Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company  
The New York Times
April 23, 2000, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 14; Page 4; Column 2; The City Weekly Desk 

LENGTH: 974 words

HEADLINE: NEW YORKERS & CO.;
Fighting for Jobs on Their Own Turf

BYLINE:  By NINA SIEGAL 

BODY:
SHAMSUDDIN RIZA knows a thing or two about gut rehab, the term used to describe tearing apart a structure from the inside and renovating it. Mr. Riza, the owner of a small family contracting firm in Harlem, oversees a crew of workers who labor in the hollow shells of brownstones on West 133th and 134th Streets. He has also seen his neighborhood undergo a kind of gut rehab of its own.

Harlem has become a place of operatic jack hammers, of deep pits of shuffled earth, of brownstones embraced by orthodontic scaffolds, of yellow hard hats. The economic renewal means one thing: construction.

Lots of it. But neighborhood contractors like Mr. Riza say they have been excluded from Harlem's boom.

Mr. Riza founded his contracting firm in 1976, closed it for a while, then reopened in 1997 as KJS Construction. Although he subcontracts for a few private companies and occasionally for the city's department of Housing Preservation and Development, he said opportunities for small minority firms are limited.

About $900 million will be invested in residential and economic development projects in Harlem in the next five years by federal, state and local governments, development corporations, banks, housing organizations, entrepreneurs and private investors. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development is contributing $343 million to building and restoring homes in Harlem.

All that money, boosters say, will do a lot to improve Harlem economically. But as the polish is placed on cherrywood banisters, and as new mirrored shopping centers on 125th Street reflect a changing mix of consumers, who benefits?

"It's abundantly clear to me that local contractors, subcontractors and vendors are almost totally shut out of the construction work and the related trades work in the Harlem community," said Lloyd A. Williams, president and chief executive of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce. "I would be very surprised if over 20 percent, and that's very generous, of the construction work that is being done in Harlem, whether it is rehabilitation or new construction, is being done with local contractors or minority contractors."

Before any project can move ahead in the city, the developer must present a proposal to the neighborhood's community board. In most cases, Mr. Williams said, developers promise to hire locally. But because proposals are not binding, few honor those commitments, said Stanley Gleaton, chairman of Community Board 10 in Harlem. "Local hiring, it's a joke," he said.

Asked about policies in this area, Carol Abrams, a spokeswoman for the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, cited several programs intended to expand neighborhood participation in home-building projects. The mayor's office declined to comment on involvement in other types of development in Harlem.

Community boards can monitor hiring, but they have little influence on the awarding of contracts. Mr. Gleaton said his board had brought this issue to the attention of the city, the Council and private investors. There is agreement that hiring within the neighborhood is a good idea, but no one monitors hiring to ensure that it happens.

Of the few Harlem residents who have gotten construction jobs, most are only employed daily, and do not have benefits or job security, Mr. Gleaton said.

Labor unions have stepped up efforts to organize those workers. The Mason Tenders' District Council of Greater New York and Long Island, which represents laborers, and the New York City District Council of Carpenters are active.

Byron Schuler, an organizer with the carpenters' union, said that while 85 percent of the workers on nonresidential projects in Harlem are unionized, only 30 percent of the workers on residential projects belong to a union. Union carpenters earn about $30 an hour, plus benefits, he pointed out, but day laborers make as little as $30 a day.

Mr. Schuler spends his days at construction sites around the city urging workers to join his union and encouraging contractors to take part in a minority apprenticeship program offered by the union. He said the union is also lowering certain initiation fees and making its eligibility requirements more flexible to allow firms with as few as one or two employees, to join the union.

Contractors like Mr. Riza are wary of such overtures on the part of unions.

"The only reason they're here at all is because there's gold in these hills," he said. "But when they come to Harlem, they squeeze the little guy out."

"I'm pro-union to a certain extent," said Mr. Riza, who spent 15 years as an organizer and shop steward for two unions. "But I'm more pro-equality, and there was a time when blacks and Latinos and women had to go to war to get any work from the union."

There is, however, considerable support for unionizing Harlem's construction workers.

Judy A. Riley, a program coordinator for Consortium for Central Harlem Development, a nonprofit group that provides technical advice to some 30 small minority contracting firms in the neighborhood, said many such companies would like to see their employees unionize because union membership brings eligibility for larger construction contracts.

And Councilman Bill Perkins sees unionization as helping many Harlem construction workers who now accept day labor because they cannot get permanent jobs. Still, he is not overly optimistic.

"When you walk through Harlem these days, you see all these ribbon cuttings," said Mr. Perkins. "You see the developer, you see the governor, you see the contractor, you see the politicians, but you don't see the worker. The guy from the neighborhood with the construction hat should be holding the scissors, and the other guys holding his hand. But not only is he not holding the scissors, he's not in the picture at all."
 

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GRAPHIC: Photos: Shamsuddin Riza, above right, owner of a small contracting firm, with his son Joshua, on 133rd Street. Far left, Byron Schuler, an organizer for the Carpenters Union, on 134th Street. (Photographs by Rebecca Cooney for The New York Times)