If you live, work or play in the South Bay, chances are you’ve recently passed by a construction site. Cranes are in the air all over Silicon Valley. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested in development. But did you ever stop to think about where all that money ends up? Does it create good jobs and careers for our communities? Does it continue to circulate in the local economy? Unfortunately, the answer is increasingly no.
Even though the construction industry offers local on-the-job training pathways through the state-registered apprenticeship system, too many developers are bypassing the apprentice system, paying wages well below the area standard and instead bringing in workers from outside the area to labor in often unsafe conditions.
Some Silicon Valley cities are starting to address this issue through public policy, spearheaded by a partnership between Working Partnerships USA, the Building Trades, the South Bay Labor Council and other community groups.
Echoing the Sunnyvale City Council’s recent vote for a local hiring and apprentice utilization program, San Jose Councilmember Ash Kalra last week introduced a proposal to develop a “Good Jobs Ordinance” for the City of San Jose. San Jose’s program would build on Sunnyvale’s model while broadening it to leverage San Jose’s workforce development agency work2future as well as the several billion dollars in public construction and projects on public land anticipated over the next few years.
At Tuesday’s City Council priority setting session, after hearing numerous community members give testimony about the need for better job and apprenticeship opportunities, nine of the 11 City Council members voted to prioritize the good jobs proposal, making it the highest scoring issue of any of the 18 nominated ideas.
The City Council also prioritized a second issue critical to local construction workers: developing policies to combat wage theft. Wage theft is the rampant, although illegal, practice of paying workers less than they are owed or not paying them at all. The Council’s high ranking of this issue will help ensure that cracking down on wage theft violators who steal millions of dollars from workers is a top priority for San Jose.
Prioritizing these issues is an important first step. The next steps will come in the next six months as the ideas are developed into policy and law.
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