Building Racism

Meanwhile, the Latinos faced their own woes. Problems started for Hector Rodriguez on his first visit to the job site. A union journeyman carpenter, Rodriguez was instructed by Bay Building Services foremen Ernesto Cunningham and Jesus Sandoval that he would earn $24.25 an hour, $9 an hour less than union wage, according to the lawsuit, though the work he did for IMR and Bay Building Services was only what he considers carpentry work – siding, windows, sliding doors, and walls. After a few weeks, Rodriguez began getting paid carpenters' wages, but had $100 deducted from his paycheck each Monday by Bay Building Services foreman Qaltemo Arellano, according to the lawsuit. Rodriguez, 28, says he has paid taxes for the 11 years he's lived in the United States, and thought what his bosses were asking was illegal. Yet he had problems finding work, and had four children: "I wasn't happy, but I had to work." After he had worked there for several weeks, one of his sons required emergency dental surgery. Rodriguez' Kaiser copay was $6,000. He pleaded that his supervisors not take a cut of his pay that week, but they still did, as Rodriguez explained at the hearing.

Rodriguez complained to the carpenters' union along with the Aguilars and others, but things only got worse. According to the lawsuit, Rodriguez said he was threatened on the job site by Jesus Sandoval's brother, Elias, that if he kept complaining to the union, something "might happen to him outside of work." One night last fall, months after he'd been laid off, Rodriguez says he donned his cowboy boots and cowboy hat to go to the Fiesta Nightclub in San Jose to see El Potro de Sinaloa, a popular singer from his home state. He later noticed other job-site supervisors were at the club, and the scene that ensued seemed taken straight from a mob movie, as described in the suit: Carlos Delgado, Cunningham's brother-in-law, grabbed Rodriguez by the neck and called him a "fag," saying that complaining to the union wasn't something a "man" does. "They could do something to me easy," Rodriguez says. "I was scared. I have family, and if something happened to me, I don't know what would happen." Delgado could not be reached for comment.

The carpenters' union filed three charges against IMR and Bay Building Services with the National Labor Relations Board. The two companies "settled" the charges for the alleged antiunion comments at the warehouse meeting by accepting the slap on the wrist of having to post a bilingual notice saying that federal law grants them the right to union activity. Another charge against Bay Building Services was withdrawn when NLRB reps said there wasn't enough evidence that the Aguilars and two other men had not been recalled from a layoff because of their union activity. The lawsuit alleges many black and Latino carpenters were laid off in retaliation for complaining to the union or signing a petition.

Rodriguez says the managers tried their best to stop communication between the Latinos and blacks. He speculates that was so they could get the Latinos to work fast and in unsafe conditions, and steal their money without anyone squawking. Rodriguez says he was discouraged from talking to blacks, and that the workers ate lunch separately, so communication was often limited to the black workers telling the Latinos there was a work stoppage in protest. Black carpenter Gregory Hall heard of the accusations regarding the Latinos' stolen wages and circulated a petition denouncing it among all the workers. Hall says it was intended to show solidarity; he didn't show it to the management.

Last fall, the Aguilars and Rodriguez attended one of the community meetings held by black workers at a church near the work site. Ivy remembers everyone whooping in disbelief as the details of the alleged wage stealing were translated into English. The separation tactics had failed. The two sides realized they were both victims of the same alleged business model: to employ the cheapest workers who wouldn't complain.

Upon hearing the stories, Ivy says he was reminded of black men he'd worked with through the decades who accepted bad working conditions out of fear of losing their jobs. "It was almost like slave labor," he says.

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.