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.
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.
I think our initial focus should be on establishing a shared vision, mission, and goals for rebuilding our transportation infrastructure. Everyone feels the pain, everyone wants the problem solved. Our current job is show the public that we can and will solve the problem.
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p>Providing a forward-looking twenty-first century transportation infrastructure will do more to enhance our business climate, regenerate prosperity for all our residents, and restore the economic health of Massachusetts than anything else we can do.
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p>The key to any bubble-up approach is to seed the environment with a commonly-shared vision that the “long tail” embraces. When the public enthusiastically shares the vision, mission, and goals, then the jobs, training programs, apprenticeships, and union growth will follow. They will follow because the public will demand them. Our job, today, is to create that demand.
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p>When the time is ripe, we will not have to push these concepts on a reluctant public; the public will, instead, clamor for workable answers to questions like:
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p>”When can we start?”
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p>”Who’s going to do all this?”
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p>”Where will we get the labor?”
Having been forced to use union labor on various projects, I have to think the union pressure on Deval and Doug Rubin, and any and all of the other Beacon Hill power brokers, to flow much of the stimulus money their way will be very, very intense.
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p>And the unions pay for that attention every election.
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p>Then there’s always the MBTA Silver Line tunnel project … needs $1.5 billion and the MBTA is not backing off its plans to build it. Unions will do the work. 50% of the cost, I think, may be ear-marked by the feds already.
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p>A bellwether of how stimulus money will be steered will be if this specific project gets any of the inbound largess, then I think Lew will have a tough time getting his share of the moolah.
The existence of outfits like “Labor Ready”, where basically anyone can walk in off the street and work for peanuts for a day, seems to indicate that there are some jobs that require little or no training. And the whole point of apprenticeship, as I understand it, is that you learn as you work, so doesn’t it make more sense to put trainees on the job rather than in a classrooom, or have them work half the day, with classroom/workshop instruction making up the other half? I don’t see why the training/work elements need to be fundamentally separated.
We want our economy to create broad prosperity, but there are people who have been lacking opportunities since long before last year when this economic crisis began. If we are going to actually improve the economy, rather than just put some temporary scaffolding underneath it, we need to reach the people who have always been under-employed .
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p>Yes, thousands of these people have diplomas, some construction or work experience, and a strong work ethic. In Boston, look at graduates of YouthBuild, Madison Park Vocational H.S., JFY, Benjamin Franklin Inst. of Technology, and others. In other parts of the state there are community colleges and apprenticeship programs that get people construction skills and experience. If the state is hiring for projects this summer, they should look to those existing programs and make the hiring process transparent.
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p>If we want to create a fair economy in the long term, we need to strengthen career training programs for everyone who is looking for job opportunities. It’s in everyone’s best interests to get young people into productive careers.
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p>Bottom Line: There’s too much work to be done NOT to train as many people as can be trained.
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I agree that unions have a way to go to make up for their past histories of discrimination. And there are many unnecessary barriers to certain groups of people gaining employment. What’s the best way to use the stimulus money to solve this problem?
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p>I don’t understand what’s wrong with the idea of ensuring that a significant amount of stimulus money goes to hiring apprentices. That way:
1) people get not just jobs but training and a career path
2) unions, which are the force that makes sure that construction jobs are and remain “good jobs” are strengthened
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p>If the fear is that unions won’t enroll the people we have in mind as apprentices, then lets work directly on that issue. Perhaps we could have fight for affirmative action or local residency requirements for organizations using stimulus money.
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I posted this comment when Lew Finfer initially posted about this issue. I believe it still stands:
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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-traditional workforce, this is not true today.
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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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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.