As many members of the Black community complain of not seeing any Black people working on any of the new construction projects, USC students at the Annenberg School delved into whether USC kept their commitments to a robust Community Benefits Agreement. Specifically, did PV Jobs train people to work in construction. Their research left 2UrbanGirls pissed off! The committee formed to ensure construction job training decided to train Blacks for RETAIL instead.
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With constant construction and expansion of the Metro rail, NFL/Soccer stadiums and possibly a new basketball arena in Inglewood, how are city leaders expecting to meet construction hiring mandates if residents aren’t trained?
A committee was created to ensure that 28 provisions, promising the community likely more than $40 million in benefits, was not fully realized.
Benny Torres helped negotiate the development agreement with a coalition of other community leaders. As the director of CD Tech, an organization focused on economic development in South Los Angeles, he was part of the Economic Development Coordinating Council formed by the agreement. The committee distributed $300,000 in grant money to provide job training to 120 local workers.
Now that training has begun, Torres said he “wished we would have done a better job because the committee missed the key window to train residents for the first wave of retail jobs.
“Getting 120 people trained is good, but we could have done more, leveraged the funding better, and done things sooner,” Torres said.
The council, made up of community, university and city leaders, decided that it wanted to focus on providing training for permanent jobs in service, retail, hospitality and maintenance instead of temporary construction jobs.
Chose to focus on RETAIL jobs and NOT TEMPORARY CONSTRUCTION JOBS?
Read the full report by clicking here. Author of the article Rachel Cohrs declined an interview request with 2UrbanGirls.
4 Comments
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This has been a problem for a while. Blacks train at Long Beach & LA Job corps, only to be left out od opportunities because higher ups drop the ball. And union reps over look many African Americans for other ethnic groups.
Let me start by saying I attended the forum with Congresswoman Waters. Where was the Mark Ridgley Thomas (Supervisor) or our Councilman they didn’t even bother to attend. Mrs. Waters she read the letter of invite sent to their offices, and if nothing else the Councilman himself should have been there, this project is right in his front door,(Disrespectful) to his constituents. Yet they set up a meeting suposively with the community but no one was there, I attended that one too because someone called me at the last minute I took a lunch break to attend, so what’s up with the meeting at 11am on a Wednesday. Did they really expect a turnout? that’s suspect right there. They were prepared with this presentation from Metro telling us they are planning to build a boarding school to teach young people about the Transportation Industry, it’s a great idea just not on that corner. I agree with the lady in the post before mine why does our community have to schools everywhere and not represent nice quality stores, pharmacies, eateries etc. What I am most offended by is how the City Council nor the County Supervisor had no intention obviously of conversing with the community until light got shined on that the Renderings they have displayed looks like a institution I’m sorry. So in conclusion let me say this, the community is preparing to approach this in a business like manner we want our needs met and some of our wants if not all before we jump on either side but, Just know we are NOT SLEEPING on this matter. We should not turn our backs on the Sasson Company if they guarantee to deliver what they’ve promised at least they came in with excitement and transparency. Any person (s) or organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community as the County Supervisor Thomas/Councilman Dawson are proclaiming now. Then they must work with the community so that we have a position of strength from which to make our voices heard. This is the significance of empowering the people first. I really do not care for the way our Councilman is moving to the back on this matter it’s like he appears if Mark R. Thomas says it’s ok. This is his District first and foremost and your MIA for 2 meetings the Forum and the County meeting UNACCEPTABLE. To Be Continued.
Very interested in job training in the construction trade.