As Supervisor John Avalos’ proposal to mandate local hiring for publicly-funded construction projects heads for a committee hearing next week, local hiring protests continue to break out around UCSF’s Mission Bay groundbreaking celebrations for a $1.5 billion hospital project that the UC Board of Regent recently approved.
The problem, according to community advocates, revolves around UC’s apparent absence of a community hiring plan. Rumor has is that local residents will only get 12-13 percent of the construction jobs, even though the site is only a T-Third ride away from Bayview Hunters Point and other low-income communities where unemployment rates have risen steeply in the last four years.
Yesterday evening, I went to a university-community celebration where UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann was in attendance. So, I asked her about UC’s local hiring plan. Desmond-Hellmann said I’d need to speak to UCSF’s Barbara French, who recently advised community-based organizations that construction at the site won’t start until December, and that the groundbreaking activities are happening now to take advantage of the weather.
So, while I’m waiting to hear back from French, check out a slideshow (see above) of the Oct. 27 local hiring protest at UC Mission Bay. There’s been coverage of how MC Hammer talked to the protesters Oct. 26, when the Secret Service got upset about the local-hiring demonstration outside the groundbreaking that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended. And how Hammer came back with a “we want jobs” message.
But there has been no coverage of how filmmaker Kevin Epps (who is responsible for Straight Outta Hunters Point and Black Rock) was on hand filming the Oct. 27 protest, or how UC’s Terry Rawlins dropped by, or how Terry Anders of the Anders & Anders Foundation) took part in the local hiring protest saying, “This is the first piñata we want to crack open,” or how Mindy Kener, who is also with Anders & Anders, added, “We want all the candy to fall out.” Or how Aboriginal Blacks United’s Alex Prince, who led the protest to demand fair and equal access to high-paying union jobs on the UC Mission Bay project near the economically depressed Third Street corridor, was accompanied by Heaven, ABU’s cuter than cute mascot dog.
“We want to make sure folks get trained and everything that’s necessary, so there is no dispute,” Prince told me. “UC has not really been helpful. They just said they want to meet with us.”
Osiris Coalition member Greg Doxey, who helped negotiate labor’s community benefits agreement with Lennar in 2008, emphasized the importance of passing local hiring legislation that has some teeth.
“We’ve found that no matter how much dollars is committed for training, it doesn’t help if developer is not committed to doing any training,” Doxey said. “That’s why we are supporting Local SF, Sup. John Avalos’ legislation. We want some teeth. All we have right now is a good faith policy. Avalos’ legislation will give us teeth to set fines to be put in place.”
Charles Hopkins, another local resident, said all the community wants is its fair share.
“It’s sustainable for San Francisco to have local hire,” Hopkins said.
A group of unemployed Asian-American members of the iron unions also participated in the ABU rally where they held up signs saying “Show us the $$$”.
An employee of Cambridge, which along with San Francisco-based DPR, is one of the prime contractors at the site, did come out to talk to the protesters.
“If folks want to put their names on the list, they can,” the Cambridge employee, who declined to give his name, said. “But the unions have their own procedures, when it comes to who they dispatch, including seniority.”
Mindy Kener of the BVHP-based Anders and Anders Foundation said she’d like to see more women hired on local construction sites.“The women want to work and get off the welfare lines,, they need to work and it’ll make a big difference in our neighborhood if we put people to work who live on the T-Third line,” Kener said. “All we need is for UC to give the green light to put our neighborhood to work.”Carlos Rodriguez, a Local 261 member who has been out of work for two years, worries that workers are being forgotten while deal making is going on.“I see how unions talk to management, they forget about the laborers,” Rodriguez said.
A man on a bicycle stopped to see what was going on.
“It’s not going to work, when they can get illegal aliens to work for $6.50 an hour,” the man said, as he resumed his peddling.
Across the street, filmmaker Kevin Epps also indicated that he thought part of the local hire problem is rooted in racism.
“Deeply rooted, institutionalized racism,” Epps said. “We are talking about power, and power doesn’t give up without another power taking it away.”
Standing nearby was UC contract compliance manager Terry Rawlins, who clarified that UC isn’t currently hiring folks to work on the construction site.
But doesn’t the university have leverage?
“Not directly,” Rawlins said, “We try to establish goals, based on cooperation with unions, and without violating any bargaining agreements.”
But UCSF Director of Design and Construction J.Stuart Eckblad told the Guardian that he thought the workers were asking for the right thing.
“I’m all for maximizing the opportunities and participation of the local community,” Eckblad said.” The question is what is realistic, and there are issues of what is really available with labor and the trades.”
Joshua Arce of the Brightline Defense Project noted that folks have been distracted by Lennar’s shipyard project from the reality that there are 6,000 jobs coming on line, a stone’s throw from the Bayview, the Mission and Market Street.
“What is equitable?” Arce asked. “A good faith approach, a market-based approach or a mandatory approach? At the end of the day, it’s about equity, and no one would dispute that this situation is inequitable. Let’s just agree that it’s not equitable [to have no local hiring plan] on a big project like this in a community that is facing such high unemployment levels.”
“There are hundreds of good-paying, union jobs on this projects while we have people in our communities that are dying for lack of work,” ABU president James Richards told me. “We have qualified union workers standing outside the job site that are ready, willing, and able to work and if the community doesn’t work, no one works.Good faith efforts have never worked and now they want us to be fooled again. So, we are going to step it up, and we don’t give a damn about the unions, either. The person who fights for these jobs, deserves these jobs. So, let’s begin to tell the truth. Many of the folks in the labor unions don’t speak English, they are not from San Francisco, and most are not even from this country. Everyone is dancing around the truth. Everyone knows the truth, but they don’t speak it.”
But ABU’s tent looked inclusive at the protest, Arce noted, as he pointed out the power of teaming up with all marginalized groups in San Francisco.
“I could go for that,” Richards said. “We got blacks, Mexicans, Asians, whites, everybody in ABU. It’s ain’t no racist thing. But let us work, too. “Why do we always have to get in last? Don’t nobody give a damn about us!