Rep. Margaret Anderson Keliher (DFL-60A), Speaker of the Minnesota House last week praised the work of HIRE-MN, the expansive network of community service and environmental advocacy groups that succeeded in passing a bill that directs $2.5 million for training and outreach for green jobs and infrastructure stimulus spending.Keliher said, “Showing up made the difference.”
She offered a new “beatitude” in reference to Biblical blessings. “Blessed are the community organizers for they shall change the world,” she said.
Keliher encouraged HIRE-MN partners to continue working in the belief that “we can grow our way to prosperity; that all must share in the promise and the opportunity; and that, like yeast, opportunity and promise must rise.”
“Accountibility and transparency are important,” she said. “These town hall meetings show you are willing to hold us accountable, and, you are willing to hold yourselves accountable as well.”
“Our lives are being negotiated, and we are not there!” said Alex Tittle, providing background to why the HIRE-MN initiative focused on infrastructure spending. Tittle is responsible for training programs at Summit Academy Opportunities Industrialization Centers, (SAOIC) one of the partner stakeholders in HIRE MN.Phyllis Hill, representing ISAIAH, a community building advocacy agency, and Tittle reported on Federal infrastructure initiatives in Minnesota, noting the challenges and strategies to broaden the pathway to more inclusion of people of color and women in the projects that are being funded by taxpayer dollars to help jumpstart the nation’s economy.
According to Tittle and Hill, about 7,000 jobs in infrastructure repair and renovation will be created from federal stimulus spending in Minnesota. Federal and state diversity and inclusion requirements mean that almost 900 of those jobs are to be targeted for women and minority workers in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area as part of a $500 million stimulus spending project primarily through Minnesota Department of Transportation (MNDOT.)
“ISAIAH, HIRE MN, and the other partners in this movement sat at the negotiation table with MNDOT and the construction trades industry. We listened to and challenged MNDOT’s reports on their accomplishments to move toward fairness and equity in compliance with the law and legal agreements,” said Hill during a HIRE-MN town hall meeting last Tuesday night at Sabathani Community Center.
“If our negotiation sessions would have been a class, MNDOT would have failed. They would have earned an “F” grade. We discovered we knew more about the reports they wrote than they did. They had over $700 million in their contracting budget, but couldn’t meet their own goals for minority and women inclusion. And their reports were laden with inaccuracies,” she said.
Tittle said one item that shows structural inequity in how MNDOT fails to live up to its own professed and legal obligations is found in how it allocated $4 million in training funds in the last reporting period. He said MNDOT reported it had expended, or allocated, 790,000 for minority training, funding some internships and on the job training programs. Some 88 minorities and women benefitted from that training. But MNDOT reported it spent $3.2 million in training for an engineering program whose beneficiaries were 44 white males, five minorities, and 6 women.
HIRE-MN maintains such disparity in spending proves the absence of intent to deal fairly with people of color and women.
Tittle and Hill joined other HIRE-MN stakeholders and legislators in acknowledging the community organizing feat accomplished by HIRE-MN. The initiative succeeded in garnering $2.5 million from the Minnesota Legislature. In a bill signed into law by Gov. Tim Pawlenty weatherization training will receive about $1 million, and other infrastructure construction training at about $1 million. The bill allocates about $500,000 for outreach and information that will make communities of color aware of the opportunity to train for the new green jobs energy and infrastructure spending will create.
Minnesota Sen. Ellen Anderson (DFL-66) said in her 17 years as an elected official, she has not seen such a consistent and expansive turnout of people representing community values, issues and needs. Usually, she said, the halls of the Legislature are lined with “white guys in suits on their cell phones. We need you at the Capitol. You shook things up! Green Jobs is not just a short term idea. It’s more than that,” she said.
“If you are there, we will do better. On our road to cleaning up the planet, we are being watched by the whole country,” Anderson said.
Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-60B), Chair of the Transportation Policy and Oversight Committee in the Minnesota House agreed. When over 250 HIRE-MN people showed up at his hearing on MNDOT, “it was a watershed moment.” He said, “Now MNDOT is being held accountable.”
Hornstein paraphrased Abolitionist Frederick Douglass and reminded HIRE-MN workers that “ ‘power concedes nothing without a demand.’ You demanded,’ he said.
Will Steger, who co-chairs HIRE-MN with Louis King, said the next wrung on the HIRE-MN ladder is organizing to tax polluters with the tax revenues going to clean jobs like weatherization. He said Minnesota should be weatherizing 10,000 homes, not jus 1,000.
Steger said jump-starting the economy is important. Brian Elliott, who is the District Director for Congressman Keith Ellison’s Minneapolis office, said people should pay particular attention to two federal bill: The Clean Energy Bill which supports renewable, efficient, carbon reducing energy policy and initiatives; and the Federal Transportation Bill. The Transportation Bill, Elliott said, will determine the course of transportation development and spending for the next six years.
Elliott said Ellison and Congressman Jim Oberstar are hosting a forum to discuss transportation policy 2:30-4:30pm Saturday, June 6th at North Regional Library, at Lowry & Fremont in North Minneapolis.
State Sen. John Marty (DFL-54), like Keliher, a likely candidate for Minnesota Governor, warned that now HIRE-MN partners must continue to be watchful. “Watch, watch. Lots of people with money will be asking us to give them this money to support things they want, not to support things you need and desire,” he said.
Louis King praised the legislators present with special kudos to North Minneapolis Rep. Bobby Joe Champion. “We have a statesman in the state capitol now,” he said.
Through Champion’s efforts Minneapolis Community Action (Hennepin County) is getting $20 million for weatherization, and Ramsey Action Program (Ramsey County) is getting $15 million. The training dollars authorized by the Legislature will go those agencies which in turn are responsible for getting the money into the community.
“We cracked to code,” King said. “Unions don’t give jobs. Employers give jobs. Companies do.”
One hand giveth, the other hand taketh...
Transportation department officials last week Thursday discussed how to restructure job training programs in ways they said would change the rate of compensation companies receive for placing on the Job Training (OJT) trainees, and, allow a pool of trainees to be moved from company to company, from project to project without impacting the low-bid status of companies awarded contracts, while doubling the time that they spend in the OJT status from 2,000 hours to 4,000 hours.
HIRE-MN organizers, however, say such machinations gut the spirit and intent of federal infrastructure stimulus spending.
Louis King challenged the premise of the considerations charging “I feel that is discriminatory that the only way to get people of color on MNDOT job sites is through the OJT program. Where is the program for white applicants?”
“It is even more ridiculous to suggest that the government must subsidize the majority of the wages for the OJT participants. This implies a lack of skill at the entry level vs white applicants. Where is the proof that these people don't deserve to be paid by the employer? Why should the tax-payer pay twice?
King said he rejects and denounces the appearance that MNDOT is considering practices that “represent a major transgression against the "good faith" efforts that we have extended over the last few months. In essence, this is a deal breaker.”
King said he objected to giving “people employing these discriminatory practices and extension of the OJT period to the equivalent of two years of full time work, and want the wages picked up by the state.”
He said the strategy smacks of back room deal-making. “I am tired of the back room deals. The people working for the Association of General Contractors (AGC) used to work for MNDOT. The people working for MNDOT have worked for the AGC. Who represents the people? The answer is simple--no one,” he said.
“Instead of MNDOT saying that it is a new day and the times of discriminating against people of color are over, we get these types of attempts to circumvent justice.”
King is calling for public hearings to address these concerns. This would allow MNDOT and the contractors to state their views in full view of the public in the spirit of transparency and accountability, he said.
Insightnews.com