Fighting for Workers or Fronting for Developers? Questions For SF Building Trades Leader

Fighting for Workers or Fronting for Developers? Questions For SF Building Trades Secretary Tresurer Michael Theriault

Fighting for Workers or Fronting for Developers?


Building and Construction Trades Secretary Treasurer Michael Theriault has called a Rally today at Civic Center that is part of an attack on City Planning and Preservation, as if the public effort to maintain neighborhoods and a city environment in which working people can afford to live is responsible for the loss of jobs.


Whose agenda is this – that of working people and the great majority of the citizens of San Francisco or that of the large developers who have gutted planning, rolled back preservation and turned San Francisco into a city to which working people must commute?


The project that Brother Theriault is pushing is an eleven-story building that guts the planning criteria for the Waterfront and Maritime District. The developers whom he serves concealed from the Planning Commission that they intend to raze to the ground 113 Steuart Street – the historic labor landmark from which Harry Bridges and International Longshoremen’s Association Local 38-79 organized and led the
Great Maritime and General Strike of 1934.


Whose interests are served here? Is this the way jobs are to be achieved in San Francisco – by gutting the structure where working people waged a three-month united battle to control their own hiring, extend union protection to workers throughout San Francisco, on this the 75th anniversary of a unified struggle that electrified working people across America and the world?



Not every project is in the interest of the workers who build them. Destroying our history and desecrating entire neighborhoods does not serve our working population. Covering for the developer’s lies actually subverts a viable restoration that meets planning criteria and preserves the Hall.




The fight for good union jobs cannot be separated from the social content of the work performed. Developers can replace City Hall with a glass and steel high-rise - with condos and offices at $1 million a throw - if we don’t give a damn about what happens to our city and the impact on the people who inhabit it.


The jobs we need can never be separated from the social content of what we build Public control over what happens in our cities is a life and death interest of working people. Planning that answers to our needs is an indispensable weapon of restraint and control over the cynicism of speculators who have zero interest in the social consequences of their projects.


They don’t. We do. Here is the litmus test of whose interests are served by the agenda served by Brother Theriault:



· Non-union projects are going up next to union halls in San Francisco – but no demonstrations or picket lines have been organized against them.



· City funded jobs building libraries and schools with non-union labor go unchallenged by the Building Trades leadership.



· Skilled craft workers in San Francisco are unemployed while city and government construction takes place with non-union labor without a word from this leadership.



· Workers from great distances are being brought to work on projects in the city while union craft workers in the city languish unemployed.



· Vanishingly few Black carpenters are placed on city jobs, despite the protests of members of Carpenters Local 22 and of Black worker organizations such as ABU – met with stunning silence from this leadership.



The lives and well being of working people are at stake. Planning and Preservation are our weapons of combat.



Brother Theriault mobilizes in support not of the united interests of working people but on behalf of the developer’s ploy, a revision of Articles 10 and 11 of the Planning Code that gut Proposition J.



Codes 10 and 11 apply to less than two percent of the building stock of San Francisco. They have little to do with the volume of jobs we need and everything to do with gutting the Planning that would advance them.



Working people need to come together in clear sighted and united opposition to the agenda of the Developers and the Chamber of Commerce.



In 1934, we did this. In 2009 our crisis is more profound. The trade union movement and working people at large have a historic opportunity to unite and fight for jobs that advance social progress, for planning that serves the needs of the vast majority– the workers whose capacity and productivity can transform San Francisco and the world.

http://www.fogcityjournal.com/wordpress/2009/05/07/stay-tuned-tourk-it-up-a-notch/#more-1220

Stay Tuned: Tourk It Up a Notch

Tourking it up a notch, hired gun Alex Tourk rubs shoulders
with the new Billy Whiz kid on the block, BOS Prez David Chiu,
following Chiu’s soliloquy to the building tradesters Tuesday.
Photos by Luke Thomas
By Hope Johnson
May 7, 2009
After several weeks of constructing loud and confusing noise, the San Francisco Building Construction and Trade Council (BCT) held a rally in front of City Hall Tuesday to announce they’ve finally decided exactly why they’re upset.
To turn up the political spin on this previously unfocused anger, they’ve hired Mayor Gavin Newsom’s former Deputy Chief of Staff turned publicist Alex Tourk.
BCT Secretary-Treasurer Michael Theriault now firmly states labor leaders are pretty steamed over the passage of Proposition J.

