Blue Mass Group

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How can Stimulus Funding coming to Massachusetts provide jobs for lower wage earners

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Stimulus Funding Could Help More of Us, Governor Patrick will decide

   The $789 billion dollar Federal Stimulus Bill is the largest domestic spending bill in history. It is supposed to create 79,000 jobs in Massachusetts mostly in construction of roads, bridges and mass transit and also for so called green jobs or energy retrofitting of homes and buildings.

   However, with 266,000 people out of work in Massachusetts, this is not enough funding for everyone to get a job.  So who will get these jobs?  There may be more than enough unemployed construction workers to fill all the construction jobs that may become available.  They certainly need and deserve these jobs.

   However, concerns come when you consider the other people who have not had a chance to ever get good paying construction jobs in the past. There are a good number of current low wage workers and long term unemployed who could fill some of these new, now available construction jobs too.  These other workers would have to meet the requirements for becoming a full time union apprentice worker. For that, they have to be 18 or older, have a high school degree or GED, pass a drug test, and meet requirements for showing up for work on time and having a good work ethic on the job.

    34 community groups from across the state and two unions, have asked Governor Patrick to set a policy that 15% of the Stimulus funded jobs actually go to qualified lower wage workers, long term unemployed, and/or unemployed young adults aged 18-24.

   This would still leave 85% of the jobs for union construction workers.  That’s still a lot of jobs. However, they naturally would want all the available jobs to go first to their unemployed members.

    In recent years, some construction unions have done much better at hiring more Blacks and Latinos as apprentices which is to be commended.  However, some unions have not done so well at this and historically most construction unions did not do well at this. So there is a still a need to insure some equity in access to these good jobs to qualified people of all income groups and all racial backgrounds.

   So a proposal for targeting 15% of the jobs has been made by 36 organizations to the Governor and his staff. After we got no response to a February 18 letter signed by leaders of these organizations, we had to do more to get some response. Then,  after several hundred calls were made to the Governor’s Office from people from these organizations around the state this past Wednesday and Thursday, the Patrick Administration offered a meeting with the State Stimulus Czar Jeffrey Simon.  

   Our coalition will take this meeting but we’ve continued to reiterate to the Governor’s staff our request to meet with him since such a policy as we’ve proposed would take a decision by him.

   If the greatest job creation bill in history, provides few jobs for lower wage earners and long term unemployed, it would be sad and bad.  It doesn’t have to be so, But, it’s up to Governor Patrick to decide to sit down and look at this tough issue that still contains opportunities for everyone.

Lewis Finfer is a community organizer, a Dorchester resident, and Director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network and helps coordinate the Safe Teens/Safe Communities Coalition

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Comments

  1. Yes, the ultimate call would probably be made by the Gov.  But Simon is managing the nuts and bolts of figuring out what stimulus money goes where.  He’s the guy you need to convince.  My advice, FWIW: take that meeting very seriously.

  2. Lou:

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    p>While I won’t disagree with your basic statement that in the distance past union apprentice programs had faired poorly at access for the non-trabidtional workforce, this is not true today.

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    However, some unions have not done so well at this and historically most construction unions did not do well at this. So there is a still a need to insure some equity in access to these good jobs to qualified people of all income groups and all racial backgrounds

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    p>Take a look at the study done by The Labor Resource Center at the the College for Public and Community Service at UMass Boston. They researched the data comparing Union (really Labor-Management run) apprenticeship programs vs non-union (employer run) from 1997 through 2007.

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    87% of all women registered with the state as apprentices are in union programs; 79% of all racial and ethnic minorities registered are in union programs; 73% of all veterans and 77% of all persons with disabilities are in union programs.

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    p>You can find the full report here:

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    p>http://www.cpcs.umb.edu/lrc/

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    p>Union construction training programs have far higher retension and graduation rates. If stimilus money is going to create job opportunities for unemployed workers in construction, shouldn’t those opportunities begin with real training for careers not short term job placement that ends when that particular project ends?

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    p>Even with the safety training available, construction remains one of the most dangerous industries to work in. Basic requirements such as age and drug testing are essential for individual and group safety. In fact to even go onto a public construction site, individuals must have completed a 10-hour OSHA Training in safety. The state should provide the necessary safety training if long-term and/or underemployed workers are to be considered for construction work.

