Expert Tradespeople From Various Locals Make Up SFUSD Construction Crafts Coalition

Photos by Tue Nam Ton, Contributing Photographer
Column by Rudy Gonzalez, SF Building Trades Secretary-Treasurer

The San Francisco Unified School District Construction Crafts Coalition is a small but determined crew of skilled and trained construction workers who keep the city school district’s infrastructure humming.

The coalition includes a variety of local union workers: plumbers, gardeners, locksmiths, carpenters, sheet metal workers, painters, drivers, roofers, and ironworkers. Each coalition worker is at journey-level in his or her trade and is equipped with the depth of experience necessary to ready our facilities and help promote good learning environments for our students.

This photo feature will introduce you to just a portion of the Crafts Coalition.

Coalition workers are the unsung heroes of the school district. When the pandemic hit, they stayed working and have been on-site the entire time.

They repair and maintain ventilation systems. They fabricate and build the plastic barriers that protect students and staff. They are the lifeblood ensuring most every district facility across the city is functioning correctly. They provide both consistency and customization to SFUSD. In so doing, they also provide significant cost savings to the district.

These men and women love their jobs, and they enjoy working alongside educators and students. Coalition workers are parents of current students and SFUSD graduates themselves who have been loyal and dedicated to the district for many years.

Sadly, the economic pressure has become too much for some, and we have lost — and will continue to lose — great staff to other public agencies, namely, the City and County of San Francisco.

That’s because coalition workers, who have been without a contract since the beginning of last July, are hired by the school district under the civil service system. Coalition workers’ job spec codes and job descriptions match those of city and county employees, but they get paid less — 13.8% less, to be exact — than those doing the same jobs who do work for the city or county rather than the school district.

We need SFUSD leadership to invest in retaining the fine employees of its Crafts Coalition, and that starts by negotiating a fair contract that’ll give coalition employees parity with city employees in similar lines of work.