EMPLOYMENT LAW: Workers Group’s Discrimination Protest Halts San Francisco Construction; Threatens Violence

February 12, 2010

San Francisco – Protests by an African-American group about the bidding process has placed a multi-million dollar plan to tear down an old library in the Bayview area on hold.

According to the Bay Area Black Builders, their members are not represented enough in most aspects of the project, including laborers to architects who design the new library.

Joe Debro, the group’s president claims segregations similar to the 70’s and unions have been protective of their membership and memberships, which includes many relatives and friends.

This, he says, all unfairly excluded African-American workers.

"They go to Oregon to hire a white guy to build - to design - a library to be built in Hunters Point, essentially a black community. That's just absolutely disrespectful. So we challenged that and the meeting went downhill from there," added Debro.

The group is also threatening violent protest.

Debro said that the group will shut down construction sites all over San Francisco and Oakland because they believe that the entire system – from public biddings to union memberships – have been unfair to the African-American workers.

And our position is - in black communities from now on - we set what our community benefits. And community benefits means 50-percent of all the workers in Hunters Point must be black. If they're not, we're going to go to war. Contractor's going to have difficulty working in our community," Debro said.

When asked about what he meant about “going to war, his reply was “We closed down jobs in the 70's to try to integrate unions. We're going to close down these jobs. We're not going to allow people to come into communities and work and exclude us. We'll stand in the doorway and close down the jobs.”

Debro said some of the sites that his group will be targeting include a seniors’ apartment building in Bayview and a construction at Cox elementary in Oakland.

Due to the development, San Francisco’s Public Works Department announced that the bidding process will be re-launched but does not guarantee a 50% hiring of African –American workers.

If that happens, Debro said that it could get ugly.

When asked if he was suggesting the use of violence, he answered yes saying that the country only responds to violence and does not respond to anyone else.

Representatives from the contractors, though, disputed Debro’s claims of segregation.

According to the contractors, their companies had not discriminated based on ethnicity and pointed to various races n their payrolls.