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    p>My last two points  – Local Union leadership’s first responsibility is to represent the current dues-paying members for wages, hours, working conditions and , yes, job opportunities. So your point about Unions wanting unemployed members to have first chance at new work is correct. And the Union Leadership position is understandable.

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    p>However, construction careers are often short and people move in and out of the industry. My union has made significant gains in the raw number and percentages of women, people of color and non-traditional workers in our apprenticeship program. We are working hard to ensure that opportunities remain even in this recession.

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    p>I encourage you to meet with the Patrick Administration and encourage access for non-traditional workers on public construction. And I encourage you to join the Construction Unions of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council to lobby for a percentage of all work hours created to be dedicated to registered apprentices in state certified training programs. This will open up career opportunities in apprenticeship programs and benefit all workers.

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  3. You forgot to tell BMG folks what they could do to help. Call the Governor? Call Simon?

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    p>”Sad and Bad” is a bit of an understatement describing the unintentional ( or intentional) consequences I think.

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    If the greatest job creation bill in history, provides few jobs for lower wage earners and long term unemployed, it would be sad and bad. It doesn’t have to be so, But, it’s up to Governor Patrick to decide to sit down and look at this tough issue that still contains opportunities for everyone.  

    • As for who to call – my union has been working through the Mass Building Trades and its president Frank Callahan. Frank has been working with the Patrick Administration on the Stimulus Funds project, so I don’t have a name to suggest directly. But clearly calling the Governor’s Office will get BMGers started on the path. I will ask tomorrow and post the contact the Building Trades have been working with for future reference.

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      p>And Judy, I appreciated your comment on my post and have always admired your passion and expertise. I have actually been a BMGer since February 2006 but don’t post as often as I should given my support for progressive policies and my belief that Unions can and should be major players in the progressive movement. And that Union members – public and private sector workers – deserve support from progressives.

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      p>Note: Lew sorry I mistakenly called you Lou.

    • Money for apprenticeships, and opening some of the union apprenticeships to the folk Lou described.

  4. 79,000 new jobs?  Existing union members, or un- or under-employed ones, will get the call.  Lots of Big Dig folks floating around.  

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    p>After the money is gone, so are the jobs.  That’s why my experience suggests existing labor unions will want stimulus funds to be deployed slowly to maximize their members’ employment over time.  

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    p>Members will want to hoard all the available job months by NOT adding new hires.  Fewer members = more months of guaranteed work.

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    p>What is Massachusetts doing to create an environment for new, and permanent, job creation?  This is a more important question than how to spend the one-shot stimulus money.

  5. but I would really prefer if a large chunk of the stimulus was targeted at smaller firms – union or not – to create jobs. It is my belief that such jobs would be more sustainable.

  6. Economic growth should be the key driver in selection of projects, not the distribution of jobs.  There are other ways to satisfy this need, including education and project business arrangements that can incorporate new workers into productive jobs.  But designating a certain number avoids making the best decision for the overall economy which could benefit everybody.

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    p>An excerpt from a summary of a recent project review of the Hamilton Canal District in Lowell may illustrate a better way to accomplish the same goals.

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    An interesting aspect of the work to be done is a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed between CWC, Trinity, CMAA and the Building Trades to engage local workers in a Apprentice Program that would serve to grow the workforce while providing good-paying jobs.  This redevelopment is not just an end in itself, but its process should help in the creation of an educated, productive workforce in the area.

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    p>In this arrangement the the project developer, major subcontractor, the Building Trades Union and the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Agency commit to an apprentice program with the underemployed SE Asian youth to accomplish learning and job creation in a single project.  That should be much more effective than designating a number of jobs.

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    p>I would rather see the efforts along these lines, with the State providing tax incentives to accomplish the goals.  That is much better than quotas.

  7. Unions are federally funded ergo they are subject to federal quotas. Live by the sword—die by the sword.

  8. I was with a youth group yesterday that has just heard about the BRA’s Dorchester Ave project because it made the news as a shovel-ready candidate for stimulus funds. They saw it as a possible place to have a voice in nbrhd improvement — but I wonder whether the public input process is considered closed. I don’t have an answer yet.

