News

Building Racism

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Last fall, some carpenters went to La Raza Centro Legal in the Mission to inquire about their rights. La Raza contacted Bob Salinas, who had just won a $100,000 settlement for three workers who had not been paid for all their hours worked at a Chinese buffet in the East Bay. After listening to the carpenters' stories, and doing his own investigation, Salinas decided they had grounds for a civil suit.

Although the carpenters' statements and the photo of hateful graffiti may be the only records of the alleged racism on the construction site, evidence that some of the work was done haphazardly is built right into the renovated units.

To the untrained eye, the neat row of the redone yellow-and-tan three-story units of All Hallows Gardens sloping down to the shipyard looks cheery and inviting, especially compared with the brown barracks-like Oakdale housing project across the street.

But Gonzalo and Fausto Aguilar pointed out the shoddy work earlier this month. The brothers say many of the hires were undocumented family members or acquaintances of the management who wouldn't protest kickbacks. The lawsuit says that Ernesto Cunningham would hide several nonunion Latinos in a warehouse, and told them to hide if the union steward came to the site. The union fined Cunningham and IMR, according to the suit. (The carpenters' union refused to comment for this story.)

The Aguilars say inexperienced workers bring down the level of safety for everyone. "It's like this: If you go to a job where there's blacks, whites, Latinos, safety is first, right?" Fausto says. "But if you go to a job where there's 70 percent Latinos, they don't care about safety."

"They want fast work," Gonzalo says. "It pains me to say it, but the Latino foremen are the ones who treat us the worst. This wasn't the first time. But here it was more evident."

The brothers point to the doorbell where Jesus Sandoval had told them not to leave a space for the wires while they were putting siding on the wall. When asked why, Sandoval told them, "Fucking black people, they don't deserve it," the lawsuit states.

The Aguilars point out how at a corner of the house, the siding doesn't align on the adjoining walls. At another place, siding runs up the front of the house at an angle.

Coming home from work, resident Patricia Williams opens up her garage door to show how the construction folks left it when she moved back in, after staying in another unit for a month during the renovation. Sawdust coats the floor, which is littered with nails, pallets, and an empty barrel. Uneven holes are cut into the walls around exposed wiring. The thick television cable mysteriously snakes out of the apartment's second-floor wall and into her garage, the only one like that on the block.

"It's tacky," Williams says. "They just did a bum job."

Such disappointment clouds what chief assistant city attorney Jesse Smith called a "fresh start" between AIMCO and the city, after the company settled the city's lawsuit in 2004. To encourage the company to completely redo the units, the city promised to endorse AIMCO's application to the state to receive tax-exempt status on bonds to finance the work. But the approval came with stipulations that AIMCO must pay prevailing wages, enact nondiscriminatory hiring, and abide by the city's First Source Hiring program to prioritize San Franciscans for entry-level jobs, especially residents of the Bayview.

"As a corporate entity, they're not known for their civic-mindedness," says Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes the Bayview. "We had to sue them to get things repaired properly. ... That's why we put the conditions in, and not say we'll just leave it to their good graces."

But since no formal complaints were lodged with city agencies about violations of the agreement, the city did very little, although multiple officials say the district attorney is investigating. The city was limited in its ability to pressure for jobs, since the first hiring legislation applies only to entry-level workers, when much of the work at the AIMCO site was for journeymen, says Chris Iglesias. He was then the director of CityBuild, the city's program to help construction companies implement local hiring requirements. AIMCO says that by the end of 2007, nearly 40 percent of all hours worked on the construction site were by city residents.

While Maxwell says "the agreement did what it could," since in the end the pro-ject was not city-funded, the carpenters and community activists say the city and AIMCO let them down.

"I'm tired of people saying they need to put teeth into these agreements," says Dorothy Peterson, a longtime AIMCO opponent and activist for the building's residents. "C'mon, just do the right thing."

Will the city be suing for breach of the agreement? The city attorney is waiting to see if AIMCO will make good on its promise to force Fortney & Weygandt to investigate the allegations, Smith says. "Ultimately it could go to legal actions, but we're all hoping if there is a problem, [AIMCO] will take quick action to solve it," he says. "That's what everyone is hoping and expecting will happen."

"They're in trouble," says carpenter Terry Mackey, sitting against the back wall of the City Hall meeting room, referring to AIMCO and the other defendants.

The carpenters turned the Government Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee meeting into something resembling a pep rally, including applauding themselves and their supporters and heckling their villains.

"Get up there and tell us a lie!" one man yelled as Bill Wong, a former senior field representative of the carpenters' union, took the stand. Many carpenters say that if their union had reacted more aggressively to their complaints, or had better policed nonunion members on the site, it would have headed off the lawsuit. But carpenters' union attorney Salinas says the union had been looking into the wage grievances, but those cases were dissolved because of the pending lawsuit.

While testifying, one carpenter declared: "We love each other. We just didn't know this, but we know this now." And after the Aguilars' father testified of his support, placing his white cowboy hat on the podium, several black carpenters embraced him in a bear hug. While shooting a group photo outside on the steps, a few workers held up peace signs.

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