tv [untitled] November 12, 2010 12:30am-1:00am PST
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hired any san francisco residents prior, and assign those individuals on to the project. it is assigning the core members they have worked with previously and assigning them to this work. ultimately, the other aspect we do is we work with contractors who are doing public court in san francisco to maximize the opportunities of bringing on apprentices onto a project site. all our public works projects currently by state law requires that, a maximum of 20% of the work hours should be performed by apprentices. we try to work with each of the contractors in order to maximize the opportunity. not all projects in san francisco have apprentices. if a contractor comes on board and only need four laborers or only need four pile drivers, the opportunity to bring on an apprentice is not there. larger projects provide us with
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greater opportunity because you have a larger core base of journey workers that we can begin to prioritize apprentices. chairperson maxwell: what about doyle drive? >> that is federally funded. it is a project that is being managed out of caltrans and the san francisco transportation authority. they are the project manager on that side. what city build has been able to do is to work with them to find opportunities in the upcoming large contracts, again to be able to encourage using good faith to encourage those contractors to hire out of our local union halls here in san francisco, and again to make requests of san francisco residents so the king of opportunities out on -- tso they
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can have opportunities out on doyle drive. the opportunities are limited given the scope and nature of federal funding requirements. chairperson maxwell: federal funding makes it difficult because we cannot do what? >> correct. certainly, funding dictates a lot of local hire and what our office is able to do. if the dollars that are being used by one of our contract in departments came from the federal stimulus bill or is an award the received from the department of transportation, for example, there are explicit provisions on federal dollars being used for specifically local hire. "we often do is use the city first source language on federal contractors, again working with the -- trying to maximize
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opportunities. just because there are federal dollars on the project does not discourage our participation in encouraging contractors to hire san franciscans. it just means the mandate for public works projects that have federal funding is much more difficult. and then i just wanted again to give you a sense of the library project, looking at the project by trade in particular. the slide will show you that here are a particular set of traits that all have met at least 30% or greater working on the library project. if you look at carpenter's, laborers represent the bulk of the hours. both are above 40% participation rate on these projects. a lot of this is opportunities that lbe businesses in san
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francisco have to participate. we are trying to encourage them to do more. to give a sense of the trades that are more middle -- where we did not have too much representation -- you have a whole set of additional trades that are at 10% or greater in terms of participation. again, i wanted just to give you an illustration that there are san francisco residents in a vast majority of the trades that touch public work in san francisco. there are some here that you can see we did not have very many hours. if you look at the brick tenders, elevator construction, and the field surveyor, we did not have a lot of hours. we spent a lot of time focused on the craft that have opportunities and hours in order to try to make some changes. quickly moving on to the pipeline in terms of how we can influence -- chairperson maxwell: every tall
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building has elevators. we are not letting them off the hook, right? >> correct. when i was suggesting, supervisor, was that in the examples of the library project we did not see a lot of elevator work. we focused to try to move that needle. chairperson maxwell: library projects, you are right. i keep thinking about other things. you are right. >> i want to talk a little bit about city infrastructure in terms of trying to increase the supply of qualified san francisco residents in the building trade. since city build started, we have conducted 10 cycles, 10 academy class is in the last five years. it takes a lot of work in order to recruit, to sustain our residents in our programs. it is an intensive program. it is the partnership the city has with labor, with our community based organizations to go out on a daily basis to recruit folks, assist them in
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order to be qualified for the program, and ultimately provide case management support during the entire training. it is a growing system. but i wanted to give you a sense that the capacity is there in order to move and trained folks. we have also expanded opportunities for training across all industries. city build tries on a daily basis to have our curriculum be stellar to the point that a contractor has no excuse not to hire a graduate of our program, so that no apprentice program, or any comments about our greta -- we can meet or exceed all of their qualifications for entrance into an apprentice program. that is what we are designed to do, to give folks success. to give you a sense of the number of placements or referrals we have made on two
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projects, we have basically assisted over 200,000 san franciscans to work on public works projects. about 1400 of them were referred to public works. because we have first source here in san francisco, a condition of approval from the planning department, large planning and construction projects have to adhere to good faith efforts. we have been successful in getting san francisco residents on privately funded projects. to give you a sense of the demographics in terms of the type of residents that are at our community based organizations, that partners are going after, we are increasing the number of women in the trades by our active recruitment, our active efforts to try to specifically on federally funded projects, where they do have a requirement for participation of women in the trades, to maximize those opportunities and give you a sense of the scope and diversity
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of our folks. last, i wanted to share with you a sense of where our residents are coming from. they are all over san francisco. again, it is our partnership with our cbos that provide us with the access to our communities and our residents in order to maximize placements. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you very much. i cannot overstate how much support you have given us in crafting this legislation. i really appreciate your work. mr. rodriguez, mr. iglesias, and ms. simmons as well. what i wanted to do at this point in the hearing is to discuss -- to hear from chris iglesias first. then i will discuss the legislation and we will go into public comment. >> that pretty much concludes
