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Getting people back to work
Angela Blackwell
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KAI RYSSDAL: Indulge me for a moment as I fast forward the news cycle to this Friday. It'll be the first Friday of the month and as such will bring us the September unemployment report. We're coming off August's flatline -- there were no new jobs that month. Fourteen million people, give or take, are out of work -- 9.1 percent of the workforce.
Commentator Angela Blackwell makes an important point. That jobs report? It's an average.
ANGELA GLOVER BLACKWELL:
The white unemployment rate for this past August was a staggering, heart-breaking 8 percent. But what most people don't know is that black unemployment was at 8.5 percent before the recession even began.
The black community was already living in a recession long before Lehman Brothers and credit downgrades. And today, the black unemployment rate is nearly 17 percent -- it's doubled since the recession. So how do we get jobs to those who need them the most? It's the three P's -- we target the people, places and projects most neglected before and during this recession.
President Obama's call for more infrastructure spending is a great start. But we have to go deeper. Every poor community in America has two things -- lots of unemployed people and lots of decaying infrastructure.
The school down the road from you needs a new roof. Know what? Thousands of schools in poor communities need their roofs fixed, too. We can get tens of thousands of people at work doing that right now.
And that overburdened bus system so important to low-income people?
By expanding that, we can get folks building new buses, driving new buses, and riding new buses to work.
Thousands of school playgrounds and miles of cracked sidewalks can be repaired in black and Latino neighborhoods. The projects are there -- and the scale is big enough to make a real difference right now.
These kind of manageable, targeted projects have multiple benefits. They can get up and hiring fast. They can employ people from the surrounding neighborhood.
And they're manageable enough that the contracts can be won by small, local businesses -- especially minority-owned firms that are more likely to hire black and Latino workers.
Not only are these sound investments for today, but they're exactly what these communities need to compete tomorrow.
RYSSDAL: Angela Glover Blackwell is the founder and CEO of PolicyLink in Washington D.C. Send us your thoughts about what you hear on the broadcast. Click on that link that says contact.
Thank you Angela Blackwood for this very important editorial and for further drawing attention to the plight of black Americans. Even today, almost 50 years since Martin Luther King stated the words “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character†in front of the Lincoln Memorial overlooking the reflection pool at the national Mall, there are still many differences. But we cannot allow ourselves to focus all of our attention onto one race or American subculture during these trying times. Many Americans are struggling regardless of race or ethnicity.
I found the September 29, 2011 Census article that you must have referenced for your data. I have taken my own close look at this data. Using results from the 2010 census, one out of every eight (13%) Americans was black. In today's unemployment, 24% or one out of every four is black. There are two ways to look at this result. One is, why is this number is so high? The other is one of relief that the number is not higher. The reforms that have taken place in America since the 1960s have definitely had a positive impact.
One thing that should protect black Americans is actually being used against them. Minority immigrants, legal or illegal, are protected by the same minority protection laws intended to protect minority Americans. This must stop. True, an Indian or Asian in America is a minority. However if they are not an American citizen, and they hail from India, where they clearly are part of the majority ethnic culture of an entire nation, why then are they entitled to minority protection within the United States? Regardless, they are still protected by the same laws. And in doing so, they put our domestic minority population at risk of underemployment and unemployment. And from this, all America is at risk. With unemployment at 9.1% for all Americans, or 28 million out of work, protecting American jobs has never been more important.
We need to stand together as a nation, and with states such as Alabama and Georgia, and work to uphold laws enforcing legal immigration and protecting American jobs.
Ms. Blackwell’s jobs strategy is absolutely right: we need to invest in projects that provide multiple benefits like fixing schools or expanding bus transit. Studies by Duke University (see http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/climatesolutions) show the positive ripple effect of such activity for businesses across the U.S.. For example, according to Duke, if we create demand for more clean, transit buses (to avoid exacerbating air quality in all areas), we create customers and growth opportunities for manufacturers located across the U.S., from Allison Transmission in Indiana and ArvinMeritor in Troy, Michigan, a maker of bus brakes to USSC Group in Axton, PA making bus seats. Likewise for re-building our schools – high efficiency windows generate business to companies like Air Products in Allentown, PA that provide the insulating gas fills, TruSeal Technologies in Solon, Ohio that delivers the spacers used in such double paned windows, and Jeld-Wen, Inc. in Oregon, making the final window products. LED lighting is an emerging sector where the U.S. leads with firms like Cree, Inc. in Durham, NC, a company that has been adding jobs for the past three years. The Duke University data show that the immediate construction jobs are an important part of the story, but are followed by a bigger opportunity for job creation in the work required to make the windows or buses or new roofs.
Ms. Blackwell’s jobs proposals, rebuilding sidewalks, etc., would be appropriate – if this were 1936.
For many years in the 1970s and 1980s I lived in Ann Arbor’s “Old West Sideâ€. When I would go for walks I would see many sidewalks bearing the imprint of “WPA 1935†or “WPA 1936â€.
But 2011 isn’t 1935. Want to replace a sidewalk or build a new one where there isn’t one? First it takes a study to determine “needâ€. Then there’s the grant process where a bunch of suits wander around on government jets checking and double-checking the applications. Once a grant is awarded the locals have to select and vet a contractor. Once construction finally starts it’s done by a small crew with a power excavator, slip forms and concrete delivered by transit mix. Each of these jobs is more-or-less skilled.
Contrast to 1935: I don’t profess to know how the money was allocated, but I’d bet it was a lot less complicated than it is today. The straw boss could hand out shovels, rakes, hoes, hammers, saws and a level and almost everyone knew how to operate them. The most complicated job was mixing the concrete with a portable mixer – someone had to know how many shovels of sand and gravel and how many quarts of water to add for each bag of cement. You’d have a crew of maybe a dozen instead of three or four.
I won’t even speculate on the difference in “safety†rules.
Ms. Blackwell had some good ideas for creating work and jobs but her suggestion that the projects she propose hire locally is not right. While local job applicants should be encouraged, all should have an opportunity (assuming they are legally in the country) to apply for such work. I think she would think differently if projects in neighborhoods that were not majority Latino or majority Black were requried to be staffed with local labor.
