City Government

Proposed City Jobs Policy Could Shut Out Black Construction Workers

Published

7 years ago

January 13, 2018

City staff, along with Councilmembers Rebecca Kaplan (front left) and Abel Guillén, hosted a meeting Monday evening at City Hall to hear community feedback on proposed changes for a new labor agreement for development on city-owned lands. Photo by Ken Epstein.

City of Oakland staff held a meeting this week to discuss a proposed public lands policy, which would include a labor agreement with the Alameda County Building Trades Council that some critics fear would undermine the few jobs that exist for African-American construction workers on city-connected projects.

The proposal, as written by Councilmember Abel Guillén, would expand the coverage of the city’s current Local Employment Policy, which at present only applies to subsidized, non-market deals.

If adopted, the policy would apply to all projects involving sale or lease of city-owned land.

The Project Labor Agreement (PLA) between the city and the building trades unions would cover all projects of 80 or more housing units or with an estimated construction cost of $40 million or more.

The proposal would require the Building Trades Council to submit a report to the city within six months after the agreement is signed containing the race, ethnicity, gender and percentage of Oakland residents of each union affiliated with the labor council.
Councilmembers Guillén and Rebecca Kaplan co-sponsored the meeting.

Guillén, who chaired the discussion, explained that he has been working on the public lands policy for over a year. He said the city should strike a balance between selling property for top dollar and requiring public benefits, which would limit the amount of money the city can earn.

“Selling property gets the most money,” he said. “If we want too much, we don’t get the money. [We must] balance a public lands policy with a jobs policy.”

Under the current jobs policy, 88 percent of work on city-connected projects go to union workers, and the balance goes to nonunion or mixed nonunion and union.

Guillén said his proposal would be finalized and sent to the council for discussion and revision. He is suggesting the city pass a policy and then evaluate it after five projects in a few years “to see how we did on local hiring,” he said.

Kaplan emphasized that a new jobs policy should guarantee equity—jobs for Black construction workers and black-owned construction firms, minority workers and for women—and keep money in the local community.

“I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the jobs policy input meeting, and the thoughtful comments and suggestions made by attendees,” Kaplan said in an interview with the Oakland Post.

“I believe we can, and should, work to bring forward jobs policies for public lands that incorporate all of our community, including other issues like ‘ban the box’ as well,” she said. “We also need to continue to work to expand opportunity to get into good-paying jobs in growing construction, including apprenticeship opportunities for Oaklanders.”

Community speakers at the meeting—including representatives of small construction firms—questioned the city’s commitment to equity, based on its past track record.

“How do minority contractors in Oakland get access to contracts, especially on public land? We’re not included. We’re [always] after the fact, and it’s too late,” said Pete Varma, president of the Northern California Chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors.

“Every time they try out something, Black contractors are left out,” said Louis Summerhill.

“How many Black contractors were involved in putting this [proposal] together?” He asked.

“This isn’t a new conversation. We are the last hired and the first fired, and it hasn’t changed,” said Eddie Dillard.

Several speakers questioned whether a new policy would make a difference if it is not enforced.

The problem with a project labor agreement, according to critics, is that contractors hire workers through hiring halls run by the building trades unions for their members, which are predominately white and have always been segregated.

As a result, African-American construction workers – no matter how experienced – tend not to be union members and have little access to union jobs. Black workers tend to work for non-union, Black-owned small construction firms.

Those job opportunities could be eliminated by a PLA.

The language of Guillén’s proposal allows non-union firms to work on city-associated projects, but “non-union contractors must make first hires from the union hall.”

The firms can then hire a “maximum of five core employees” of their firms, and after that, “All future hires are from the hiring hall.”

As a result, the PLA could mean that almost no Black workers would be able to work on city projects.

Statistics released by the city several years ago show that five percent of construction jobs on city projects went to Black workers. The Oakland Post in October requested current data from the city but has not yet received it.
According to Robyn Hodges, a member of OaklandWorks attended the meeting.

“Oakland is never going to realize equity as along as the Building Trades are writing the rules,” she said. “This plan needs to be tossed out and rewritten, the same way we did with the Army Base Project.

“This needs to become a more open process. If we keep going to the same meetings with the same people, we will be getting the same results.”

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

Published

18 hours ago

November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

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Evidence Appears to Show Cover-Up of Previous Charges of Discrimination Against Jewish and Black Jurors, D.A. Says

Today, District Attorney Pamela Price announced that attorneys assigned to review the office’s death penalty cases found evidence revealing that instead of investigating claims of prosecutorial misconduct—excluding Jewish and Black residents from juries — a former senior Alameda County District Attorney’s Office prosecutor who is now a sitting judge in Alameda County, Morris Jacobson, and a team of investigators appeared to have taken part in covering it up.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

A handwritten note by an employee under a previous administration appears to show plans for a cover-up of jury discrimination in a death penalty case. Courtesy image.

