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Bay Area Black Contractors declare warBy Lee HubbardBlack contractors and black construction workers are being left out of the public works projects and construction all over Northern California, according to the Bay Area Black Builders Association. (BABBA) This lack of work includes the various stimulus projects initiated by President Barack Obama, which have totaled $20 billion nationally for roads, bridges and infrastructure projects to create jobs. These jobs were intended to jumpstart the economy, but with black unemployment figures at 16.2 percent nationally, compared to 10 percent unemployment overall, things are looking bleak for black contractors and workers. “We are not working in any place except in maybe the black neighborhoods and we are barely working there,” said Joe Debro, founder of the BABBA. ”Black contractors hire black workers. We are going to have to take our fight to the streets to get our fair share of the projects from the various private, city and governmental agencies.” A recent meeting of over 40 black contractors from all over the San Francisco Bay Area at the BABBA headquarters in San Francisco, dealt with ways to improve the work situation for black contractors. They discussed pressuring city officials for a fair and open bidding contracting practice, and they discussed tactics to disrupt job sites where blacks are not working. They wrote a draft statement that dealt with black contracting and black worker issues and ways to in act change in both areas. ”We have to put pressure on private, city and state governments to make sure that black contractors get there fair share,” said Willie Ratcliff, Vice President of the BABBA. “We pay taxes and we are citizens and yet we are locked out of the market.” Ratcliff said that black contractors have to fight two fronts: one with the governmental agencies in the bidding process to get contracting jobs and, once they get the jobs, they have to fight with some of the trade unions to make sure they can hire black workers. ‘The unions will go outside of the state to bring in craft people to fill jobs that local people should be filling,” continued Ratcliff. “The city goes along with this stuff. We have been way to quiet. We have to make sure we get work and our people get jobs.” Several factors have gone into the lack of black contractors getting work. While some insist proposition 209 hampered black contracting across the state, Debro says, “That’s an excuse. Black contractors weren’t getting that much work before proposition 209 passed Things haven’t changed. When Jerry Brown was mayor of Oakland, he gave city contracts to his political friends, who were white. You don’t see black contractors getting bid contracts like the one Turner Construction got to work on the Fox Theater. Blacks are going to have to demonstrate and force action on the ground and politically to make things change. This is going to happen!” and he cited the BABBA statement, which declares war on black unemployment in the construction trades, as a start to changing things. The BABBA statement reads, “We will no longer watch while others rebuild our communities. Our community labor agreement requires 50 percent black workers on projects in the black community. Unless 50 percent of all labor in our communities is black, contractors will have problems.” For more information on the Bay Area Black Builders Association you can contact the offices by phone 510-910-2691 or by e-mail Joe Debro at transbay@netzero.com. Discuss it on SBE Forum >> |
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