Counties:
Employment of African-Americans at Safeway as Compared
With Other Places
of Work
Certain trends appear when taking a general survey of the Safeway
stores in
the Kitsap and Mason county region. There is a definite difference in
the amount of
African-Americans working in Safeway stores in these areas. The cause of
this varies
from transportation, other places of work, and government influences. The
issues of
ethnic locality, economic opportunity, and transportation will all be
covered in this
case study. Bremerton being a city of 34,000 and Kitsap county 190,000
according to
Components of Population Change by County: April 1, 1980 to April 1, 1990,
has a large
ethnic component, but is this component distributed equally in the Safeway
work force? Since there is almost 33 million African-Americans in the
United States of America, you would think that they would be somewhat
scattered proportionally around the workforce, this may not be the
true.
West Bremerton
The west Bremerton area has a history of racial segregation.
Since Bremerton's
creation by William Bremen, there has been an idea that all people of
African decent
must reside in one area. In fact Bremer himself created the idea that all
blacks would
reside in the Navy Yard city area. He was instrumental in the encouraging
of real
estate companies to sell his property to people on the basis of race, and
locate them
respectively. Very little has changed, in Bremerton today, the majority
of African-
Americans live on the west side of Bremerton. The Puget Sound Naval
Shipyard is also
located in the down town area that is close to the west side. When
viewing the location
of African- Americans on the west side, most are located around the
shipyard in Navy
yard city.
When viewing the employment of the west Bremerton Safeway, one
can't help but to
notice a increase of African-American workers. The number when last
checked was four,
and growing. From working with some of the west Bremerton employees,
while their new
store was being built, I learned that most of them lived on the west side.
Being close
to there place of work was important, because they also had other
obligations, and the
mere fact that it was quicker, thus cheaper, to get to work was an
incentive to working
there also. The large amount of African- Americans on the west side can
thus e closer
to home which saves money. Sense there are more African-Americans on the
west side then
in any other area in the Kitsap and Mason county area it would be
plausible that there
would be a larger amount of African-Americans working there then anywhere
else in the
area. The assumption above holds true.
When visiting the Shelton store, the population of African-
Americans in the
work place at the local Safeway store held true. The little to non
African-Americans who
live in Shelton seems to be represented by the fact that there are
absolutely no
African- American workers there.
Since most of the areas African-American population live in the
Bremerton city
limits, let's take a glance at another employer on the west side to see if
the west side
statistics hold true for other businesses also. Lets go with the fact
that 30% of all
people in the Navy are African-American, (Don't Believe the Hype, Chideya,
Farai), this
is the tale of the tape for Bremerton. Most of the African-Americans
today live on the
west side, because most employed African-Americans in Bremerton are
employed by the Navy
in some way or form. Few of them move to the east side. Another employer
downtown is
the Washington State Ferries. The work force there is 35% percent
African-American said
a 30 year employee. My father working in the accounting department there
is one of the
few who live on the east side. Besides him, there is only one other
African-American
worker who does. Locating close to work wasn't the biggest factor in his
choice of housing, rather the quality of schools and the distance to my
mother's
work; when my brother and I were younger, my father wanted someone there
to take care of us,
and the library that my mother worked at was across the street from my
elementary
school. This shows some of the factors that may be taken into account when
people are choosing
where they are going to make their residence.
Kitsap county and Bremerton Demography
The Kitsap Transit
Unlike Seattle, Kitsap county has a rather poor public
transportation system, in
fact there is a single car pool lane on the highway that runs through
Bremerton.
Because of the lack of the lack of quality public transportation, there
are not any
means, except by single transportation, of traveling to a job outside of
the immediate
areas surrounding Bremerton. Safeway doesn't feel the need to ship in
workers, because
1.) it is too expensive 2.) there is a work force that is there and
available already.
Taking this case study and viewing it on a larger scale, the
reason is evident
why companies are not just willing to up and move to inner city areas, or
even bus in
workers from those areas, "It's too darn expensive." Only the local
governments have the ability to create change by increasing public
transportation to go from the areas where
African-Americans are, to the areas where the work is. On a broader
scale, most
African-Americans live in the intercity which is plagued with unemployment
and
underemployment. To make it plain and simple, "If they don't have a car,
then they can't
get to where jobs are unless there is adequate public transportation.
Kozol, "Life on the Mississippi," a study on the life of the economic
situations
Explaining the lack of funding by the state government to black
municipalities.
Steele, Claude, "Race and the Schooling of African-Americans," this study
explains
differences that social tensions in education has on African-Americans.
Books:
Chideya, Farai, "Don't Believe the Hype," a guide to statistical
information about
north and south.