Michael Theriault: Friends, San Franciscans, tradesmen, lend me your ears.
No, no, you haven’t missed the special election. It’s not until May 19.
Voters approved this Prop J all the way back in November. It creates the Historic Preservation Commission that oversees the designation of property as historic in San Francisco. According to Theriault, labor leaders believe proposed changes to the language in the planning code under Prop J will prevent creation of future construction jobs.
BCT’s claims against Prop J, their new business association with Tourk, and continued media propaganda all add to the mounting evidence that political opponents of the Progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors are upset over the power shift away from moneyed interests that occurred in last November’s elections.
Construction workers related stories of unemployment hardships at the rally. However, just as it was misleading for the Bush administration to continuously pair Saddam Hussein with terrorist attacks in New York, it’s purposefully misleading for labor leaders to associate current unemployment with historic protection provisions under Prop J. The ongoing nationwide economic crisis has brought construction to a standstill all over the State, from the East Bay to Orange County, municipalities with and without historic preservation statutes in place.
Conservative moderates in San Francisco have good reason for wanting to damage the reputations of Progressives Peskin and Daly, whose endorsements of candidates in upcoming district and mayoral elections will be influential.
The Bay Area Reporter suggests today that Laura Spanijian, conservative moderate supervisorial candidate for District 8, voted for Daly over moderate August Longo for Regional Director for just this reason.
The Chron’s C.W. Nevius did his best to contribute to discrediting Peskin by announcing Board President David Chiu, and well-known progressive Planning Commissioner Christina Olague, would speak at BCT’s rally, emphasizing both were either endorsed or appointed by Peskin and leaving the impression both may break solidarity with Progressives. Nevius followed up but made no mention of the fact both Chiu and Olague spoke out at the rally against the smear campaign on Peskin and Daly.

C.W. Nevius reluctantly shakes Chiu’s hand while Larry Mazzola Jr.
prepares to discard a Supervisor Chris Daly pro-union leaflet.

Board Prez David Chiu demonstrates a sublime ability
to use reason over hyperbole.

Planning Commissioner Christine Olague,
who recently converted from Green to Dem,
defends Daly and Peskin’s record of labor support
but shares Theriault’s Prop J concerns.

Here’s looking at you, kid.
Oh, well, the Chron isn’t so good at propaganda anyway. Nevius states, “Everyone keeps saying the tiff between labor and the far left is much ado about nothing,” even though his colleague Willie Brownclaimed the opposite just a few days prior.
No wonder Theriault alleges it was the media who “garbled” the message of labor leaders at BCT’s rally at the Democratic Party’s Unity luncheon last month. On the other hand, BCT itself failed to make clear on its own intent. Check out FCJ’s video of Daly with the union members outside the luncheon. Signs demand the resignation of Daly and Peskin but no mention is made of Prop J.
Anyway, the BCT may have put Tourk on the payroll just in time. Letters to the editor, Chron writersand bloggers are not buying the Prop J stole our jobs construction, and labor leaders may eventually need Tourk to clean up their own image with union members.
Recurrent Energy’s photovoltaic deal needs one taxpayer protection amendment
The Board of Supervisors passed the first reading of a controversial contract Tuesday with Recurrent Energy to install and operate a solar plant on the Sunset Reservoir. One of several concerns raised includes the City’s buyout option at years seven and fifteen. Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi put his best foot forward to amend the legislation to cap Recurrent’s profit on a buyout, but Supervisor Eric Mar, departing with his Progressive colleagues, seemed more persuaded by Sierra Club John Rizzo’s singular climate change interests, rather than protecting taxpayers from potentially getting gouged.
Noone we’ve talked to wants to scuttle the deal, but an amendment may still be possible to set in stone how much profit Recurrent Energy will be able to realize when the City chooses to exercise its buyout option. As it stands now, “fair market value” could mean anything.
FCJ spoke with Supervisor Mar yesterday who said he is willing to support a mutually agreeable buyout cap amendment. But, he warned, time is running out fast before next Tuesday’s second reading.
As an aside, it will be interesting to see how quickly gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom Tweets this project as one of his questionable achievements.
Stay tuned.
Fun Fact
FCJ highly recommends the theatrical stage comedy Stale Magnolias currently at Glama-Rama in the Mission. Read FCJ’s review, here.
Luke Thomas contributed to this article.