Local Hiring
The Brightline Podcast: Season 2, Episode 3
In this episode, hear about the history of local hiring practices in San Francisco and how Brightline’s Construction on Ramp Program is linking job training and hiring opportunities to help create economic equity for frontline and local communities.
Transcript:
Cristan Turcios: At least out here, it’s always like, “Yeah, let’s get him in the computer job.” We need him coding now. I’m like, man, who’s gonna do my sink?
Aubrey: This is The Brightline Podcast from Brightline Defense. We explore environmental justice issues, or EJ issues, in the Bay Area and California, highlighting the work of community-based organizations, including our own. My name’s Aubrey, and today we’re going to find out how one policy is making sure that everyday San Franciscans can afford to work, play, and thrive in the city.
Cristian Turcios: I love furniture. Like I was telling you, like I love building stuff with my hands,
Aubrey: This is Cristian Turcios. He was born and raised in the Daly City area of San Francisco.
Cristian Turcios: I wasn’t really in school. I didn’t like it too much. Like I was going through a lot in school, like depression. Just, I, I didn’t like it, you know, but I would still like, do a lot of things to just keep me busy and just not think about it
Aubrey: So instead of school, Cristian focused on other things.
Cristian Turcios: So I just bought tools and I just, I actually crazy. I was working on furniture, just making my own furniture. I like that. I loved it. I’d Fix up IKEA furniture on the street and make it new. Just give it to someone. It was amazing.
Aubrey: Cristian never thought that his furniture making hobby could ever lead to a career. Until one day, his school was visited by a tradesman from Mission Hiring Hall, a local labor organization that promotes access to career development and training.
Cristian Turcios: It was really short, like one, two minutes by the way, like out on the stage in front of the whole school. Cause like, hey, um, we have this opportunity. Um, you get free tools at the end, Like honestly, if you didn’t listen, you wouldn’t have caught it.
But luckily I wasn’t sleeping that day in homeroom, so I came up. It was me and my buddy were like, Hey, he’s giving free tools. I need tools.
AUBREY: But that presentation wasn’t just about tools. It was actually about jobs in construction, and about how students like Cristian can build a successful career in the trades.
Cristian Turcios: It was a lot of things going through my head.
The main one. What the f***? I can get a, excuse my language, you can get a career like That blew my mind. I thought carpentry was just, just a non respectable job. Like you break your back for like a small amount of money, but out here in the Bay, the unions like it’s, it’s respectable.
And you’re building something with your hands, like it was amazing . It really was.
Kurt Grimes: The trades are a viable career path. Not every student in school is gonna be someone who’s gonna be headed towards a four year university.
Aubrey: This Kurt Grimes. He’s the program manager at the A. Philip Randolph Institute, another local organization that advocates for access to career development and job-training programs. Part of Kurt’s job is to go into local high schools and get students like Cristian interested in the trades.
Kurt Grimes: So, you know, sometimes you have to go there like three and four times, meet a few of the kids, and then present it. You know, what are you gonna do after high school when you graduate, are you going to college? “Um, not with my GPA.” Oh, okay. Well I have something that can allow you to get your own place. Here in San Francisco, and give you benefits, a pension, and allow you to sort of like be your own person very soon, very quickly, right after high school graduation. And they’re like, Oh,
AUBREY: Kurt explains that students have more options than they might think.
Kurt Grimes: So let’s say we’re on a four and a half, five year plan, if you pursue the construction trades for five years, you will not have any debt coming out of school. You will not be making just a cut above minimum wage. You should have enough money by that time saved, if you are managing your money correctly and you are hustling and working, you should have enough money to be able to afford not just an apartment in San Francisco, but possibly a starter home here in San Francisco.
Aubrey: Cristian wasn’t thinking about buying a starter home quite yet. But he really wanted those free tools
Cristian Turcios: Yeah, so I heard the speech. I decided, hey, um, me and my buddy we’re gonna go over, check this out, see what the hype is about.
Aubrey: So he went to a follow up presentation from a tradesman at Mission Hiring Hall, one of those labor advocacy groups we mentioned.
Cristian Turcios: He’s like talking about it. He’s like, “Yeah, there’s this program just for high schoolers. We can’t get you in the main program for the tools.” but he is like, You gotta go to Sector Bridge. And basically it’s a little introduction program on construction. Like really, really just stepping your feet in.
Aubrey: That program, which is now called Construction On Ramp, is a 2 week-long job readiness training program run by Community Youth Center in San Francisco, or CYC, the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Mission Hiring Hall, and Brightline.
Cristian Turcios: It was like one wood shop class.
you got a lot of field trips. You go to the construction sites early on as they’re starting their building process. Like, we actually got to see the Chase Center get built, which was really crazy for me. And like now it’s like this, uh, architectural monument in this city that everyone travels around the world for to see the Warriors.
