Minorities are trained for construction trade in new state program
Friday, February 13, 2004
BY STEVE CHAMBERS
Star-Ledger Staff
In a third-floor classroom in Newark's Central Ward, an unlikely assortment of students gathered for an orientation program. Some were middle-age, others barely out of high school. Most were men, and all were black or Latino.
They listened patiently to speakers promote the construction trade unions as a bridge to opportunity, but they didn't really perk up until a former convict and an 18-year-old woman took the microphone to tell their stories.
Both had navigated the job-training program successfully and were working. He repaired roofs throughout the county and she was installing windows at the new Belmont-Runyon Elementary School a dozen blocks to the south.
"Sometimes when I'm working, the kids will walk by and say things like, 'Look, Mom, that's going to be our school,'" said Dominique Drew, who grew up in Newark. "You're thinking about the kids while you're working."
With $6 billion in state money pouring into New Jersey's most distressed school districts for new, court-ordered schools, the state is spending millions of dollars in an effort to ensure that some of the work goes to city residents.
Long mistrustful of trade unions perceived as closed shops, community activists have argued since the inception of the school construction program that all the money cannot go to contractors and workers who commute in from the suburbs.
Rebecca Doggett, project consultant for the Newark/Essex Construction Careers Program, walked a picket line 40 years ago during the construction of Barringer High School, demanding that locals get work. They didn't.
But Doggett and others said things have improved. Marty Schwartz, president of the Essex County Building Trades Council, has worked closely with Newark's career training program and said unions are intent on diversifying their ranks.
Out of 100 graduates of the program -- a 10-week orientation to the trades that helps residents understand the system and prepares them for tough entry tests -- about 60 have been accepted into the unions. All have gotten work.
"The perception remains that the trade unions are closed," said state Labor Commissioner Albert Kroll, a lawyer with close ties to trade unions. "In the past, those jobs were often passed from grandfather to father to son. But as more and more kids went on to college, there was a need for new blood. That new blood is coming from the minority community."
Newark's state-funded job-training program is ahead of others, but a pilot in Camden has been similarly successful. One in Trenton is being reworked, and 11 more are just getting started.
The legislative compromise that raised $8.6 billion for new schools -- $6 billion for distressed districts and another $2.6 billion for the suburbs -- said one-half of 1 percent of the money would go to training, or roughly $30 million in the urban districts.
Additionally, state law requires that 25 percent of all public works projects be awarded to small businesses or companies owned by minorities or women. The Schools Construction Corp., which is overseeing the $8.6 billion initiative, has more than met those guidelines.
Neither law requires, however, that those companies or any specified number of workers come from the city where a school is being built.
The issue of whether Newark residents would find work on school construction sites was hotly debated at a Newark Council meeting two weeks ago. John Spencer, CEO of the SCC, was there to report on his progress, but he got an earful from several skeptical and angry council members.
"We will hit those sites, and we will close them down," said Councilwoman Bessie Walker, implying she would lead pickets at school sites if Newark residents weren't being put to work.
Another critic, Councilman Charles Bell, said the Newark training program -- run by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice -- was a "drop in the bucket" and was accepting the "cream of the crop," rather than residents more difficult to employ.
"In a city of 200,000-plus, I find it hard to believe we can't come up with 200 or 300 people who can meet the criteria," he said in an earlier interview.
Gerald Murphy, Spencer's second-in-command, said the SCC is firmly committed to meeting the requirements on minority contractors and in expanding opportunities for urban contractors and workers. He said a new initiative will help small firms meet bonding requirements designed to ensure that work gets completed.
While the SCC is doing all it can to advise minority contractors of opportunities, it cannot legally hand any firm work, Murphy said. Firms must be "qualified" by the state attorney general and treasurer, then submit the lowest bid.
A bill signed by Gov. James E. McGreevey in 2002 encourages project labor agreements for public works jobs over $5 million. Those agreements favor unions and require all contractors to pay "prevailing wages."
Some critics say the agreements hurt city residents, who despite their contracting experience might have been frozen out or not educated enough to meet union requirements.
Kenneth Zimmerman, executive director of the social justice institute, said the long struggle over jobs in Newark prompted the formation of a task force three years ago that created the jobs program. He said the intent was to identify the kind of workers the unions demanded.
"Otherwise, we knew folks could sit around and (complain about inequities), but they'd just be talking," he said.
Drew, the 18-year-old glazier's apprentice, met the rigid standards. She had gotten good grades in the Essex County vocational system and still hopes to someday be an electrician. After the training program, there was an opening for glaziers.
Today, she is happily installing windows and glass "curtain" walls at $12 an hour.
Robert Phelps, 42, the former convict who also spoke at the orientation, leaped at the chance to be a roofing apprentice. This summer, he helped put a new roof on the Newark junior high school he dropped out of as a troubled youth, and today he's earning $13.75 an hour.
"It's a beautiful thing," Phelps said. "I never realized how good it could feel to be productive and working."