2/7Labor-Community Speakout On Racism In Workplace

Saturday Feb 7, 2004 11:00 AM

A Town Hall Community-Labor Speakout
Saturday, Feb. 7, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Green House,
4919 Third St., between Palou and Quesada
San Francisco
to demand this investigation by the PUC and an end to racism in city (San
Francisco) employment and against all racist attacks in the workplace.
We want your voices on this issue.

(Special Free Showing Of The Documentary “Strange Fruit” on the fight against lynchings in the South at 10:00 AM)
Green House - 4919 3rd St./Palou St. San Francisco

Endorsed BY: San Francisco Bayview, National Black Newspaper of the Year,
Labor Action Coalition, Peace and Freedom Labor Committee, ANSWER, Labor
Committee for Peace & Justice, NALC 214, and Campaign Against Taft-Hartley, Repression
and Privatization




We say no to these attacks.
PUC-SF Stop Covering Up Racism
Say No To Segregation, Prejudice and Bigotry
Stop Segregated Working Conditions
No More Hanging Nooses and Racist Firings
Stop Modern Day Segregation
Abolish Human Resources
No More Plantation Politics
Stop Privatization of Civil Service Jobs



Coalition For Justice and Human Rights
P.O.Box 15086
San Francisco, CA 94115
a_labossiere1 [at] yahoo.com carltv214 [at] aol.com
415-867-0628







For More information read the following articles:

Working For The City Is A Living Hell
http://www.sfbayview.com/082003/workingforthecity082003.shtml

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/08/16/MNL120088.DTL

http://www.sfbayview.com/012104/racistattacks012104.shtml
1/28/04

Black city workers protest racist attacks

Not ‘silent about things that matter’
by Alex Flynn
Mentor Dee Gray, Poor Magazine
PNN
As a white woman, I haven’t experienced racism directly, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen how painful it is. My grandparents adopted my uncle, who is Aboriginal (known as “Native American” in the United States), after my mom and her four sisters and brothers were already grown. The age difference between Uncle Alistair and me is only 10 years, so he felt more like a brother than anything else. In Canada, there is a lot of discrimination against Aboriginal peoples, and Uncle Alistair didn’t escape it by growing up in a white family.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” On Friday, the day after the 75th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth, Anita Labossiere, her supporters, and a number of community activities protested in front of City Hall. Anita, an African American woman, has worked at the Southeast Pollution Control Plant in Bay View Hunters Point for over 23 years and, during most of that period, has experienced racial harassment.
Even after finding the word “nigger” on her car and being passed up for promotion after promotion, she tried to work with her manager to fix the situation. Nothing worked, and she ultimately took a stress leave. But the penalties continued when she was told she couldn’t return to work, first because she was declared “violent” and then because she was told she had a “twitch.” These claims arose after she had gone public about her experiences.
I saw people discriminate against Uncle Alistair all the time. One time, when we were driving him back to my grandparents’ place we stopped at a gas station to use the washroom. My mom, sister and I went to the women’s room and Uncle Alistair went to the men’s. When we met back at the car, Alistair looked devastated: the clerk had refused to let him in, saying he was just a “stinking Indian.” My mom tongue-lashed the clerk and reported his conduct, but it certainly wasn’t the last time that Uncle Alistair was discriminated against.
Discrimination against Native Canadians isn’t limited to my uncle. Similarly, Anita hasn’t been the only African American city worker who experienced racism at a city public utility. Carmi Johnson, a stationary engineer with the Pollution Control Bureau, found a hanging noose in her workplace and was harassed out of her job (she has documented her story in her book published by Poor Press, “Wasted Waters”). Anita’s co-worker, Leticia Brown, was harassed and followed.
When Human Rights Commission Senior Contract Compliance Officer Kevin Williams spoke out against the racism he investigated and that her experienced personally, he was fired. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission couldn’t escape politics when they were asked to look into a hanging noose incident at the San Francisco International Airport. Their report was ultimately discredited.
In San Francisco, it’s a leap of faith to expect that City Hall will be much help. The problems with the Human Rights Commission were allegedly due to interference by the Mayor’s office. And, even though racist incidents have been brought to the City’s attention for years, City Administrator Bill Lee said that the matter is “in review” by the administration and suggested that “these people” (the demonstrators) write letters directly to Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The years of stagnancy make it even more amazing that people are still willing to raise their voices. Long time community activist Marie Harrison says that this kind of racism happens again and again. As she puts it, “How can a nation as strong and powerful as the U.S. stand still for hangman’s nooses to be hung in our workplaces?” Working with management, bringing complaints and going to court so far haven’t succeeded in leading to change, and so she comes out to every demonstration hoping that big numbers will make a difference.
It is hard for me to understand how, in this day and age, racism still happens. Perhaps, as suggested by Stationary Engineers Local 39 member and organizer of the demonstration Steve Zeltzer, the racism aimed at San Francisco city workers is connected to something else. He believes that the racial harassment cannot be disassociated from the privatization of public utilities. The goal, he says, is to get rid of long-term city workers and good paying union jobs, ultimately giving them to private contractors.
Alex Flynn is an intern in Poverty Studies, a training program offered at Poor Magazine that trains people with race and/or class privilege how to write about issues of poverty and racism from the position of empathy rather than “other.” For more poverty scholarship and empathetic journalism on issues of poverty and racism, go on line to http://www.poormagazine.org. See Anita’s story at http://www.sfbayview.com/082003/workingforthecity082003.shtml. See “Nooses found at sewage plants” http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/08/16/MNL120088.DTL. See an article about Kevin Williams, the Human Rights Commission and the noose at the airport at http://www.sfbg.com/News/35/44/44sfo.html.



http://www.sfbayview.com/122403/pucstop122403.shtml
Will PUC stop racism at wastewater plants?

by Roland Sheppard

San Francisco - On Dec. 1, Anita Labossiere, along with this reporter,
expressed some of our concerns to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission that
overt racism – replete with hanging nooses – continues to raise its ugly
head in the city’s wastewater, or sewage treatment, plants.