Special to The Post

During a press conference, Price presented a copy of a handwritten note by a former DA office employee who attended a meeting with employees from the office.

Jacobson, a deputy district attorney at the time, led the meeting in preparation for an evidentiary hearing ordered in the Fred Freeman case.

That hearing was ordered after former capital trial prosecutor Jack Quatman, the prosecutor in People v. Freeman, signed a declaration revealing that he and other capital case prosecutors routinely struck Black women and Jewish jurors in death penalty cases.

Jacobson was assigned by former district attorneys Tom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley to coordinate the ACDAO’s response during the evidentiary hearing.

In that capacity, he and others assigned to the capital case team went to great lengths to distract the courts from the substantive legal allegations by besmirching the whistleblower Quatman’s character and credibility—a strategy that succeeded.

Key sections of the note include, “left it w/ Morris saying he would give us direction. Wants to find dirt on Quatman,” and “How good are your memories? His point was he doesn’t want any documentation of what we do unless it is agreed upon???”

“This note provides the public some of the missing clues regarding who appeared to be involved during previous administrations in covering up prosecutorial misconduct at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said Price. “The note from this meeting in 2004 gives insight into why prosecutors’ notes containing evidence of discrimination against potential Jewish and Black jurors may not have been subjected to a comprehensive review and were not disclosed to the Court in most of the cases until my office was ordered by Honorable Judge Vince Chhabria to review death penalty cases.

“What the public should know is that prosecutors have special duties as ministers of justice to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a fair trial and to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” she said.

United States District Court Judge Chhabria determined earlier this year that there was “strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were … excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases.”

He subsequently issued an order directing ACDAO to disclose jury selection files in all Alameda County cases which resulted in a death sentence.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is the source of this story.

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Bay Area

In the City Attorney Race, Ryan Richardson Is Better for Oakland

It’s been two years since negotiations broke down between the City of Oakland and a developer who wants to build a coal terminal here, and the issue has reappeared, quietly, in the upcoming race for Oakland City attorney. Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Members of Oaklanders Defending Democracy political action committee with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, center. Courtesy photo.

By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Richardson has worked in the Office of the City Attorney since 2014 and is likely to continue current City Attorney Barbara Parker’s policies managing the department. He has committed not to accept campaign contributions from developers who want to store and handle coal at a proposed marine terminal in Oakland.

Retired Judge Harbin-Forte launched and has played a leading role in the campaign to recall Mayor Sheng Thao, which is also on the November ballot. She has stepped back from the recall campaign to focus on her candidacy. The East Bay Times noted, “Harbin-Forte’s decision to lead the recall campaign against a potential future client is … troubling — and is likely to undermine her ability, if she were to win, to work effectively.”

Harbin-Forte has refused to rule out accepting campaign support from coal terminal interests or their agents. Coal terminal lobbyist Greg McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committee “SOS Oakland” is backing her campaign.

In the 2022 mayor’s race, parties hoping to build a coal terminal made $600,000 in contributions to another of McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committees.

In a recent interview, Harbin-Forte said she is open to “listening to both sides” and will be “fair.” However, the City Attorney’s job is not to judge fairly between the City and its legal opponents – it is to represent the City against its opponents.

She thought that the 2022 settlement negotiations ended because the City “rejected a ‘no coal’ settlement.” This is lobbyist McConnell’s narrative, in contrast to the report by City Attorney Barbara Parker. Parker has explained that the City continued to negotiate in good faith for a settlement with no “loopholes” that could have allowed coal to ship through Oakland – until would-be coal developer Phil Tagami broke off negotiations.

One of Harbin-Forte’s main priorities, listed on her website, is “reducing reliance on outside law firms,” and instead use the lawyers working in the City Attorney’s office.

However, sometimes this office doesn’t have the extensive expertise available that outside firms can provide in major litigation. In the ongoing, high stakes coal litigation, the City has benefited from collaborating with experienced, specialized attorneys who could take on the nationally prominent firms representing the City’s opponents.

The City will continue to need this expertise as it pursues an appeal of the judge’s decision that restored the developer’s lease and defends against a billion-dollar lawsuit brought by the hedge fund operator who holds the sublease on the property.

Harbin-Forte’s unwillingness to refuse campaign contributions from coal terminal interests, her opposition to using outside resources when needed, as well as her uncritical repetition of coal lobbyist McConnell’s claim that the City sabotaged the settlement talks of 2022 all raise serious concerns about how well she would represent the best interests of Oakland and Oaklanders if she is elected City Attorney.