San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos Proposes Nation's Strongest Local Hiring Law

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- October 20, 2010 -- Next year, San Francisco public dollars will create 9,400 blue-collar and green-collar jobs as the city embarks on an ambitious ten-year, $27 billion capital investment plan.  A city-funded study by L. Luster & Associates released Monday also shows that San Francisco’s performance in meeting its longstanding goal of employing 50% local residents on public works is at an all-time low, while city unemployment has peaked:   from July 2009 to July 2010, only 20% of city-funded construction hours were performed by local residents, down from 24.1% over the past seven years.
 
Yesterday at City Hall, 150 out-of-work local union members, community contractors, social justice advocates, organizers, labor leaders, and environmentalists surrounded San Francisco John Avalos as he announced his proposal to replace San Francisco’s “good faith” efforts approach to local hiring with a mandatory requirement that contractors hire a set percentage of residents within each construction trade that will increase from 30% to 50% over the next 3 years.  The proposal penalizes contractors that fail to meet this requirement, but offers financial incentives to those that do.
 
“This is how we are going to change things in San Francisco, what has been in effect has not worked for us,” Supervisor Avalos told the San Francisco Examiner.  Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, told the San Francisco Chronicle that “when it comes to making local investments with our tax dollars for building our public infrastructure, it makes sense that we have as much benefit as we can at the local level.”
 
Seven San Francisco Supervisors, one more than is necessary to approve what would become the nation’s strongest local hiring law, spoke at Tuesday’s rally.  Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who authored the city’s workforce development centralization plan in 2007, thanked Cleveland, Ohio for “showing us the way” to legally defensible local hiring mandates and pledged to work on expanding the policy shift away from “good faith” practices to the non-construction arena.  The Bay Guardian reported that Tuesday’s rally served as the launch of a campaign to increase local opportunities for residents in all sectors called LOCAL SF.
 
Board President David Chiu greeted those assembled in multiple languages reflecting the diversity of those assembled at City Hall and, along with Supervisor and fellow Harvard Law-grad David Campos, reminded all present that mandatory local hiring is legal and has survived court challenge.  In fact, City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s approving Avalos’ proposed community hiring policy as to form signals the City Attorney’s intent to defend the new law if need be.
 
Supervisor Chris Daly hammered home the failure of “good faith efforts” to deliver on years of promises of jobs to disadvantaged communities, while Supervisor Eric Mar spoke of the environmental benefits of a localized workforce and the impact on green jobs, points reiterated by Sierra Club political director and City College Trustee John Rizzo.
 
However, it was Supervisor Sophie Maxwell who bestilled the crowd of gatherers from every corner of San Francisco, including the Mission, Chinatown, South of Market, the Castro and her own district’s Bayview-Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley neighborhoods, when she spoke of “the bittersweet nature” of the occasion.  “Think about all of the opportunities that we have lost over the years in relying on 'good faith efforts'," she said.  
 
Mayor Gavin Newsom told the Bay Citizen that he “supports stronger local hire requirements” and will “work with the Supervisors, the building trade unions and the community” to achieve those job guarantees.  Upon introducing his measure later that afternoon, Avalos indicated his intent to continue a dialog calculated to lead to the Mayor’s support for the measure and thanked the Office of Economic and Workforce Development’s Rhonda Simmons and Chris Iglesias, CityBuild Director Guillermo Rodriguez, and Redevelopment Agency Director Fred Blackwell for their work on building strong, consensus-driven legislation in a series of local hiring stakeholder meetings convened by the San Francisco Foundation and the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.
 
 Supervisor Avalos acknowledged to Bay City News that there are “delicate relationships to balance,” and indeed one industry expert interviewed by  KGO Channel 7 News believes that capturing 30%, or 2,820, of next year’s jobs instead of the 1,880 to be expected if the City remains stuck on 20%, involves “creating better than 1,000 journey-level workers out of thin air in the next two years.”
 
There are several major developments on the local hiring front in San Francisco.  On Monday, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commissioner Juliet Ellis presented the Board’s Land Use Committee with a groundbreaking local hiring and community benefits program that she initiated as a Commissioner, before SFPUC General Manager Ed Harrington wisely tapped her to join him and Assistant General Manager Harlan Kelly to implement the program as the PUC’s Assistant GM for External Affairs.  In addition, last month Department of Public Works Director Ed Reiskin unveiled a pilot project that makes DPW local hiring data available online to the public and the community in real-time on the City’s DataSF website.
 
An informational hearing on the Avalos local hiring policy will be held in a few weeks and we can expect to hear from the array of organizations that rallied in support of the policy and were thanked for their contributions to it, including Chinese for Affirmative Action, Chinese Progressive Association, PODER, the Southeast Jobs Coalition, Young Community Developers, A. Philip Randolph Institute, Anders & Anders, Arc Ecology, Positive Directions, Visitacion Valley Community Development, Inner City Youth, Brightline, Sustainable Futures, ABU, the Osiris Coalition, Southeast Community Development,  POWER, Coleman Advocates, the Progressive Workers Alliance, Community Benefits Law Center, Mission Hiring Hall, Filipino Community Center, Jobs with Justice, Pride at Work, REDF, Merriwether & Williams, Davis & Associates, SF Community Power, Asian Neighborhood Design, Global Exchange, Charity Cultural Services Center and many others.
 
Bayview community leader Espanola Jackson often testifies at City Hall hearings that "we've been trying to change these 'good faith efforts' since the late 1960's."  Over 40 years later, it looks as though change may be coming.

Brightline Defense Project is a non-profit civil rights advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and empowering communities.  Brightline’s efforts have led to the prevention of a new power plant in Southeast San Francisco and increased employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged residents, particularly in the green jobs sector.

Brightline asks ALL San Francisco residents to protect working families by voting NO ON PROPOSITION B this November election.