corporate. My manager had told me and others repeatedly that when the economy would go south, that I was untouchable, because of my skill set.

I learned at that time that is was going to be the corporate policy, from then on, that once they got rid of the “regulars” they would fill in the seasonal gaps with amigos and high school kids. Minimum wage, no benefits, layoffs at will...and hope people didn’t bitch too much. And that’s exactly what they did.

I returned to the store in March of last year to pick up vegetable plants. I had to leave because I was mobbed by regular customers with questions, complaining that they can’t get any help, etc. They were mad. I haven’t been back since because I don’t want a repeat of that. I run into these customers in town every week.

Star Nursery is NO victim here, trust me. They got rid of one guy who had been there 20+ years, with a kid in college and a daughter getting married in six months.

duly noted, thank you.

I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Star Nursery. Despite their claims, they aren’t part of the solution, they’re part of the problem.

When taking a cab in Vegas from the Christmas party to the airport, the driver (upon learning where I worked) swore up a blue streak that would make a longshoreman blush. Because Star was and is well known as a “ripe” place for illegals to work.

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