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the presentations, but i did want to include that what we are working on right now -- we are working primarily with the chapter 6 contract requirements, including the human rights commission, reviewing the legislation and identifying areas of concern and possible amendments to them. we will get back to you. some of those include three levels. when we kick in -- size of projects? when do we escalate to a 50% mandate? there is administrative flexibility and greater coordination in reporting, greater financial incentives. these are looking -- we are looking at these with the departments. harlan kelly with the puc is here. we have a lot of participating partners here today. i think it is also important to know that these chapters -- this will impact chapter 6. over the past few years, this
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board has been very proactive in listening to the contract in community, the contracting industry, about making changes to chapter 6 to streamline doing business to the city. this board has done that. this board and as mayor of made many changes over the past few years to streamline payments and design flexibility, trying to make san francisco and is your place to do business. as the board finished that, we had the chapter 14 amendment with hrc increasing the participation and beefing up some of the tools for them to get more local lbes in the mix on city contracting. this legislation is in line with a lot of the activities the board has taken around chapter 6. chairperson maxwell: i know this is a little off, but as we go forward with our green academy and hour nurse academy, the information we are getting and
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some of the things we are doing with this legislation, d.c. that is going to be helpful or is kind of -- do you see that is going to be helpful, letting people know what we're going to be asking for? the see this as helpful for that? >> i think this is a perfect segue for director simmons to maybe address that a little more broadly. >> good afternoon, board of supervisors. just to the point on the other sector academies we started, rhonda simmons, director of corporate development. we have a health care academy and what we call a train green academy. both those are modeled after citybuild. i think the long-term strategy is to try to grow those in a similar way in which we have citybuild. we just graduated our first two clauses. i think you have seen that --
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attended those graduations. i think citybuild set a template for us to use moving forward and to expand what we are trying to do in terms of job training and getting san francisco residents to work. chairperson maxwell: thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you chair maxwell, and thank you for your presentations ms. simmons, mr. iglesias, and what i want to do before going to public comment is to address the amendments to chapter 6 of the ad man code. we are replacing section 6.22 g, which is the program replacing language to provide the proposed mandate. actually, my office is going to make copies for members of the community. i only have five copies here. i will make sure you get copies
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of you concede dealing with yourself. -- so you can see the language yourself. this will create mandatory local hiring, mandatory local hiring by trade, starting at 30% and increasing 10% each year for three years, looking at disadvantaged workers. at least half the minimum number of workers and -- of hires must be disadvantaged workers, someone living in areas with unemployment rates that are 150% of the median san francisco unemployment rate. apprentice requirements -- for covered projects advertised after the effective date of the projects, it requires at least 50% of product work hours the performed by local residents with low less than 25% of apprentice project work hours performed by disadvantaged workers. we want to require application of the project to public works or improvement contracts
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estimated to cost more than $350 thousand. that will be the threshold for contracts that would fit under this new legislation. to each contractor and subcontractor who performs more than $100,000 of project work on such projects it applies. for subcontractors, a lower threshold. reciprocity for project outside of the city. with prior application of the policy to city projects constructed outside of the city with percentage requirements proportional to city investment in the project. we have to look of what is happening in other cities to see if we can work out agreements across other cities so we can have workers back and forth across the region, to ensure we are working in concert with other policies that exist in the bay area. projects using state or federal funds -- this is an issue which could come up around the doyle drive project, where we have
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federal money. that would be carved out. it would not be counted toward our local hiring goals. it would be local funds that are eligible for local hiring. one of the issues around this legislation is that there are out of state workers that are still able to work on local construction projects because the constitution of the united states allows for the inflow of interstate commerce. to put up a block of anyone working from out of the state would be against the constitution. this legislation would assure that we would count out of state workers who are working our local construction projects. we would create incentives, non- financial incentives, for contractors and subcontractors to receive local hiring incentives, to ensure there will
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get a benefit from reaching the goals. we will make sure we have resources to meet the requirement. will require referral services identified by the office of economic and work force development if a pre-existing method of hiring does not allow a contractor to meet the local requirements. we want to assess the qualification of workers and clarify this does not harm the capacity to assess potential local hires. contractors would still have that ability. work-force development -- we want to make sure with this legislation that we authorize the office of economic workforce development to engage community- based partners in the work force development system to assist in compliance and recruitment. we know that if we are not making investments in our local work force development programs
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that we are not going to be successful. we will make sure we are in powering the office of economic and work-force development to do that work. it would have penalties for contractors that are not meeting the floor. the penalties could be -- they could be ducking them hours o german level for not meeting where their hours are short -- they could be ducking them hours on journeyman level for not meeting where their hours are short. they could hire an apprentice, does not incurring a penalty. for penalty funds that come in, they would be distributed into compliance programs as well as work force development programs. monitoring -- the office of economic and work-force development would be the entity to monitor the project, making sure that our meeting the work force higher goals.
