Hostility At Alcatraz Not Confined To The Past, Racism, Workplace Harassment & Union Busting At Alcatraz Cruises/Hornblower Cruises

Hostility At Alcatraz Not Confined To The Past, Racism, Workplace Harassment & Union Busting At Alcatraz Cruises/Hornblower Cruises
http://www.blog.criminalu.co/tag/alcatraz/
THE MARGINALIZED
HOSTILITY AT ALCATRAZ NOT ALL CONFINED TO THE PAST
MARCH 16, 2014 LEAVE A COMMENT
Ayoe Jiboku learned a lot about Alcatraz during his time on the rock. Unfortunately, like many of those whose time at Alcatraz make the former prison one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations, Jiboku’s experiences of racism, hostility and emotional duress were not from the dark pages of history. Jiboku’s story is painfully set in the present.

For four years, Jiboku (pictured above with former inmate and author Robert Lucas AZ#1118) worked for Hornblower Cruises, a San Francisco-based company that operates tours to the island prison in conjunction with the National Parks Department. He was an outgoing and popular employee who garnered hundreds of comment cards from happy tourists.

But he also endured endless harassment from his employers, he says now, so much so that he finally quit. He suffered from work-related anxiety and high-blood pressure.

But he wasn’t going to just roll over. He filed a petition, which has already garnered more than 1,000 signatures in support. The petition calls for the parks department director to review what Jiboku claims are discriminatory policies before renewing its contract with Hornblower Cruises.

Jiboke’s petition states, “In that period of time I was subjected to easily over twenty instances of rampant discriminatory conduct, threats, unequal advancement opportunities and frequent racial epithets and insults, online and in person, in particular frequent derogatory use of the N-word, by several of my direct supervisors, one of whom was subsequently promoted twice to a managerial position.”

Hornblower took over the contract to ferry people to Alcatraz in 2006.

Today, Hornblower operates out of eight different ports, including: San Francisco, Berkeley, Sacramento, Marina Del Rey,Long Beach, Newport Beach and San Diego, all in California, and New York City. Recent expansion has targeted Niagara Falls in Canada. The company’s entire fleet now includes more than 30 ships.

Jiboku says the company’s success does not translate to its employees.

“I just got tired of being stepped on. It would be difficult for the company to attack me too hard as I have won nearly every award they could give… except deserved promotions,” he told me. “As a matter of fact they lulled me into a false sense of security in a meeting with the GM who admitted that they had been less than fair with me … and that is why the position of security manager was being created specifically for me. It was a red herring. Two years later, nothing had been done. ”

Jiboku is not the only employee to endure discrimination, Rather he is one of the few unwilling to take it. This is a kind and generous man who is easily mistaken for soft. At least it seems Hornblower management might have made that mistake, first blowing smoke at him while promoting others, then disciplining him for raising a fuss.

Disciplining is an understatement. Jiboku keeps a personal journal. He has meticulous notes. From those notes he has an 18-page, exhaustively researched document on broken company policies, glaring instances of preferential treatment and absurd human resources breaches. It seems apparent that those in power at Hornblower — almost uniformly white — looked down on employees like Jiboku and other minorities.

They made a silly, racist mistake in underestimating Jiboku. This is a man who is the son of immigrants, born in the United States, who learned four languages and lived on his own since he was seventeen in several different cultures. He is not easily intimidated.

“My first foray in college was when I was barely seventeen and it was quickly cut short when Moslem fanatics invaded the university, burning down my department (of Fine Arts) at the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Kaduna State in Nigeria,” he told me. ” They killed 22 students on campus — and about a hundred ‘nonbelievers’ outside campus. I escaped that in the back of a vegetable truck.”

Demonstrators protest Hornblower's policies in San Francisco
Eventually Jiboku decided life deserves to be lived better than this. He described it simply:

“I was forced to resign after five years of pure torture at the hands of the senior management of Hornblower Cruises,” he told me.

Jiboku’s petition is relatively straight-forward. Having exhausted himself working within the company, he has given up hope that they can reform themselves. The institutional racism runs too deep in his estimation. Instead he wants the parks department to conduct its own review before it renews the contract.

San Francisco is a great city for the defense of civil liberties. It’s interwoven into the fabric of the city and its leadership. It’s been burnished by the likes of Harvey Milk and George Moscone and carries on today with a progressive city council willing to lead the way of the great liberal social experiment of equality.

For this reason alone, Jiboku’s petition is worthy of serious consideration. Should enough people sign on, the parks department would have to look into these allegations.

But in the spirit of what San Francisco stands for — and for the importance historically and culturally that Alcatraz holds — the parks department owes it to everyone to a take a thorough look.

Other service providers exist. Before Hornblower, the Blue and Gold Fleet (with unionized employees in contrast to Hornblower) held the contract. It still operates in the San Francisco Bay. Other companies would gladly submit bids.

Admittedly, the Alcatraz tour continues to improve under Hornblower’s management. But if those improvements (and rising ticket costs) come at the result of discriminatory and abusive labor practices, then it’s time its association with a leading liberal city end.

Simply put, Alcatraz’s long brutal history needs no more modern chapters.