placement and advocacy group, staged a protest Tuesday morning. Their slogan is, "If we don't work, you don't work."
Because of a labor dispute involving the installation of the solar
panels, nine other laborers who had been working on the site were also
expected to be laid off, one of the project's subcontractors told the SF Examiner.
Instead,
after heated negotiations between the contractors, workers, and city
officials, Smith and the other new hires will start work tomorrow, and
the other laborers will keep their jobs--and get a pay bump.
The crux of the labor dispute was whether installing solar
panels--including tasks like bolting together metal brackets--was a job
that could be performed by basic laborers, or whether it was a task for
higher-paid electricians.
Laborers make about $40 an hour, while electricians make $75 an hour, according to PUC communications manager Charles Sheehan. Since solar technology is relatively new, the distinctions between different types of work are still being settled, he said.
Because some of the installation work was being performed by laborers,
the
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 6 lodged a complaint in March with the city's Office of Labor
Standards and Enforcement (OLSE), claiming that the contractor was not paying the proper wage for the work.
On Friday, OLSE sent out a letter that workers on the project should, in fact, be paid the prevailing wage for electricians, a decision which prompted supervisors to send away the new laborers who arrived on Monday, and which seemed to put the other laborers' jobs in limbo.
But this afternoon's negotiations at the Public Utilities Commission at 1155 Market Street turned into a major win for the laborers and the Aboriginal Blackmen United.
Not only will the current laborers keep their jobs, and be paid a higher electricians' pay rate, but they will also get back wages for the hours they spent on work that OLSE ruled should be paid an electricians' wage, Sheehan said.
In addition, the PUC will start the process to hire an additional four San Francisco laborers from disadvantaged neighbhorhoods, in an attempt to meet a target of 20 laborers. This was was the number set in an agreement between CityBuild and the project's contractors, Sheehan said. (Others involved in the negotiations have set the number at 21).
Smith, a Bayview resident and long-time member of the Aboriginal Blackmen United, said she has been out of work for a year and a half, and that she was jubilant to return to work on Thursday morning.