Aubrey: And even during the pandemic when in-person field trips weren’t possible, Construction on Ramp brought in virtual reality headsets so students could see what it’s like to operate machinery. When they were able to meet in person, students got hands-on experience with tools.
Kurt Grimes: Also, having them actually work with their hands, you know, seeing what they can actually create really does give some kids a sense of accomplishment and they’re like, “Yeah, I could do this. I could do this.”
Cristian Turcios: I believe a wood shop class was one of our first things we did. We made a little, a wooden box. We just, he had all the pieces cut, we just put it together with some wood and some nails and then that was it.
AUBREY: That little wooden box was a powerful symbol.
Cristian: And we gotta keep it too. So it was like a nice little like, “Hey, you can build stuff with your hands, Keep it, whatever.” But it was like, for me, it was really a reminder in my room like, “Hey, like you’re gonna do this eventually. Like just enjoy it.“
Aubrey: Cristian completed Construction on Ramp, and eventually graduated high school too. Now, it was time to apply for the next stage of his journey, a program called City Build. It was created by the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development to provide pre-apprenticeship training on 26 different trades to local residents. The Construction on Ramp program was 10 days long. CityBuild was 12 weeks.
Kurt Grimes: CityBuild has a list of requirements, um, to make sure young people are able to get into this program, cuz they only pick 50, 50 students per cohort and that’s twice a year.
So we encourage them to graduate. Whatever you do, don’t miss class. Do it. You have to do to get that high school diploma.
Aubrey: One of the requirements to get into CityBuild is a sit down interview with a panel who will decide if the applicant gets in or not. For many young people, that can be intimidating.
Christian Turcios: And I got called once I graduated, he’s like, “Hey, something’s lining up. Would you like to go into the class? You just gotta do the interview.” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m gonna do the interview. Let’s do it. I’m 18, I wanna work, let’s go.” And then the rest is history .
Aubrey: Christian got in.
Christian Turcios: It was like, it was really like a school schedule. Like one of the heads would just talk like, “Hey, this is what we’re gonna be doing today, yada, yada boom.” you’d start with, I believe a math class, actually, math or English class. Cuz some guys like, they don’t know any English, so it’s nice that they get to learn that second language. Um, after that then you’d have your lunch and then you, you would do another class after that, like wood shop or your mechanics.
Like it was everything I wanted to learn in school. Cuz in school, you know, nowadays you never got to touch anything. I’m like, I need this. I love this . And I go there. It’s like everything I dream of and more. So much fun.
Aubrey: CityBuild wasn’t just woodshop and mechanics. Every day students got to hear from professionals who had spent years in the trades.
Christian Turcios: Those people would always just spit game. Game on top of game, all day. Love the spiel on them.
Aubrey: Christian completed CityBuild, and now it was time to find a job in the real world.
Kurt Grimes: And that’s, that’s the great thing about City Build Academy and that is, when you graduate CityBuild Academy will always ask you what are your three, uh, choices of trades you wanna go into? They try and put you into one of the three. If they can’t get you into one of the three, they’ll at least put you so that you’re working.
Aubrey: And when a job in one of the right trades opens up, CityBuild will contact that graduate, and get them an interview with the contractor. No testing required, thanks to their CityBuild certification.
And that’s how Christian got his first apprenticeship with a local bricklayer.
Christian Turcios: And even just my first day. I had to look for the boss. The boss isn’t in the classroom. The uh, so I see this guy, I’m like, “Hey, are you with the bricklayers? Yeah. Like, I’m like, Well, it’s my first day. Where’s uh, where’s uh, Tim?” He’s like, “Come on, come with me.” And then we’re uh, we’re in the train station actually, and he makes me walk down like five stories of scaffold And like, scaffold is really weird cuz some, there’s no stairs. Cause a lot of it’s like ladders and stuff.
So I’m just like climbing like a monkey down all the way underground. And then, uh, he’s, he’s not even there too. I get down, They tell me like, Yeah, Tim’s upstairs. I’m like, all the way upstairs Oh, alright. Well, I just go up, you know, that wasn’t a problem. I meet him and then they’re like, Yeah, just anything He says, Just do it. And I was like, Oh, that, That’s what they told me. All right. Just exactly what City Build told me. They told me.
Aubrey: CityBuild Director Ken Nim sees success stories like Cristian’s playing out across the trades.
Ken Nim: CityBuild reliably places successful job trainees into the unionized construction trades, such as carpentry, ironwork,labor, and comment mason and we’re making the City’s local hiring policy work to create sustainable careers that support families.”
