Posted on 05/31/2021 11:41:12 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Washington – U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is making a new push to ensure that the transformation of Interstate 81 in Syracuse doesn’t leave behind some of the city’s most disadvantaged residents.
Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced a bill today in Congress that would require at least 50% of the workers on the $2 billion construction project to be hired locally from Syracuse.
The chronically unemployed, ex-offenders, veterans, and others who face barriers to employment would be given priority when it comes to filling hundreds of jobs for the five-year project, one of the largest in Syracuse’s history.
At least a third of the government contracts and subcontracts related to I-81 would be reserved for small businesses.
The bill also requires 30% of the contracts to be awarded to businesses of all sizes owned by minorities, women, and veterans.
Gillibrand included the requirements in a new version of her “Build Local, Hire Local Act,” a bill that rewrites federal rules for hiring on big public works projects.
Gillibrand said she was inspired to write the bill after hearing about plans to demolish the elevated portion of I-81 in downtown Syracuse and replace it with a street-level boulevard.
The highway’s construction displaced a historically Black neighborhood in Syracuse’s 15th Ward and cut off previously connected neighborhoods in the heart of the city.
Gillibrand and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh are among those who say it’s important for the new boulevard to benefit the community in a way that addresses problems the original highway created and to bring fairness to big development projects.
Gillibrand said the local hiring requirement for I-81 could serve as a national model for making sure that big public works projects benefit the communities where they are built.
(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...
The New York highway that racism built: ‘It does nothing but pollute’ (5/21/21)
Syracuse offers paid apprenticeship to gear up labor force for I-81 construction (5/20/21)
PING!
“The chronically unemployed, ex-offenders, veterans, and others who face barriers to employment”
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just isn’t the same.
Chronically unemployed, felons and drug addicts make the best workers.
They’ll for sure show up 5 days a week at 0600 and that road will be expertly built and safe to drive on.
Is there ANYTHING that politicians can’t do?
Veterans face barriers to employment? In whose universe? I’ve always found my service to be a plus. The only reason someone would be reluctant to hire a vet would be if he was watching the black propaganda the media and the therapeutic state spew about Vets.
Of course. This is the journalism of the left.
The Demrats are all but announcing their true intentions. It's all funny money to be squandered in fraud, corruption and feather bedding.
Lol. As if the “chronically unemployed” are chronically unemployed because of a lack of available jobs. They are chronically unemployed because they are chronically unemployable.
You need a skill to build highways and bridges....you do not do it with a shove..
It’s not government’s role to “steer” jobs.
Way too much forcin goin on. We don’t need no stinkin forcin.
So law abiding citizens who need a job to feed their families will be by-passed. Isn’t that just sweet!
I see some heavy equipment accidents at an all-time high on this project. So many ex-cons run scrapes and paving machines in prison training.
scrapers — damn spellcheck
This idiot thinks construction work is for the untrained. They always do. They think construction works and industrial workers can just show up and do the job. The idea that the majority of the jobs on a big highway and interchange project take four year apprenticeship training to do a journeyman role.
On the ‘unemployment’ side of this....
Have been seeing an ad on the tube from some tea company that features several Black people raving about how they ‘love’ their job etc.
NO problem with that but if looked at from the right prospective, using Minorities to put out the message that if you go to Walmart and buy THEIR brand, it will keep them working and OFF the dole.
I am quite sure the producers of the ad weren’t really looking at that aspect but that is definitely the way that I like to interpret it....<: . <: . <:
Isn’t about the work that needs to get done. Rebuilding I-81 is a “pot of money” that the senator would like to redirect a chunk of to the useless-eaters in society.
“As if the “chronically unemployed” are chronically unemployed because of a lack of available jobs. They are chronically unemployed because they are chronically unemployable.”
I worked in two defense plants that got a deal on their rent by agreeing to take the majority of their employees off the welfare roles. Damn, those were some unhappy, nasty employees. Not only was there constant drug and alcohol use, but they’d pee in finished units, costing the company over 100k in direct costs each time and much more in lost bonuses. During that time, three of the employees were murdered by other blacks. In my entire career, not one of the thousands of regular, non-forced employees were murdered.
When you get right down to it, even though the buildings were essentially rent free, the cost of having nasty, unhappy employees with terrible work ethics were not worth it. It reminds me of “Project One Hundred Thousand,” where judges made felons “volunteer” for the military rather than go to jail. The cost of getting those people out of the military far exceeded any possible gain.
Democrat-run city, Democrat county...Onondaga voted for Biden in 2020. Schumer and Gillibrand fail to realize that there are other parts of the State besides the larger Democrat-run cities.
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