Organized Labor

In spring we see them all over town. Anna’s hummingbirds display themselves by flying 40 or 50 feet straight up, then doing a power dive straight down and pulling up in an audible whir just before hitting the ground. We see them also chasing other hummingbirds from their territories and sometimes hear the hard, high clap of one ball of feathers against another as they contest boundaries.

For creatures of that order, the question of turf is simple. An area contains only so many flowering plants. You need those flowers to feed your family and yourself. No system exists to allow you to move to where more flowers are blooming. Nothing you do will make more or fewer flowers bloom in your territory. There is only the law of tiny beak and tiny claw. You make displays of power. You fight where necessary to keep what is yours.

Our situation is and should be more complicated.

In our unions, through our collectively bargained agreements, we have procedures by which workers can come into our jurisdictions to work and terms by which they can be kept out. We establish turf, but we recognize that work will come and go within that turf. Sometimes more will bloom here, sometimes more elsewhere.

In our political jurisdictions, be they cities, counties, states or nations, we can encourage or discourage work. We can cultivate or cut back blooms.

The discussion of “local hire” is fundamentally one of turf. San Francisco’s government has only so much by way of resources. If resources are to be expended in construction, many residents believe that the work generated should go first and foremost to residents. In a time when private sector work is more than sparse and when the few projects of any substance are all publicly financed, with some City-financed, the instinct of many is to say, “Keep out, this is ours.” They say this more loudly as they become more desperate. They display and exert whatever power they have.

As we in the Trades know, work is lumpy. Sometimes there is plenty here, sometimes almost none. Sometimes one Trade will have plenty of work here, while another will have almost none. This is true even when huge projects like Mission Bay are under way; those projects have busy and slow stretches. Usually – and we are enduring a great exception to this now – work is better elsewhere when it is poor here. We go where the work is, whether by driving, if it is close enough, or by packing our tools and moving for a while. Members of our Trades from elsewhere in our jurisdictions or from outside our jurisdictions do the same when work is slow where they live but better here. The procedures in our collective bargaining agreements by which we do this improve our chances for successful careers.

A permanent policy of “Keep out, this is ours” can hurt those chances, especially as it is replicated in other cities.

Ours is a city and ours are politicians that battle for the rights of immigrants – as have we in this Council, as do we – and that hold to the principle that borders do not diminish the rights of workers.

Should the Daly City line?

Even though the resources of city government may be limited, that government has the ability to cultivate or cut back private sector construction. Private sector work is far more important to us in most years than public sector work.

Unfortunately, we in the Trades have seen that some of the same “progressives” who are talking of “local hire” mandates have voted often in the midst of this recession to hinder private sector construction. Just this month Supervisors Avalos, Mar, Mirkarimi and Campos lined up behind a motion by Supervisor Daly to reject the environmental impact report for an office tower proposed for Second and Howard Streets, a vote that would at very least have delayed the project for months and possibly killed it altogether. Daly didn’t bother to offer a rationale for his motion. Again, as with the Hunters Point project, Supervisor David Chiu was a deciding vote to allow the project to go forward.

If we are to see legislation that mandates “local hire,” it must balance an assertion of turf with the real needs of workers. If by reaffirming boundaries it brings new workers into our ranks, it must not then hurt their work and careers by so insisting on turf that it provokes like insistence from surrounding jurisdictions. It must also honor success and not penalize it. If workers reach a point in their careers where they can afford better homes, the Board of Supervisors must either help provide them or consider those workers local still, even if they move elsewhere.

And if the Board truly believes in providing opportunities to San Franciscans, it will become more focused on making private sector construction work, do what it can to make it blossom and use its pruning shears only sparingly and judiciously.