Aubrey: He says a new apprentice in the carpentry trades starts off at $34.20/ hour, and can earn up to $57.10/hr when they journey out and complete their apprenticeship program. But getting trained and certified hasn’t always been the biggest barrier to finding work in the trades. When companies come into San Francisco to build major projects like the 2008 renovation of terminal two, at San Francisco International, they’ve often brought labor in from other cities and states, instead of hiring locally. Only 12% of the work hours on that project were done by residents of San Francisco.
Kurt Grimes: If you are one person that lives on the west side, um, working in an office or working for a computer company or a company, um, local hire isn’t necessarily something that may affect you. But if you’re living in the Southeast where a lot of people working in the construction trades and construction companies are not mandated to hire you, they bring their own people in.
It kind of leaves our people. And so we wanted to fix that.
Aubrey: That’s where local hire policy comes in.
Kurt Grimes: When we have companies that come from the outside and they work in San Francisco and then they leave, um, that money that’s been earned leaves our city. That money isn’t spent in businesses, whether they’re large or small. It’s not spent on any sort of activities that are here. It leaves.
Aubrey: in 2010, San Francisco adopted a local hiring policy that would ensure that San Franciscans would have access to jobs in construction. The policy was created through collaboration of nonprofits like Brightline and Chinese for Affirmative Action, as well as labor representatives, contractors and the City.
Now, all contractors on publicly-funded projects must hire 30% of their workers from local communities.
Kurt Grimes: When you come into San Francisco and you work here, you should be able to hire people that are also able to do that work here.
Aubrey: The jobs created from construction, and Local Hire are designed to support a shrinking middle class in San Francisco.
Kurt Grimes: We’re trying to recruit young people that live here in San Francisco so that they can have an opportunity to make enough money to be able to afford to live in San Francisco with a one bedroom apartment pushing like $3,500 a month, it’s crazy.
AUBREY: Rent that high is just out of reach to people who don’t have access to full employment.
MICHELLE LEONARD-BELL: And there’s always in San Francisco, been this community of folks that live many decades in underemployment simply because they don’t have an opportunity such as construction
AUBREY: This is Michelle Leonard-Bell, the Executive Director of Mission Hiring Hall.
MICHELLE LEONARD-BELL: construction is a pathway to provide sustainable income for a family unit, and it’s one of the highest paying sectors in the country. The, the trajectory of the whole family immediately rises within the first one to three years of employment for a construction worker.
AUBREY: And a huge part of boosting that trajectory is giving families the chance to stay in San Francisco, which is also a boon for the city itself.
KURT GRIMES: We don’t wanna have San Francisco turn into a city where you have the extremely wealthy and you have the extremely poor right on top of each other because then you’ll end up with no one really being able to provide services. And that’s what makes a city thrive is its ability to, to offer services for its citizenry.
Aubrey: Community organizers know that the success of people like Christian- in careers that can be accessed without a college degree- is essential for the future of San Francisco, and the people who live here.
Kurt Grimes: Whatever you put into it, you can get out of it. You can end up being a foreman, a supervisor. You can also go on to becoming an engineer or an architect or even a union rep.
Aubrey: Local hire is also connecting frontline communities to jobs on renewable energy projects like solar and offshore wind, making sure that tradespeople can share in the benefits of the clean economy.
Kurt: It also enables them to live, work, and play in San Francisco. If you take the the live, work and play aspect out of our city, what are you doing to our city?
Aubrey: And with the support of union benefits and retirement plans, Cristian and other young tradespeople will be to live, work, and play in San Francisco for life.
Christian: I love going to the union hall. I love seeing everyone. Like we go, we go to. Work hard, bring some money for our family and that’s that, like, it just, it’s that sense of pride like that, that’s what it is for me a lot. [A] sense of pride being a part of the union and safety. It’s a lot of security.
Aubrey: And not just security, but career advancement, too.
Cristian: I actually, I see myself in the, maybe the higher positions in the union, like maybe becoming an organizer and that work honestly like speaks to me a lot.
Aubrey: Cristian hopes that other people his age get inspired to follow a similar path.
Cristian: But it’s kind of a shame a lot of young people don’t do it. You know, at least out here, it’s always like, “Yeah, let’s get him in the computer job.”
We need him in, we need a coding now. I’m like, man, who’s gonna do my sink?
Cristian: I really want people to know that construction is a viable career and that a lot of young people can do it and we need a lot of young people to do it.
AUBREY: This episode was written and produced by me, Aubrey Calaway, and our assistant producer Will Entwistle. Original music by Maya Glicksman . Thank you to Eddie Ahn, Cecilia Mejia, and Sarah Xu for support on research and writing, and to Kurt Grimes, Cristian Turcios, Michelle Leonard-Bell, and Ken Nim. This podcast is funded by the Environmental Justice Small Grants from the California EPA.
For more information about Brightline, you can visit our website at BrightlineDefense.org or on social media @brightlinedefense. You can also find a transcript of this episode on our Medium Blog.
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