What the Price of Milk has to do with Jobs in Oakland

Sobering Moment--Problem Deeper Than We Knew

On a recent evening I found myself at a local Oakland theatre watching the movie “Good Deeds”. The movie, beautifully set in San Francisco (could have been Oakland, but that will be a story for another blog), tells the story of a successful CEO cast in the wrong life and a single mother working as a corporate cleaning lady. In one very poignant scene, the cleaning lady asked the CEO if he knew the price of a gallon of milk. Sadly the CEO did not.

This story, for me, has many lessons—the divide between the haves and the have nots, the disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street, and the very real struggle the underemployed and jobless face each day. For millions of Americans, and thousands of Oaklanders, the price of milk represents a quandary. How do I feed my family? What choices do I make if I am very tight on money? What will I do without a job or a job that does not pay enough to maintain a decent standard of living? For these Americans/Oaklanders the rising price of milk and other necessities drives home a larger point of deeper despair. The larger point, we are all connected to this, and so to the solution in some meaningful way

Lengths of Despair

I was struck by a recent article in the New York Times entitled “How Far Would You Go for a Comeback”. The article tells the story of several men who have left their homes in Anywhere, USA, some of them on the brink of bankruptcy or homelessness, for jobs in the oil industry in Williston, ND. For these men, Williston, where the unemployment rate is 1% vs the national average of 8.3% (Oakland is at 16.5%), is a source of salvation allowing them to send money back home to their families thereby keeping their lives afloat. One, a trained cook, who at one time owned his own home, had been reduced to picking up cans, musing in the process “if we’d get $10 to $15, we used it, we did what we had to do”. Part of me admires this indomitable example of the American spirit. The other part of me is filled with profound sadness that able bodied men and women, who want to work, support themselves and their families, increasingly often, don’t have the option to do so. This is not the American dream.

Oakland is filled with people of similar resiliency. We recovered from the big earthquake of 1989, the Oakland Hills fires of 1991 and most recently the sit ins of Occupy Oakland. This resiliency, alone, has not adequately prepared us for the country’s current recession. This recession has proved to be a beast of considerably greater magnitude than the aforementioned tragedies. It has left our city with an unemployment rate of 16.5% or twice the national average. There are many reasons for this fact. David Simon, writer of the Wire, and winner of a MacArthur genius award grant, writes about the ghettoization of America. He asserts that many lower skilled jobs have been pushed to the outskirts or overseas. Additionally, for various other reasons (perception of dangerous city and an out of control crime problem, too much bureaucracy at the city level, lack of a favorable tax climate and perception around level of disposable income of city’s residents available for purchase of company goods and services) we have seen other companies relocate from Oakland or out of California taking precious jobs with them.

This joblessness has pushed up both crime and general feelings of desperation in our city. What are we to do? I remember growing up in the shadows of the Bay Area, the child of a single mother facing similar struggles. My mother dug deep, sometimes working two jobs. She made sure I had access to good schools. These schools provided me access: access to a good college and a law school. Ultimately theses schools led to good jobs. Assuming we make some fundamental changes to our primary education system, I believe we can have similar experiences here in Oakland.

There is Hope (for Oakland)

There must be personal accountability to be sure—secure additional training, ensuring we are involved in our schools and children’s scholastic endeavors, demonstrating a willingness to share costs such as healthcare with businesses and engage in community policing to help make our neighborhoods safer. We, as the residents of Oakland, must be willing to do whatever it takes to get this city back on its feet. Demonstrating such a “cant fail attitude” through actions such as the above in a vacuum are likely not enough. There is also a role for government and business. Oakland has many pluses that should attract business: a largely educated workforce—colleges (Berkeley and Cal State East Bay), community colleges (Peralta), unions that train many workers in trades, a solid transportation system and access to a water front. We also have a Port and sports teams that could also be greater engines of economic growth.

We must aggressively market our positives to attract businesses if we want well paying jobs in our city. We must support our Mayor and her economic development team in this activity. We can do this through the “personal accountability” actions above, participating in the Mayor’s block by block program, and encouraging the companies we work for to come to Oakland. I have done this with my own company. My company is now in the process of building a location in East Oakland that will provide 70-100 healthcare based jobs. Imagine if we all made a concerted effort to do this kind of outreach. As the current Chair of the Oakland Workforce Investment Board I believe we have what it takes to succeed. It will take a material number of jobs to reduce our 16.5% unemployment rate.

We must be bold and audacious in attaching this number. A few examples:
• Appropriate tax breaks for small business so that may create jobs
• A unified effort, including a healthy Oakland effort where we are take better care of our health, that reduces healthcare costs and makes it more attractive for businesses to provide jobs
• Using our unique attributes as a city as real sales tools to attract businesses that can hire thousands of workers at a time
• Doubling or tripling the size of our police force and leveraging technology (like Shotspotter) and advanced data techniques to combat our crime problem and combat the perception that our city is an unsafe place for workers to work
• Organizing a standing business council that the Mayor may rely on for real, tangible ideas; this can be done as a roundtable with our chambers and labor councils as well
• Ensuring that our city government continues to build diversity and attract people, both elected and employees, with deep budget and economic experience
• Work to develop a more efficient government, with a surplus, where hard choices are made to encourage savings and the creation of a surplus, and discourages spending where certain items cannot be readily paid for

I do not claim to have all the ideas, but these are a start. I believe we can achieve our goals through hard work and concerted effort. However, until we take such actions, dare to be bold and audacious in our thinking, for many Oaklanders, like many Americans more generally, the price of milk will continue to matter—a lot!