Uniting unemployed youths with paid jobs in the trades
Agreement provides jobs, improves public infrastructure and drives the economy
Divaldo Miguel admits it was a struggle to make ends meet before he became a cement finisher. With only a high school education, the 29-yearold father of three cycled between periods of unemployment and stints at minimum wage jobs with no benefits. “I’m not gonna lie, it was tough,” he says. “I wanted to work, but there was nothing solid out there.”
Miguel (who goes by his last name) had considered post-secondary education, but says “I had to think of the family. When you have little kids, you need to have something in your hands.”
Even if he had been able to get a degree or diploma, he says, “there are never any guarantees what you’re taking is going to land you a job.”
Then one day two years ago, while in an Ontario Works near his Steele and Lawrence neighbourhood, Miguel found a flyer recruiting trade workers. He attended a meeting and found a place in a program intended to get at-risk populations back to work.
“They were really supportive,” he says. He worked for about a year replacing toilets and shower heads with high-efficiency models in community housing, and then applied for and was accepted to an eight-week training program as a cement worker.
“Things are good now,” says Miguel, who is currently a first-year apprentice. “I make $22 an hour and I have full benefits, which is something I really need with the family.”
What’s more, he has the union representing him “and I know my wage is only going to go higher as I put in the time and get the experience,” he says.
Miguel is a clear example of the benefits of getting disadvantaged groups in Toronto’s communities good jobs in the trades. And yet, the “inner suburbs of Toronto are home to some of the most concentrated poverty in the city with high unem- ployment rates and low wages,” says Pedro Barata, vice-president of communications and public affairs for the United Way Toronto and York Region.
The United Way identified a need for change in these communities years ago, says Barata, and implemented a Building Strong Neighbourhoods strategy that extends benefits to high-needs areas in the form of community hubs, providing everything from prenatal care to senior care.
“But there was a piece missing,” says Barata. “As we turned our atten- tion to next steps in our Building Strong Neighbourhoods strategy, we heard from residents and other stakeholders, that the community infrastructure piece was really important, but what was missing was economic opportunity — linking people with opportunities and skills development.”
That’s why United Way has become a champion of Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) — an initiative to connect local residents in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to good job opportunities created by new public infrastructure projects, such as the Eglinton Crosstown LRT Line.
The latest buzzwords in city-building circles, CBAs have the potential to make large-scale public projects do double duty in Toronto’s neighbourhoods — providing not only badly needed infrastructure, but local employment as well. The basic concept: any company bidding on a public infrastructure project must hire workers through local apprenticeship programs.
“If you’re going to have a major development that involves billions of dollars of public funds — then you want to create a triple bottom line,” explains John Cartwright, president of the Toronto and York Region Labour Council and a co-chair of the Toronto Community Benefits Network. “You want the economy to be strengthened at the same time as you’re building crucial public infrastructure. And you want people who have not in the past participated in construction, skilled trade or white collar jobs, to get a chance to share in the prosperity.”
Cartwright credits the United Way with playing a crucial supporting role in getting the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN) off the ground, as well as in ensuring people in the neighbourhoods affected by the Eglinton Crosstown know about the potential for jobs in the trades and get the help they need to prepare for apprenticeship programs.
“One of the critical factors of success is to make sure we have a bird’seye view of a young person’s journey — getting from where they are today to becoming an apprentice,” says Barata.
That meant working with Metrolinx (the Crown agency that manages and integrates road and public transport in the city) to understand what their workforce requirements would be. “Then we worked backward from that to determine how to create a pipeline to recruit and assess young people, connect them with the training and supports they need, and put them in the position to get apprenticeship training,” says Barata.
The goal, says Kevin Bryenton, vice-president of the Ironworkers International Union, is to hire somewhere between 10 and 15 per cent of the workers on the Crosstown from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. And that means letting people know there are good paying jobs in the trades and the apprenticeship system means you get paid to learn.
“We get people who go to college and pay $10,000 to get welding certification,” he says. “If they had come to the ironworkers training centre to get an apprenticeship they could have got the same thing and got paid to do it.”