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-- hire goals. in cases of conflict between the terms of the policy and agreements entered into by a contractor, subcontractor, or department after the effective date of the policy, the terms of the policy shall govern. those are the main amendments that are part of this legislation. the legislation also will be before us on november 22. we have copies in my office and will make sure that this will be passed out to members of the community. i do want to go on to public comment to hear community members and stakeholders concerned about this legislation. if there are other questions from the committee, we can move on to public comment. i do have some more a number of cards, a good stack of cards. i will call people in this order. if you hear your name, please come forward. aspin all of -- espinola
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jackson, quinlan from quinlan company, faye yee chen. >> good afternoon, supervisors. i want to just make a small statement here. i support what you are doing. i would like to say that in the '70s there was a man, and he introduced legislation and they said it would not work. the legislation at that time passed. it is still in effect. i would like to see in all of this and a that each department would have to spell out when they are asking for local hirings what the mandate is. it is not up to the supervisors, but the prime contractor -- it
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should be in writing, concerning local hiring. also, the subcontractor should have it in writing. there would not be anyone to say that we did not know. i have experienced over 40 years a good-faith effort based in hunters point. we have always had to say there was nothing good to come out of it. i am glad to see there is no more good faith in this project to our getting through. we are talking about mandating that people in san francisco, all of san francisco, will be able to work where they live. when you work, you spend money. i am tired of people not even buying a lunch here in san francisco, but they are taking my taxpayer money. it is the homeowners in this city and county that is making it possible for people to get all the money they are receiving. we do not want to see you working here in san francisco.
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it should be a crime. anyone that does not do that should be penalized. then those funds would go into more training for the people here in san francisco. thank you very much. supervisor avalos: thank you. next speaker, please. >> good afternoon. my name is patrick quinlan. i am a licensed general contractors since 1978 and have done a number of public works jobs. and i like the idea that you are going to have voluntary compliance. to mandate compliance will require enforcement, and during the month of july, august, and september this year, i was the main person monitoring
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prevailing wages on projects with the san francisco unified school district. they have $800 million worth of construction on school buildings, where they are repairing and modernizing buildings. with one main person visiting 30 job sites to check all the workers and contractors, i would like to say that the enforcement was thin. i am film. -- am thin. [laughter] the employment of the contractors and subcontractors on this project -- out of city contractors have out of city subs, by and large. out a city sub's mostly brought workers from where they came from, from outside the city. the racial patterns -- a number of asian contractors had one major contracts. it was about 40% asian, 30%
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black, maybe 25% white, and 1% black on the work force. when i asked my boss if we could keep statistics on the local hires, she said no way. the prevailing wage enforcement was light. rarely, after hours or on weekends, was there any enforcement. check them all the way around. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you. next speaker, please. >> hello, madam chair, supervisors. my name is macy lions. i am a resident of bayview hunters point and have been for the last 27 years. i represent the osiris coalition from the southeast community. i am here in support of local hire.
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i myself in the past have worked in construction, but i got out of the trains because of the lack of work. i do different work now, but i know plenty of people who have not been able to do that. they have not had the opportunity. they have not been blessed to transition. this is not about pitting worker against worker. for some unions to say that citybuild or ycd or abu are taking all the jobs from them is totally untrue and false. the fact is that because of the reports ms. lester did, 80% of the work is going to people outside of san francisco. that is not fair. we are talking about a fair distribution of the work between san francisco construction workers --
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construction workers between san francisco and those who live outside of the city. this would make all of the difference in the world for our construction work force. i know plenty of people that are out of work, and journeymen and apprentices. we really support this. i think it will make a big difference for the people in bayview hunters point who suffer from the highest unemployment in the city, i believe. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you. next speaker, please. >> supervisors, how are you. i am a member of the chinese president association. my husband is a plumber right now. he is unemployed.
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each month, he has only a few days of work. this is not just limited to him. his friends are also like that. when people do not have work, they have to move to another city. some of them even had to move back to turn up. -- move back to china. the chinese progressive association main goal is to pursue back wages for workers. in the past few years, there are a very small amount of workers coming to our association to ask for back wages.
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but recently, there are more construction workers to come to complain to us. some of the bosses hold their workers from $5,000 to tens of thousands of dollars. do you know why they continue to do that? it is because they do not have any job opportunities and they have to work for unconscionable employers. so these employers continue to deprive them of their wages and also their opportunity to work.
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to provide employment opportunities for local workers is reasonable and logical, because it local citizens do not have any work, the government would not have any tax revenue. also, the citizens would not have money to consume, and then the economic opportunity for the whole city would be deprived. to hire local workers can help local workers' livelihood and increase the local city revenue , and decrease government subsidies. it can also promote local
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economic prosperity, and also provides local workers at a stable home. although hiring local construction workers is the first step, this hopefully will bring other trades to have that kind of opportunity. i hope this legislation will implement quickly and that local people would have job opportunities and take care of their families. supervisor avalos: thank you. next speaker, please. >> my name is ace wash. i am a longtime advocate along with the m.
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