Over the next five years, the city of San Jose plans to spend $1.42 billion on public construction projects.
These taxpayer-funded projects will provide critical infrastructure for San Jose’s neighborhoods. But will they create good jobs for our local communities?
Our new report — covered today in the Silicon Valley Business Journal — reveals that right now, San Jose’s public works projects are falling short in providing career opportunities to our diverse local communities:
Depending on a largely non-local workforce impacts our neighborhoods and environment. And it means that instead of generating career pathway opportunities and wages that circulate in the local area, our taxpayer dollars are flowing out the door.
To tackle these issues, communities across California and the nation are turning to a model called Community Workforce Agreements (CWAs). CWAs are a public policy tool designed to uphold workplace standards for wages, health and safety on the job while setting hiring goals that create new construction career pathways for local residents, especially young workers or those with barriers to employment.
