Tag: good faith efforts

The long journey to an equitable pathway for community workers and contractors at San Francisco Unified has seen great progress over the past year; and the same policy makers, community members, labor leaders and community contractors that brought us this far appear poised to carry a torch now held by many across the line between longstanding hope and a truly historic reality.

It has been five short months since dozens of unemployed Black workers and contractors protested exclusion of Blacks from demolition and demanded inclusion of Blacks in the rebuilding of Bayview’s Willie Brown Middle School. Now SFUSD plans to ask the School Board at their meeting Tuesday, Feb. 12, 6 p.m., at 555 Franklin, First Floor, to AWARD THE $44.6 MILLION CONTRACT FOR WILLIE BROWN SCHOOL TO A MAJOR WHITE CONTRACTOR without competitive bidding. Pack the meeting! Protest economic racism!

In late August, Aboriginal Blackman United organized over 30 unemployed union members from Bayview Hunters Point to protest construction at Bayview’s Willie Brown Academy. We did not protest because we disagree that our public schools are much in need of repair or with the $531 million that the San Francisco School District will spend to upgrade our public schools. We protested because, despite this historic opportunity for the School District to work with local communities to rebuild our schools, there are no Black workers and no Black contractors at Willie Brown Academy. And at ABU we say that if we don’t work, nobody works.

The San Francisco School Board is considering a strong local hiring and contracting policy that will give Blacks and all San Franciscans a chance to compete for a share of the $531 million in school construction funded by Proposition A – and give our children the economic security they need to succeed in school and in life.

Supervisor John Avalos’ landmark local hiring legislation proposes to end decades of reliance on “good faith efforts” to employ local residents on local projects funded by local dollars and would make San Francisco only the second city in the country with a mandatory local hiring ordinance that penalizes non-compliance.

Supervisors Nate Miley and Keith Carson have restored my faith in Black elected officials. The leverage that public officials have just before contract award is enormous. Nate Miley and Keith Carson by their actions have established a method of enforcing contractor goals that can create economic parity in the Black community.