Organized Labor

Common wisdom would say that advocacy of construction and advocacy for the environment are opposing concepts, not to be held together in the same thought.

In the case of San Francisco that common wisdom would be wrong.

We can assume that the population of the Bay Area will continue to grow. Nothing we have seen indicates the contrary. Proposals to limit “growth” are not proposals to limit the growth of population, but to limit the provision of residences and facilities for a growing population. As the population of the Bay Area grows, residences and facilities can be provided for it in two ways: By development outward into land that is now being used for farming and ranching, or by denser development in existing urban areas.

The environmental disadvantages of development outward are obvious. Start with the loss of farms and ranches. In the case of ranches, which often include not just grassland but woods, scrub, vernal pools, and largely undisturbed watercourses, wildlife habitat is also lost. Dogs and cats from the new housing tracts prey on the wildlife that remains. Automobile mileage increases, both for commuting and for shopping and other personal business. This increase draws further on oil resources and adds to pollution. A net loss of plant life that would otherwise lock up carbon dioxide contributes to global warming.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the outward spread of development brings it also into hotter regions. Hot weather housing has its own environmental costs. The need for air conditioning must be paid for with more electric power production and more transmission capacity. Per capita water use in the hotter reaches of the new, broader Bay Area is radically higher than in its older, cooler bayside core, especially given the prevalence in suburban landscaping of that most unnatural of acts in a semi-arid climate, the lawn.

Where, then, to build?

Right here. In San Francisco additional housing and facilities would mean vertical and not horizontal development – that is, we would in most cases build higher where buildings or parking lots already exist. No farmland or ranchland would be lost, no wildlife displaced. San Francisco is already well-served by public transit (although Municipal Railway riders know that it could be better served). Shopping and other services are often within walking distance of residences. Residents often walk, bicycle, or ride public transit to work. Many residents find no need at all for cars. San Francisco is literally cool; those residents who have air conditioning rarely use it. Not much of San Francisco is planted to lawns.

From a strictly union point of view, development in San Francisco is preferable to development in far-flung suburbs because we are strong here and it is an area that is compact and patrolled more readily. Development in the City would also be of a type that favors the skills we have from our apprenticeships; mid-rise and high-rise construction requires more skill and more various skills than does that of stick-frame single family homes. Construction of the streetcar and subway lines to serve the mid- and high-rises also requires a high level of skill and is labor-intensive.

The environmental advantages of construction in an urban core like San Francisco versus suburban tract construction suggest that we need not be alone in advocating for our work. They suggest new possible alliances for us and a possible new consensus that may drive construction for a generation to come. Another article in this edition of Organized Labor draws from discussions with environmentalists and urban planners about just such a possibility. An earnest effort to cooperate with them can mean that work for the environment means also more work for our members.

This work will not go unopposed. Some of the concerns San Franciscans hold about development should be acknowledged and honored. Traffic, preservation of local businesses, sufficient open space and sunlight, provision of adequate funds for schools and other public facilities to serve new residents, care for architectural heritage: These are all legitimate concerns. In some neighborhoods, too, poor and working-class residents worry that housing development driven by its current economic engine, the sale or rental of market-rate units, will mean that they are displaced or that their jobs are lost. We would be foolish to downplay that worry. Some of those residents are our members. Others are brothers and sisters from unions not in the Building Trades. And we should consider the long-term consequences of pushing out of the city voters who would be our natural allies in many political fights and allowing them to be replaced by the well-to-do, who are not likely either to know us truly or to care for us.

I believe we can find ways of building that honor all these concerns.

Other concerns are not so honorable. We have all encountered individuals who consider the noise of a piledriver, a hammer, an impact wrench, or a welding machine a personal affront, who detest the sight of concrete being poured. Others want no change to their neighborhoods, even if harmless; they have theirs, and others can stay out, no matter the cost to the environment or to the greater good generally. They would be happy to see their neighborhoods become or remain enclaves of the privileged, urban Carmels, all expensive quaintness and private vistas. They might try – they often have tried – to represent their desire for exclusivity as environmental necessity. One way that we will need allies is in overcoming these less honorable concerns and in exposing them for what they are.

Alliances with environmentalists and urban planners will ask us from time to time to admit that a project does not make sense and to withhold our support from it. We should be prepared for this. We should acknowledge that support for some projects feeds an unfortunate and unhelpful reputation that we support building at any cost. At the same time, we should ask of our new allies that they support us on projects that some of their members oppose, if a genuine and reasonable application of the broader purpose of environmental protection, in consideration of the principle that it is better to build in San Francisco than in distant suburbia, says: Build it. We will all benefit.