Organized Labor

This makes sense if a city such as San Francisco is to succeed. As discussed in this column in August 2006, concerns for the environment and especially for global warming demand just such a city. Densely built, with residents clustered close to employment and to public transit, with necessary shopping and services often just a short walk away, with a healthy supply of daily pleasures close by, with a cool climate and a minimum of thirsty landscaping, San Francisco requires far less fossil fuel and water and places less strain on earth and air than does the standard sprawling western American city. Some of the inevitable population growth of the Bay Area should and indeed must be accommodated here. If those new residents all come with cars, then a city center already afflicted with traffic ills will find its afflictions multiplied. Serving as it does as a hub of public transit, the City is also ideal for the growth of certain kinds of employment. But if new commuters come in cars, this too will add to traffic ills.

Our future as Building Trades here depends on providing those new residences and places of employment without increasing traffic. Otherwise traffic will engender a public backlash against our work, and however much politicians may profess to be our friends they will find it nearly impossible to take our side when we say, Let us build.

Beyond the construction and improvement of public transit, other measures have been proposed to limit traffic in the heart of San Francisco. Looking at examples such as London and Stockholm, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick has advocated “congestion pricing.” Tolls would be charged for driving in parts of the City, possibly by an electronic system such as FasTrak. The money raised would support public transit.

Making parking more difficult to limit traffic may give us visions of cars creeping bumper-to-bumper through the streets in search of dwindling or less expensive parking places. But a paper released in January 2005 by San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) cites a federal study: “Data indicate that parking maximums [that is, parking limits] result in a slight increase in public transportation use and slight decreases in traffic congestion.” The paper notes, “The cost of parking and its availability, most transportation analyses agree, have the most significant impacts on travelers’ mode choice [that is, whether they drive or travel by alternative means such as public transit].” SPUR has recommended both limits and price increases for parking. Proposition A, which voters passed in last month’s election, takes steps toward fulfilling both recommendations.

Parking and driving in San Francisco will therefore become more expensive and difficult, and this seems exactly what is needed to keep us working here.

But how, then, will we get to work?

A few of us may walk or take the bus, if we live in the City; and more of us may live in the City, if we decide to tolerate no longer the expense and time of commuting, if we preserve or create housing here that we can afford, and if such programs as CityBuild homegrow a workforce that then stays in town. Some of us may ride BART from in or out of town. These commutes will be easy enough most days, but difficult on first and last days on a jobsite, when we are carrying tool buckets or boxes.

Construction is a regional industry, though, and just as San Franciscans will work outside the City, so will our members resident in places not well served by public transit need to work here. They are likely to drive, as things now stand. So may San Franciscan members loaded with tools on those first and last days.

Under our agreements employers now usually pay for parking and bridge tolls. If parking prices increase substantially, and if congestion tolls are added to bridge tolls, this may become a contentious matter in our negotiations. Employers and unions may have to imagine less expensive alternatives – shuttle services for larger jobs and/or premiums for use of public transit, maybe, and maybe tool loans or remote drop-off locations for tools. These alternatives will be freighted with their own issues for negotiation.

The company truck that is now standard issue for many foremen may also come under scrutiny. The permits that employers buy to park these trucks on downtown streets may cost much more. That parking may simply become less available. The trucks are often as much of a benefit – if not more – to the employer than to the foreman. They let the employer require the foreman to leave the job for supplies or take his tools and equipment to another job to help out. Some foremen also stop at the employer’s shop before or after work to pick up tools or supplies. Employers will have to weigh the utility of the trucks against the rising expense of supporting them. Again they may have to imagine alternatives, and again these alternatives may entail subjects for negotiation.

We might know alternatives if we were able to talk to our own past or to our present counterparts in European cities. The first large San Francisco buildings went up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries without benefit of the company truck and without workers commuting by car or pickup. The task of building in already densely built European cities must be much like the task of building here.
Unfortunately either our forebears in the San Francisco trades left few records of daily working lives or historians have failed to ferret them out. Unfortunately, also, travelers in Europe come back with tales of food and cathedrals but not of the daily lives of our brothers and sisters there. We might hope for such information.

Meanwhile the fine institution of the company truck and the practice of trades workers commuting by car or pickup are about to face demolition in the City, and new ground will have to be broken. What bucket of tools will we bring to work on this challenge, and how will we get it there?