Organized Labor

The Thirty-Fourth International Convention of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union voted 10 June 2009 to call “for 113 Steuart to become a landmarked labor history museum, labor education and training center and calls for good union jobs for working people on projects that restore our cities and serve the needs of our people and not the greed of duplicitous developers.” The project at 113 Steuart and 110 the Embarcadero was discussed in this column April 2009.

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

The union members of the San Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council will be deeply disappointed to hear of the vote of the convention of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) to support the landmarking of the building at 113 Steuart Street here, thereby opposing its demolition and the construction in its place of 110 the Embarcadero. We do not believe you would have taken this action if you had known our side of the matter.

We think it unlikely that the proponents of the resolution even told you that there is another Labor position on the landmarking, or that the San Francisco Bay Area and Vicinity Port and Maritime Council has declined to take a position on it, or that the San Francisco Labor Council, which initially supported their position, reversed itself and voted to take a neutral stance once it heard our side.

We honor the memory of Harry Bridges and the strike of 1934, in which this Council also participated. We believe that we San Franciscans and our visitors should have physical reminders of that great leader and that event.

But we see nothing magical, nothing talismanic, nothing of near religious importance in the particular arrangement of materials that constitutes a building. We see instead the work of our hands. We hold this attitude toward buildings even when we have ourselves spent our blood in their construction, as happens all too often. We hold it even when our brothers and sisters have spent their last breaths in the construction, as has happened countless times in the hundred and thirteen year history of our Council. Make no mistake, we are proud of our work and are not anxious to see it undone. At the same time, we understand that if the City is to live it must change, and that the old must give way sometimes to the new. We are proud unionists, and our part in the life of the City is to preserve sometimes, but also to demolish and to build.

You will forgive us, then, if we do not understand what there is magical, talismanic, of near religious importance in the particular arrangement of building materials that constitutes 113 Steuart. We note that the ILWU made no move to preserve 113 Steuart for nearly seventy-five years, not until its proposed demolition and replacement offered to provide us work. A sculpture at Mission and Steuart commemorates the 1934 strike and the deaths of Nick Bordoise and Howard Sperry. A marker on the Embarcadero, murals at the Redstone Building and Rincon Annex, and plaques at the Garcia and Maggini warehouse and Hotel Vitale all honor the ILWU’s struggles of 1934. The plaza in front of the Ferry Building is named for Harry Bridges. Three ILWU union halls and a headquarters building carry the memory of 1934 into San Francisco’s present by serving the living. Hines, the developer proposing the demolition of 113 Steuart and the construction of 110 the Embarcadero, has pledged a major display on the 1934 strike at ground level of the new building and a smaller display in the publicly accessible rooftop garden. We do not see what there is in a building briefly rented by a predecessor to your union and then abandoned by you for three quarters of a century that will better serve the memory of 1934 than sculpture, marker, murals, plaques, plaza, halls, headquarters, and displays. We see instead our past work standing in the way of our present work.

You have been told, we know, that Hines has been duplicitous in its treatment of the history of 113 Steuart. We have heard the case made against Hines. We have also heard – as we are sure you have not – the case Hines makes in its own defense. In the end, we do not believe it matters whether or not Hines has been duplicitous. If unionists refused to work for an employer that had been duplicitous, few unionists would ever work. Our task is always instead to make the employer adhere to certain standards. This Council would fully support legal measures that would bind Hines to fulfill its pledge of the displays on the 1934 strike.

Please understand that thousands of the workers represented by this Council are now unemployed. Unemployment in most of our locals is well above twenty percent. The situation of many of our members has passed into desperation. The private sector construction that is our daily bread has crashed with the economy. Excavations sit empty or have been filled back in. Developers have walked away from their investments. Few can find money with which to build. When federal stimulus money finally reaches San Francisco, it will employ some of us, but it will come far shy of filling the void left by the collapse of private sector construction.

110 the Embarcadero would put scores of us to work.

The opponents of the demolition of 113 Steuart and so of the construction of 110 the Embarcadero talk of providing us employment by putting a labor history museum in the existing building. We have seen nothing that permits us to consider this a serious possibility. To our knowledge, no one proposing the museum has spoken with the current owner of the property about financial arrangements. We have seen no architectural or engineering drawings. No private or public funds have been identified for the purpose. The museum proposal asks us to forego work that could start in a few months in exchange for words dying on the air. The result would be that a few more of us would lose homes, health care, the ability to support families.

But the ambitions of the opponents of 113 Steuart’s demolition – and the harm they would do us – do not stop there. Sue Hestor, the attorney for the opponents, was quoted in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (29 April 2009), “Threatened demolition of the 1934 Waterfront Strike headquarters at 113 Steuart has pulled us together. The community will proactively start defining changes we want. No more waiting for a developer proposal, then meekly responding. The community gets to define how the city should look ... along the northeast waterfront. When you start at the Embarcadero it is possible to weave in so many areas, so many neighborhoods, so much of our political and immigrant and labor history.”

Nor do their ambitions stop at the northeast waterfront and adjacent neighborhoods. In a flyer attacking me personally that was distributed at a San Francisco Labor Council meeting and elsewhere and that came from a “Committee for 113 Steuart and a Labor Strategy” and This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , they very directly tie the effort to preserve 113 Steuart to a much broader fight over development in San Francisco: “Brother Theriault mobilizes in support not of the united interests of working people but on behalf of the developer’s ploy, a revision of Articles 10 and 11 of the Planning Code that gut Proposition J.”

Last November’s Proposition J established a Historic Preservation Commission in San Francisco. The jurisdiction, powers, and duties of that Commission and of City government relative to it will be determined by Sections 10 and 11 of the Planning Code. Just before leaving office, former Supervisor Aaron Peskin proposed a version of Sections 10 and 11 that elevates the powers of the Commission and the primacy of historic preservation well beyond what we believe the voters intended in Proposition J. In those locales in this country where historic preservation ordinances have been broadly enforced they have led, not at all to the advancement of working people, but to gentrification and their eventual exclusion. The Peskin version of Sections 10 and 11 would also bring a severe reduction in private sector construction and so in our ability to make a living. It could harm us for generations. We have therefore mobilized behind an alternative version from the San Francisco Planning Commission, which version – contrary to the flyer’s assertion – is entirely consistent with Proposition J.

It is in this dispute that the opponents of the demolition of 113 Steuart by their own account see their efforts as a first shot. It is in this dispute that your vote will be exploited. You have been drawn into a fight over the nature of development by some whose zealotry against the private sector has led them to ignore both the history of what they advocate and its effect present and future on other unionists.

We are sure that none of this was discussed with you before you voted.

We do not know if there is any way or will to undo now what you have done. We do hope that you understand the consequences of your actions better than when you acted.

Fraternally yours,
Michael Thériault
Secretary-Treasurer
San Francisco Building and
Construction Trades Council