Union Construction Jobs Today Build a Brighter City for Tomorrow
January came and went fast. But if you’re out there, you can see it. Things are picking up.
A few more cranes are up. Permits are starting to get pulled downtown again. Trades trucks are lining yellow zones on the streets of SOMA and Mission Bay at sunrise. Union members are showing up and rebuilding a city that too many people were ready to write off.
San Francisco doesn’t die. It rebuilds. When it rebuilds, it’ll be done right the first time. It’ll be built union.
But let’s be honest. Cranes don’t protect standards. People do.
“When union-backed projects move, they create construction jobs immediately and provide long-term revenue once they’re built. That’s truly sustainable growth.”
As work starts to pick up, enforcement must pick up with it. That’s why this past month, we spent time getting back to basics: our right to be on the jobsite, and our responsibility to use that right.
We recently co-hosted a jobsite access training with Brother Bart Pantoja (IUPAT) and the San Mateo County Building Trades Council. Attorney Jolene Kramer walked through the legal framework behind our access rights. Brothers Bill Blackwell (UA) and Kevin Tumminia (IBEW) talked about what this looks like in the real world, because theory is one thing — the field is another.
Here’s what matters: Union representatives have the right to enter public and private property to engage in lawful union activity. That means enforcing agreements, reviewing conditions, investigating wage theft, and making sure contractors follow the law.
Access is enforcement. If we aren’t on the site, we aren’t protecting the worker. If we aren’t talking to workers, we aren’t enforcing the agreement. If we aren’t documenting violations, standards start to slide. It never happens overnight. It just drifts, and we begin to lose ground.
During our training, we also talked about school site issues. We discussed the typical “insurance won’t allow it” excuse. We talked about recording and why you say it out loud when you’re doing it. We discussed what happens when someone tries to intimidate instead of complying.
Our history tells us that as construction activity grows, particularly in the wake of a recession, our enforcement must grow along with it. It must be coordinated across San Francisco and extend into San Mateo County. That’s how you keep every jobsite safe and every agreement real. After all, the scofflaws don’t honor any city or county boundaries. They go where the work is and seek out the low road to undermine our standards.
At the same time, educators have been on the picket line. A teachers’ strike isn’t the root problem. It’s a symptom.
For years, we’ve papered over structural funding issues with sales taxes and parcel taxes and whatever short-term fix we can pass in November. That’s not a long-term strategy.
Back in 2020, California had a chance to modernize commercial property taxation. Remember Prop 15? It would’ve delivered billions annually for schools and local governments. That’s real money — structural money. Instead, commercial property that hasn’t changed hands in decades stayed locked into old assessments, and our schools are still scrambling.
Now we’re told there’s no money for counselors, no money for nurses, and no money for healthcare.
Nobody believes we’re overstaffed with firefighters. Nobody thinks we have too many mental health workers. Nobody thinks our schools are flush with cash.
The opposite is true. Everybody sees the problems playing out in the news and literally in the streets.
Let’s get real and say it: Public services are not anti-business. They’re basic infrastructure for a functioning economy. Businesses do better where schools work, streets work, conditions are safe, and families aren’t hanging by a thread. Investing in education is not a form of charity. It’s common sense. We’re talking about future apprentices, engineers, and small business owners.
We should stand with the United Educators of San Francisco. In 2026, healthcare and dignity are not radical ideas.
But let’s not pretend one candidate or one election fixes this. Working people win when we organize, and when we stay organized. We need to see this moment as an opportunity to build a mass movement that will not only demand change but sustain it and hold everyone in power to account. We need to be both bold and focused at the same time.
That same realism applies to development.
I had coffee recently with a developer who has a fully entitled project sitting in the pipeline. We talked through financing, interest rates, and construction material costs. I asked him straight-up: What do you need to make this thing move?
His answer was simple. “I need folks at City Hall to pay attention long enough for it to count,” he said.
Not a new slogan. Not a new law. Attention. Focus. Follow-through.
We can play a role there.
We’re advancing enhanced infrastructure financing districts (EIFDs) for Stonestown and 3333 and 3700 California. EIFDs are a tool allowing a portion of future growth in property tax revenue from a defined area to be reinvested into the infrastructure that makes the project viable.
Right now, the choke point is financing. Interest rates are high. Construction material costs are up. Infrastructure is expensive. And don’t get me started about the “soft costs” and margins.
EIFDs help bridge those gaps without taking money away from schools.
When union-backed projects move, they create construction jobs immediately and provide long-term revenue once they’re built. That’s truly sustainable growth — not squeezing working families harder, and not layering on another regressive tax. It’s building something that produces value over time.
I’d rather spend our energy working out which projects we can start than arguing about which ballot measure looks better in a mailer.
The Family Zoning Plan has passed. PermitSF is underway. City Hall now needs to focus on the pipeline — especially the already-entitled development agreement projects.
These aren’t sketches. Environmental review is done. Agreements are signed. In most cases, project labor agreements or all-union commitments are already in place before a general contractor is even selected.
We’re talking about tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of square feet of production, distribution, and repair and ground-floor retail. We’re talking about real investments in community benefits, new streets, new parks, and updated infrastructure.
This isn’t just about jobs for today. It’s about apprenticeships. It’s about supply chains. It’s about neighborhood investment.
We’re working with development partners to understand what’s slowing things down. Some of it is financing. Some of it is bureaucracy. Some of it is simple lack of sustained attention.
What we need now are city leaders willing to stay focused long enough to get projects across the line.
Construction jobs today equal revenue tomorrow. Public services get funded without putting more weight on working families.
The pipeline is there. The workers are ready. The tools exist. We just need the will to use them.
Let’s build.