Placing a noose where a Black worker will find it is becoming an increasingly
common form of racist terrorism in workplaces around the country. The nooses
are intended as a reminder of the thousands of Blacks lynched by Whites just a
few decades ago. Both Anita, who found a noose in her desk, and fellow
worker, stationary engineer Carmi Johnson, are victims of noose terrorism at the PUC’
s wastewater plants.

Anita told the PUC, “I have been working for the San Francisco Water
Pollution Control Bureau for over 23 years as the only African American supervising
chemist. In the City and County of San Francisco, there is a well-organized plan
by the managers to harass any minorities, minority supervisors and employees
who support Black workers.

“After the article I wrote, published in the Bay View newspaper last Aug. 20,
‘Working for the City is a living hell: Dealing with racism in the wastewater
plants,’ I have been kept away from work by the managers at PUC. They are
using every legal and illegal trick to keep me from returning to work from my
personal leave,” Anita testified, adding, “I should never have to work in this
living HELL! You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

“The following lyrics from the song ‘Strange Fruit’ explain my feelings. I
feel like I am a strange fruit swingin’ in the Southern breeze: ‘Southern
trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/ Black
bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar
trees/ Pastoral scene of the gallant South. ...’

“PUC Personnel has refused to allow me to return to work. I was on a leave of
absence brought on by stress. There are many Black employees throughout the
City who are going through what I am going through. My case is very typical of
how Mayor Willie Brown has ignored all of the Black employees’ concerns, even
allowing them to be fired on trumped up charges. We have not gotten any help
from Mayor Brown.”

Anita concluded with a call to action: “The PUC needs to conduct an immediate
and open investigation and hearing about this racism in the water and
wastewater plants.”

We were both well received by the PUC, and they agreed that this is an
important matter. They stated, for the record, that they will investigate this
intolerable situation within the wastewater plants.

But the truth of the matter is that the PUC’s department managers have
implemented a rule known as Sec. 120.22 Compulsory Sick Leave in order to keep Anita
from going back to work.

On Dec. 15, she was forcibly removed from the job under this city rule, even
though she had been accepted back to work earlier in the day. An absent, so
far unnamed, supervisor evoked rule 120.22.1.

That section of the city rules states: “An appointing officer or designee who
has reason to believe that an employee is not medically or physically
competent to perform assigned duties, and if allowed to continue in employment or
return from leave may represent a risk to coworkers, the public and the employee,
may require the employee to present a medical report from a physician
designated by the Human Resources Director certifying the employee’s medical or
physical competency to perform the required duties.”

In fact, this rule was put in operation after Anita wrote her article for
this newspaper on racism in the wastewater plants and was already on stress leave
due to the racist environment that is allowed to exist and fester at the
plant.

The way the rule is being interpreted in Anita’s case, the “appointing
officer or designee” has the right to discriminate against any employee. Every
employee who gets injured on the job, under this interpretation, could be
prevented from returning to work.

In this case, it is simply another type of noose that is left dangling before
every city worker - especially those, like Anita, who have “blown the whistle”
on racism. PUC managers even dare to implement this policy in the heart of
the largest remaining Black neighborhood in San Francisco!

The Southeast sewage treatment plant would never have been built in Bay View
Hunters Point if African Americans – both skilled professionals like Anita and
blue collar workers – had not been promised jobs and equal opportunity to
rise through the ranks. The Black community, in one of its strongest
demonstrations of unity in San Francisco history, stopped construction of the plant,
protesting that the neighborhood was already being poisoned by the PG&E power plant
and other pollution generators and that race discrimination pervaded city
employment.

Only when the city promised to minimize pollution and hire residents was
construction allowed to proceed. Despite repeated protests over the years, the
city has made little effort to fulfill either promise.

Anita is a strong person and, so far, she is standing up to and enduring the
attacks against her. If the Black community stands up with her, she will win
and all of San Francisco will gain.

On Monday, Dec. 29, at 4:30 p.m., a picket line and rally will be held on the
steps of City Hall to address this issue. All are welcome to come and raise
their voices.

We must remain ever vigilant so that a proper investigation is carried out
and that the PUC does not just “go through the motions” of an investigation and
that racism in city government is rooted out and punished.

A Town Hall Community-Labor Speakout will be held on Saturday, Feb. 7, from
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Green House, 4919 Third St., between Palou and
Quesada, to demand this investigation by the PUC and an end to racism in city
employment. For more information, call (415) 867-0628.

Email Roland Sheppard at Rolandgarret [at] aol.com.