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Black Workers Receive Only 9 Percent of Hours on City- Funded Building Projects

Published

8 years ago

February 3, 2018

A new City of Oakland report showd that during the past two years African American workers obtained a little over 9 percent of journeyman and apprentice hours on city-funded projects, though African Americans make up 28 percent of Oakland’s population.

The 34-page report, dated Jan. 10, 2018, shows that African Americans received 9.31 percent of the 659,544.32 hours worked on projects during the two-year period. Gross wages paid for the hours worked were $24,146,750.09.

The Oakland Post obtained the report, covering 2015 to 2017, after filing a California Public Records Act request.

Asians received 1.6 percent, Caucasians 20.09 percent, Hispanics 57.17 percent and Native Americans 0.07 percent of the work. The report does not break down journeyman and apprentice hours by ethnicity, though African American workers tend to be concentrated in the lower paid apprentice positions.

“We still have a tremendous disparity across ethnicities in the hiring on these city-funded projects,” said Brian Beveridge of OaklandWORKS.

“Based on other things we know, this reflects disparities in the building trades,” he said. High number of workers on sites are Latino, he said, which represents increased Latino membership in the Laborers Union and a few others, but the building trades unions overall remain segregated.

Among affiliated Building Trades unions are Laborers, Carpenters, Electrical Workers,Operating Engineers, Plasterers and Glazers.

The Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County has so far been unwilling to release information on the racial and ethnic composition of member unions.

“We would like to see a greater effort on the part of all the building trade unions to recruit from all ethnicities and get more balance in their membership,” said Beveridge. “We’re a union town and we support collective bargaining,” he said. “But we’re not seeing equity in hiring on publically funded projects. The solution can’t all be put on contractors. The trade unions have to play a role.”

Margaret Gordon, West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project co-director, told the Post that the failure of the building trades to hire and retain Black workers was the result of racism in the unions and economic obstacles to working in the building trades.

“Internal racism in the unions is a root cause,” she said.

In addition, the lack of retention of Black workers who do obtain apprenticeship positions often has to with the workers not having do the “resources to get from one job to the next job.”

“They can’t work if they don’t have the money for the tools, gas money, a reliable car, being able to buy lunch, pay for childcare, all those day-to-today things.”

A number of workers do not complete their apprenticeships, and there is little financial incentive to builders to reach their apprenticeship hour goals, Gordon said. “They pay liquidated damages, which is only. 1.5 times the person’s hourly wage. That needs to be need fixed. Liquidated damages should be 10 times a person’s hourly wages.”

The policy of the Army Base project establishes a flat rate of $20 per shortfall hour and is not tied to the wages that would have been paid to the worker.

Gordon said the participation of African Americans as apprentices and journeymen has been in decline since the construction projects in the wake of the Cypress freeway collapse in 1989.

“Those numbers have never recovered,” she said.

By the Oakland Post’s deadline, neither Mayor Libby Schaaf nor Andreas Cluver, secretary-treasurer of the Building and Construction Trades Council, replied to requests for comment.

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Black Artists in America, Installation Three Wraps at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens

TRI-STATE DEFENDER — With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

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2 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

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By Candace A. Gray | Tri-State Defender

The tulips gleefully greet those who enter the gates at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens on an almost spring day. More than 650,000 bulbs of various hues are currently on display. And they are truly breathtaking.

Inside the gallery, and equally as breathtaking, is the “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” exhibit, which runs through Sunday, March 29. This is the third installment of a three-part series that started years ago and illustrates part of the Black experience through visual arts in the 20th century.

“This story picks up where part two left off,’’ said Kevin Sharp, the Linda W. and S. Herbert Rhea director for the Dixon. “This era is when we really start to see the emergence of these important Black artists’ agency and freedom shine through. They start to say and express what they want to, and it was a really beautiful time.”

With 50+ paintings, sculptures and assemblages, the exhibit features artists like Varnette Honeywood from Los Angeles, whose pieces appeared in Bill Coby’s private collection (before they were auctioned off) and on “The Cosby Show.” Also included are works by Alonzo Davis, another Los Angeles artist who opened one of the first galleries there where Black Artists could exhibit.

“Though [Davis] was from LA, he actually lived in Memphis for a decade,” said Sharp. “He was a dean at Memphis College of Art, and later opened the first gallery in New York owned and operated by black curators.”

Another featured artist is former NFL player, Ernie Barnes. His work is distinctive. Where have you seen one of his most popular paintings, Sugar Shack? On the end scene and credits of the hit show “Good Times.” His piece Saturday Night, Durham, North Carolina, 1974 is in this collection.

Memphis native James Little’s “The War Baby: The Triptych” is among more than 50 works featured in “Black Artists in America, From the Bicentennial to September 11” at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, the final installment of a three-part series highlighting the impact and evolution of Black artists through 2011.

The exhibit features other artists with Memphis ties, including abstract painter James Little, who was raised in a segregated Memphis and attended Memphis Academy of Art (before it was Memphis College of Art). He later moved to New York, became a teacher and an internationally acclaimed fixture in the art world in 2022 when he was named a Whitney Biennial selected artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

Other artists like Romare Bearden, who had a Southern experience but lived up North, were featured in all three installments.

“During this period of time, he was a major figure,” said Sharp. “He wrote one of the first books on the history of African American art during a time when there were more Black academics, art teachers, more Black everything!”

Speaking of Black educators, Sharp said the head curator behind this tri-part series and Dixon’s partner in the arts is Earnestine Jenkins, Ph.D., an art history professor at the University of Memphis, who also earned a Master of Arts degree from Memphis State University (now UofM). “We began working with Dr. Jenkins in 2018,” he said.

Sharp explained that it takes a team of curators, registrars, counterparts at other museums, and more, about three years to assemble an exhibit like this. It came together quite seamlessly, he added. Each room conjured up more jaw-dropping “wows” than the one before it. Each piece worked with the others to tell the story of Black people and their collective experience during this time period.

One of the last artists about whom Sharp shared information was Bettye Saar, who will turn 100 years old this year. She’s been working in Los Angeles for 80 years and is finally getting her due. Her medium is collages or assemblages, and an incredible work of hers is on display. She’s married to an artist and has two daughters, also artists.

The exhibit catalogue bears some of these artists’ stories, among other scholarly information.

The exhibit, presented by the Joe Orgill Family Fund for Exhibitions, is culturally and colorfully rich. It is a must see and admission to the Dixon is free.

Visit https://www.dixon.org/ to learn more.

Fun Facts: An original James Little design lives in the flooring of the basketball court at Tom Lee Park, and he makes and mixes his own paint colors.