a promise is a promise
San Francisco, they say, is a labor town,
always has been.
Where else would the mayor take a stand,
shoulder to shoulder, with picketing hotel workers? Only in
San Francisco, where Willie Brown called for a boycott of
the downtown Marriott until workers obtained an acceptable
contract. Of course, Brown also presides over a city in
which few workers can afford to live, a city that has
returned millions of dollars in back taxes to the
corporations that do business there.
Where else would a vast public square be
named for a powerful union leader? Only in San Francisco,
where the space that spreads across the foot of Market, just
in front of the Ferry Building, will be known forevermore as
Harry Bridges Plaza. Of course, Bridges is long departed,
and during his tenure as founder and head of the
International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union,
he was more often reviled than revered by the city fathers.
Where else would a city propose to set
aside two sites to commemorate its most disruptive work
stoppage? Only in San Francisco, where the Landmarks
Advisory Board has proposed landmark status for Pier 38 and
the warehouse at 128 King Street, scenes of violent fighting
during the 1934 General Strike. Of course, the neighborhood
has changed since 1934. Now the sites reside amid some posh
“rehabilitated” historic buildings, where live/work
rents range from $2,400 to $8,100 a month.
In any case, the King Street warehouse
belonged to the enemy camp: it was leased by local business
interests trying to break the strike. At the time, local
media generally condemned the strikers. In an article that
began, “Blood ran red in the streets of San Francisco
yesterday,” Chronicle reporter Royce Brier called July 5
— “Bloody Thursday,” which marked the epicenter of the
strike — “the darkest day this city has known since
April 18, 1906.”
Originally a local effort to remove
cronyism and bribery from waterfront hiring, the strike
inspired sympathetic labor protests up and down the coast. A
catalyst for new federal labor laws, it led to the strong
union movement of the postwar period. Through the
rose-colored lenses of hindsight, working-class struggles
like the dock strike of 1934 have become indicators of San
Francisco’s romantic outlaw past.
But today organized labor accounts for
only a small percentage of San Francisco’s workers. The
other end of the spectrum is occupied by men and women who
do not earn enough to support themselves in this very
expensive city. To ease the burden, the city passed a “living
wage” ordinance last year, compensating its employees and
those of companies with city contracts at a rate of $9/hour;
as required by the law, Our Mayor’s new budget raises the
rate to $10/hour. Progress is also being made toward
providing health insurance for these workers.
But last year’s agreement between the
mayor and living wage advocates contains other provisions
that have not materialized. The thought was there, but the
funds aren’t.
A primary case in point is the situation
of CalWORKs participants — many of the people who sweep
our streets, wash our buses, and clean our service agency
offices. The Clinton Administration’s “welfare reform”
foresaw their transition from welfare recipients to
independent workers. In San Francisco, a program began in
the fall of 1998 that promised “to create on-the-job
and/or work experience opportunities for individuals
transitioning from welfare to work.” The mayor concurred:
not only would these workers’ hourly wage increase to
$8/hour; their experience would “meet requirements for
entry-level city job classifications.”
If funds were provided. They haven’t
been.
Instead, participants are recycled to
nowhere, just like hamsters in a wheel. Round and round they
go, past the time limit set for workfare jobs yet never
obtaining official experience that will allow them to move
into a “real” job.
The folks at the Living Wage Coalition,
POWER, and St. Peter’s Housing Committee say the
transition is do-able: “The cost of providing work
opportunity for 850 families is just $3.9 million (just .074
percent of the mayor’s proposed $5.2 billion budget).”
The members of the supervisors Finance
Committee — Mark Leno, Aaron Peskin, and Matt Gonzalez —
can vote to amend the mayor’s budget and provide the
needed funds. What could be a better monument to the
struggles of Harry Bridges’ longshoremen in 1934 than the
establishment of a path from poverty for these 21st-century
workers?
Betsey Culp
