Local Hire (Research)

By Poder

We are excited to release our People Powered Solutions for Neighborhood Jobs & the Local Economy.  Based on in-depth, face-to-face conversations and planning sessions in Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese, and English with over 220 District 11 residents and stakeholders, our results provide honest and powerful narratives of individuals, families, and communities' daily struggle to find work, raise families, and survive in District 11. Four prominent themes emerged from the voices of youth, elders, women and men talking and planning together: the chronic abuse of workers' rights and lack of workers rights education and advocacy; the lack of opportunities to build economic assets, including cooperatively owned assets; the need for culturally competent employment services and resources within the geographic boundaries of District 11; the need for public policy reforms to expand local job opportunities. Everyday youth, adults, and elders in our communities have the skills and talents to build a strong, local economy; what they lack is the investment and resources to make their dreams happen. The recommendations in our People Powered Solutions point the ways to new models, economic alternatives, and long lasting changes.

By UCLA-LOSH

On April 8, 2009, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed an ordinance establishing a Green Retrofit and Workforce Program. The Ordinance calls for green retrofits to more than 1,000 city buildings and a workforce development policy that creates career pathways into good, green, safe jobs, targeting those in low?income neighborhoods. The result of a two?year campaign, the Ordinance was developed by the Los Angeles Apollo Alliance, a coalition formed by Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) and comprised of more than 25 community, labor, and environmental organizations in Los Angeles. This groundbreaking Ordinance addresses major issues confronting society today – environmental, economic, and health – and represents the first time a program designed to retrofit buildings and reduce municipal energy and water costs has been combined with training for green, quality, union jobs, with the added provision of pathways out of poverty for residents in low?income neighborhoods and with consideration of worker and community health. The Ordinance represents a convergence of community organizing and local, state and federal initiatives to address climate change at a historic moment. At the local level, the ordinance is one component of the Green LA Climate Action Plan. At the state level, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. And at the federal level, stimulus funds are forthcoming to address the dual environmental and economic crises through investment in a green economy.

By the Brightline Defense Project and Chinese for Affirmative Action

Over the next decade, the City and County of San Francisco will invest $27 billion in public infrastructure projects pursuant to its 2011-2020 Capital Plan, creating tens of thousands of jobs in the process. This investment presents policy makers with an extraordinary opportunity to address persistent pockets of high unemployment and poverty, to provide sustainable careers for populations facing systemic barriers to employment, and to strengthen labor standards and worker rights by targeting these job opportunities for residents of San Francisco’s local economically disadvantaged communities. This report first researches the unique nature of the building and construction workforce, and summarizes policies and programs that affect local hiring on public projects. It then presents data on who has worked on recent San Francisco projects and assesses the composition of the construction workforce and trade unions. Next, it offers three models of local hiring policies from other jurisdictions, before finally presenting key findings and recommendations for policy makers to consider in moving forward with a new approach to targeted community hiring in San Francisco.