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Over 200 community members came out last night to the Washington United Youth Center gym downtown, asking when Google and City officials will sit at the table with us to define the vision for the company’s proposed mega-campus.

The report back from small group discussions came through loud and clear: residents know that downtown San Jose is a prime location for a company like Google, and we expect Google to work with us so the project benefits both Google and our families. One neighbor of the project reported from her small group the need for affordable housing and good jobs for all those who will be working to support the project.

“If they’re going to come to our community, they’re going to be PART of our community,” she said.

As of today, neither Google nor the City of San Jose have said how they will engage the community. Councilmember Raul Peralez thanked the crowd for getting involved now and called upon us all to get even more people to speak up. “We need to be able to express to them, what is our community – what is it that we’d like to see?” citing combating gentrification as what’s most important to him.

We’re collecting surveys from hundreds of residents and workers and will publish the results. Tech development has become disconnected from the daily realities of our communities. The only way we change this is if we define a new vision.

Today, the San Jose City Council voted to develop a plan to cover City employees under the landmark Opportunity to Work measure.

The first-of-its-kind initiative, which passed with overwhelming support from San Jose voters in November of 2016, provides part-time workers the opportunity to work additional hours before their employers can hire more part-time workers.

By a vote of 9 to 2, the Council agreed to study the most effective way to apply the Opportunity to Work rules to its own workforce.

The Opportunity to Work legislation, which went into effect in early March of this year, requires medium to large employers in San Jose to offer available work hours to current, part-time, qualified employees before hiring any new staff. Right now, City of San Jose employees do not have the same protections.

With today’s decision, the Council has taken an important step towards ensuring that the jobs the City creates using public money meet basic standards of fairness.

It was an overflow crowd at last night’s town hall. 300 community members — from residents to low-wage tech workers to programmers — came together in East San Jose, calling for Google and City officials to sit at the table with us to define the vision for the company’s downtown mega-campus.

The overwhelming message from the crowd was both hope and concern about jobs and housing. Literally every person in the room said they or their families and friends are struggling with housing prices. Jobs in the low-wage industries serving tech, like janitors and cafeteria workers, are growing faster than the high-wage tech jobs.

Tech development has become disconnected from the daily realities of our communities. The only way this project makes things better – not worse – is with our communities at the table.

Thanks to Vice Mayor Magdalena Carrasco for welcoming us all, sitting down with the folks there, and calling to, in her words, “make sure that the community is fully engaged and…no one is left behind in that progress.”

This is just the beginning. The City of San Jose and Google have yet to lay out a plan for how they will engage the community, but we’re not waiting. The next town hall will be September 20 at 6pm in downtown San Jose.

Over the next five years, the city of San Jose plans to spend $1.42 billion on public construction projects.

These taxpayer-funded projects will provide critical infrastructure for San Jose’s neighborhoods. But will they create good jobs for our local communities?

Our new report — covered today in the Silicon Valley Business Journal — reveals that right now, San Jose’s public works projects are falling short in providing career opportunities to our diverse local communities:

Depending on a largely non-local workforce impacts our neighborhoods and environment. And it means that instead of generating career pathway opportunities and wages that circulate in the local area, our taxpayer dollars are flowing out the door.

To tackle these issues, communities across California and the nation are turning to a model called Community Workforce Agreements (CWAs). CWAs are a public policy tool designed to uphold workplace standards for wages, health and safety on the job while setting hiring goals that create new construction career pathways for local residents, especially young workers or those with barriers to employment.

Learn more about the Community Workforce model and how it can be used to expand opportunities for local community members who are seeking a pathway into a secure, family-supporting construction career.

Our campaign is about inspiring the tech industry to build an inclusive middle class.

Yesterday we saw what that looks like as over 500 cafeteria workers at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters announced they’ve won union recognition with UNITE HERE Local 19!

This victory shows how we take on inequality and occupational segregation in the tech industry. Around 5,000 tech service workers — shuttle bus drivers, security officers, janitors, and food service workers — have now organized for fairer wages and benefits, better working conditions, and a voice on the job.

At Intel, baristas have won $5+ wage increases, affordable health plans, and paid sabbatical, a first for food service workers in Silicon Valley.

As our country grapples with rising inequality and economic insecurity, here in Silicon Valley we’re showing how to build a more inclusive economy.