On Monday, Nov. 22, the city of San Francisco’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee will hear the Board of Supervisors’ proposed LOCAL-SF legislation that would make it a local mandate to require that 50% of the members of a construction crew live in the city of San Francisco regardless of the skill level, experience or training of the individuals.
The ordinance, dubbed “Local Opportunities for Communities and Labor,” was written and promoted by Supervisor John Avalos of District 11 (which borders Daly City in the southern city/county and includes Crocker Amazon, the Excelsior and Outer Mission).
Avalos contends that the city’s First Source Program, which requires that contractors make “good-faith efforts” to hire 50% local residents on publically-funded projects, has “fallen flat,” and that, in reality, only 20% of the jobs are going to San Franciscans.
Avalos further insists that this ordinance, in addition to the economic and social benefits, would result in environmental righteousness by allowing workers to “take transit, walk or bike to work” instead of polluting the air with greenhouse gas emissions belched out by those insidious car-driving commuters.
In what fantasyland is Mr. Avalos living? Granted, construction workers in San Francisco need jobs, but so do lots of other workers in the Bay Area. And then there’s the skill issue.
To which, the Engineering and Utility Contractors Association’s CEO Mark Breslin last week provided the supervisors with some basic realities: “This proposed ordinance punishes individuals and their families who have started their careers in San Francisco and then moved to an outlying area to enable them to purchase a home or find more reasonable rents while remaining employed by contractors in the city, which is no different than what thousands of people employed by the city of San Francisco do. How can the city enable their employees to live outside the city, but deny those employed by the private sector the same opportunity?”
(This key fact: The average priced home in San Francisco is around $640,000. And that’s in the crummy neighborhoods.)
Breslin adds that with more than $27 billion dollars of public works projects planned in San Francisco in the coming years, the proposed ordinance will “create a multitude of problems as it does not take into account the challenges of creating a skilled team of construction workers.
“Each construction team, from the top managers to the jobsite crew has defined skills, roles and responsibilities. Employers spend thousands of dollars training on each of their key team players. Team members understand the work, the employer procedures and each other. This is important because both safety and productivity depend on the synergy between all team members. This proposed ordinance ignores this reality and, instead, treats construction professionals as interchangeable parts that will result in drastically higher bid prices, impacts on safety and production, additional training costs and the loss of key regional employees.”
Breslin has it right: In a city where the board of supervisors overwhelmingly wants to ban toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals, we now get this.
The ordinance, dubbed “Local Opportunities for Communities and Labor,” was written and promoted by Supervisor John Avalos of District 11 (which borders Daly City in the southern city/county and includes Crocker Amazon, the Excelsior and Outer Mission).
Avalos contends that the city’s First Source Program, which requires that contractors make “good-faith efforts” to hire 50% local residents on publically-funded projects, has “fallen flat,” and that, in reality, only 20% of the jobs are going to San Franciscans.
Avalos further insists that this ordinance, in addition to the economic and social benefits, would result in environmental righteousness by allowing workers to “take transit, walk or bike to work” instead of polluting the air with greenhouse gas emissions belched out by those insidious car-driving commuters.
In what fantasyland is Mr. Avalos living? Granted, construction workers in San Francisco need jobs, but so do lots of other workers in the Bay Area. And then there’s the skill issue.
To which, the Engineering and Utility Contractors Association’s CEO Mark Breslin last week provided the supervisors with some basic realities: “This proposed ordinance punishes individuals and their families who have started their careers in San Francisco and then moved to an outlying area to enable them to purchase a home or find more reasonable rents while remaining employed by contractors in the city, which is no different than what thousands of people employed by the city of San Francisco do. How can the city enable their employees to live outside the city, but deny those employed by the private sector the same opportunity?”
(This key fact: The average priced home in San Francisco is around $640,000. And that’s in the crummy neighborhoods.)
Breslin adds that with more than $27 billion dollars of public works projects planned in San Francisco in the coming years, the proposed ordinance will “create a multitude of problems as it does not take into account the challenges of creating a skilled team of construction workers.
“Each construction team, from the top managers to the jobsite crew has defined skills, roles and responsibilities. Employers spend thousands of dollars training on each of their key team players. Team members understand the work, the employer procedures and each other. This is important because both safety and productivity depend on the synergy between all team members. This proposed ordinance ignores this reality and, instead, treats construction professionals as interchangeable parts that will result in drastically higher bid prices, impacts on safety and production, additional training costs and the loss of key regional employees.”
Breslin has it right: In a city where the board of supervisors overwhelmingly wants to ban toys in McDonald’s Happy Meals, we now get this.
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