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    p>There may be similar issues with hiring on many stimulus-eligible projects  — plans, unions, contractors already in place, or already subject to established territorial claims.  

  9. The top priority for this bill and for Massachusetts is “construction of roads, bridges and mass transit”. Surely the first step is to determine what we are going to do before we start arguing about who we’re going to hire.

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    p>I think that our next four steps should therefore be:

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    p>1. A clearly articulated vision of the transportation infrastructure we want and need to create.
    2. A clearly articulated mission statement describing the work we will do to make this transportation vision real.
    3. A comprehensive statement of the specific goals with which we can measure our progress towards accomplishing this mission.
    4. A publicly-available enumeration, available from the web, of each construction project detailing which goals it advances.

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    p>This is a marvelous opportunity for Governor Patrick and his administration to listen to all the voices in the state and then lead the way towards accomplishing these four steps. In this case, the buck stops at the Governor’s desk.

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    p>While the concerns raised by Mr. Finfer are valid and must be addressed, surely our most urgent priority must be to restore the transportation infrastructure of the Commonwealth.

  10. The scramble for stimulus money across so many different interests risks reducing the funds available to so much pocket change spread across a lot of people.

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    p>Why does union labor get all the money?

  11. I got this email from Lew Finfer first thing this morning and talked to him as he was on his way down to New Bedford for a community meeting. He asked me to post this for him here.

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    Dear Colleagues and Allies,

       We do community organizing to bring people together to act on our religious and democratic values and deeply felt interests.

    We teach that you “take an action to get a reaction”.  Our campaign to get 15% of the stimulus funded jobs go to lower wage earners is getting a reaction from the Patrick Administration and the Boston Globe (see Boston Globe editorial and andBoston Globe column by Adrian Walker. We sought some media coverage because the Patrick Administration did not agree to even a meeting for 1 month until we finally organized together 300 phone calls to be made to them on this last Wednesday and Thursday.

    You can see by today’s editorial what their reactions are and what we must do next:

    1. Stimulus projects need to be “shovel ready”.
    Yes, but they only need to be chosen in 120 days, but not completed for 18 months to two years.

    2. “People are lacking skills necessary to do the job” , said Secretary Suzanne Bump, Governor Patrick’s Labor and Workforce Development Secretary”.
        a. No state official has allowed people to apply for these jobs and screened them for their skills to see if there are people with the necessary skills. Instead, they just assume there aren’t people ready for jobs. This kind of assumption makes me angry, does it anger you?

        Full time apprentices on construction projects need to be 18+, have a GED or High School Diploma, be drug free, and show a positive work attitude in being on time for work and hard working on the job.
          We feel there are many thousands of current low wage earners who could meet these requirements, if given a chance. Some even have some related construction experience.
       Yes, many lower wage earner do need training too and we had also proposed additional stimulus funding go to training too.

    3. :”Training opportunities are more valuable to low income workers than short term set asides”.
       Our proposal had also called for at least a 1% set aside of Stimulus funds for job training program to prepare those not qualified for such jobs for these jobs.  
       We also had proposed while sitting on Secretary Bump’s Work Force Task Force on Stimulus Funding during December and January that there be a set of such job training programs to prepare people not yet qualified for such jobs for construction jobs, green jobs on energy retrofitting and weatherization, and medical IT jobs that are all stimulus funded.  We are glad the Patrick Administration will do some training programs with stimulus funding that has been allocated for this purpose in the legislation and we even called for them to voluntarily use additional stimulus funding they control for such job training programs.

     Every Saturday, the Boston Globe does a chart graphing how many Letters to the Editor it gets on what topics.
    –Can each of you organize to get one or more Letters to the Editor sent from your organization or from individuals in your organization?
    –Can we make this issue the top one on next Saturday’s Letter’s chart?

      Letters to Editor can be emailed to the Globe at  letter@globe.com or mailed to Letters to the Editor, Boston Globe, Editorial Page, 135 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125.

      Our other next step is preparing for the meeting the Patrick Administration did offer with Jeffrey Simon, the State’s Stimulus Czar. Leaders from our coalition and allied groups will be holding that meeting later this week or next week.

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    p>  

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