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November 30, 2007
City's poor should be Job One
NY Daily News
Columnist Errol Louis
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While the city's unemployment rate is under 5%, the rate for black New Yorkers is nearly 8%.
I can't think of a social problem in New York's black neighborhoods - drug abuse, shattered families, crummy housing, failing schools - that wouldn't improve by leaps and bounds with an increase in the number of parents holding solid, good-paying jobs with benefits and pensions.
That's why city leaders, from City Hall to the smallest neighborhood nonprofits, must seize on this unprecedented opportunity to open doors that will give low-skilled, lesser-educated New Yorkers a shot at some of the city's estimated 123,0000 to 175,000 construction jobs.
Here's where Atlantic Yards comes in:
There's rarely been a better time to attack the long, ugly history of nepotism and discrimination in the building trades.
At the same time that megaprojects are being launched around the city - from the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to Queens West, Atlantic Yards and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center area - the average construction worker is 40 years old, and 30,000 are expected to retire over the next 15 years.
The Mayor's Commission on Construction Opportunity, the Bloomberg administration's plan to help cure the construction jobs mismatch, is still in its early stages, boosting funding for training and apprentice programs and the newly created Queens-based High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture.
Posted by lumi at November 30, 2007 5:07 AM