Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition - Los Angeles

The Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition was launched two and half years ago in the Los Angeles area to secure jobs for residents affected by the construction of the Alameda Corridor Project.

The $2.2 billion Alameda Corridor Project is designed to ship cargo from the ports of Long Beach and San Pedro to downtown Los Angeles in a matter of minutes, using a bullet train similar to those used in Japan. It's a high-speed cargo movement will cover 21 miles. In scope, the project has been likened to the Panama Canal.

The project will pass through a number of low-income communities in Los Angeles.

Concerned with past projects in the area -- like the Glen Anderson Freeway - did not result in employment gains for local residents, despite promises to that effect, community leaders, with ongoing support from the Center for Community Change, created the Jobs Coalition as part of an effort to exert some leverage on the construction process.

The Coalition went to the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, the independent agency that is overseeing the project, to ask for two things. One was a commitment to ensure that community residents would perform at least 30 percent of the work hours on the project. To make that possible, the Coalition also wanted the Authority to require the prime contactor on the project to pay for 1,000 paid pre-apprentice training slots so that community residents would have the skills to get jobs once the project got underway and not be excluded for lack of skills.

The Coalition approached the Carpenters Education Training Institute, which already operated a well respected ten-week pre-apprentice program. The Carpenters program pays participants a wage and provides them with basic math and educations skills, as well as help with physical conditioning and job readiness experience. It also provides stipends for childcare and transportations and addresses many of the other problems that keep low-income workers out of better jobs in a structured way.

After an extensive organizing and lobbying campaign that mobilized thousands of people and wide range community organizations, the Coalition got the Authority to agree to their requests.

The Authority agreed to include the Coalition's terms within the project labor agreement as well as the bid document on the design-build project. This meant that all the primary bidders and all subcontractors had to agree to them. Each of the potential prime contractors had to specify how they would comply with the hiring and training requirements.

Once the Coalition had succeeded in this, the dynamic changed. Other local unions, who had been friendly but largely uninvolved in the Coalition's organizing effort, became more interested. A proposal was developed with the Carpenters Institute and some of the other unions and marketed to the various contractors interested in bidding on the project. Eventually, all the contractors included this proposal as part of their bid.

The Carpenters Institute will provide the pre-apprentice training and the Coalition and its allied community based organizations will be responsible for recruitment and candidate assessment.

Coalition organizers expect the project to channel $40-50 million in new wages for good jobs into area neighborhoods before the project is finished. And since workers are being trained in skills that are valuable in the area's booming construction industry, these gains are likely to continue long into the future.

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