Hard toil on high broil
Employees seek any respite from sweltering work sites
AT 2:47 p.m., the taco truck on Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonanza Road hit 115 degrees.
With the ovens on and the meat cooking on the rotisserie, it’d be 130. The metal refrigerators were hot to the touch.
As the Las Vegas Valley hit a sizzling 117 degrees Tuesday, for the first time since 2013, the three workers sitting under the shade of the green
Taqueria El
Buen Pastor food truck felt defeated. It was just too hot to leave the ovens on.
Oswaldo
Hernandez,
20, said in
Spanish that he manages work “with the feeling of quitting every day.” He’s had his food truck job for two years and knows summers are the worst. He’s learned to drink lots of water; the men on the truck drink 15 to 20 12-ounce bottles of water daily.
But sometimes water isn’t enough. Ricardo Baron, who was running the truck’s cash register, said he and his colleagues also drink peach-flavored Pedialyte for electro
HOT JOBS
When a company invents something, it gets a patent that gives it the exclusive ability to produce the product for a length of time. The government grants patents to give individuals and companies a financial incentive to spend time and money inventing new products. For instance, developing a successful drug and getting regulatory approval costs an average of $2.9 billion.
Patent holders might as well stamp “Exclusively Ours” on their products. A patent is a property right just as much as a members-only health care center. Nevada law also defines as a trade secret the confidential information a company has about
a product — if that information produces economic value from not being generally known. That’s an intellectual property right.
As much as I support property rights, let’s make one exception:
The Legislature should require that all union-run health centers treat everyone and provide medications without cost to the public.
There’s nothing like government threatening your property rights to make you eager to defend the rights of others. That’s a lesson Culinary leaders desperately need.
Victor Joecks’ column appears in the Nevada section each Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Contact him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.