Long Beach to Hire Locally First

City Council Adopts a Five-Year Plan to Prioritize Local Hiring
By Crystal Niebla, Editorial Intern

Long Beach construction workers might find it easier to find work in the next few years.

Earlier in April, the Long Beach City Council approved a five-year Project Labor Agreement with the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council that would prioritize employment for Long Beach residents in construction projects costing more than $500,000.

The agreement will work in three tiers that would prioritize Long Beach first in tier one, and then draw workers from the Los Angeles and Orange Counties in the following tiers, if necessary.

Gregory Sanders, pastor of The ROCK Christian Fellowship and president of the Long Beach Minister’s Alliance, an entity that advocates for local jobs, said that the point of it is to “exhaust” the first tier before moving on to the other two.

Under the details of tier one, the agreement will require that at least 40 percent of work hours will belong to Long Beach residents. The agreement also guarantees that 10 percent of jobs will go to the “economically distressed,” Sanders said.

The agreement, through a course of five years, will cover about $28 million annually in construction activity. These construction projects do not include the Civic Center or the Belmont Beach and Aquatics Center, which will be covered under separate agreements. In the case of the Civic Center, Long Beach leased the land to an outside developer.  Therefore, Project Labor Agreement’s rules cannot affect the Civic Center construction nor it’s local hiring policies.

Before, Long Beach would establish labor agreements for each individual project. Once the project was completed, the agreement ended.

Susanne Browne, senior lawyer at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said a successful local hire requires the Project Labor Agreement and a policy that would lay out the specific details of the hiring process. Browne, who is in the foundation’s Long Beach office, works with Long Beach Local Hire Coalition to “fine tune” policy themes.  An example of these themes may include providing formatted steps as to how contractors can hire locally.

“Every project labor agreement with local hire that’s been done by a municipality or a large entity typically has one of these local hire policies,” Browne said.

Like entities such as the Port of Long Beach or Metro, Browne said Long Beach’s construction industry needs the agreement and a local hire policy to “overlap” their themes.  She said following these guidelines will help project contractors meet and then surpass the first tier’s percentage quotas.

Local hire coalitions say that Long Beach’s new five-year agreement extends opportunities for workers.

Sanders said the local hire community wants to start reaching out to people in Long Beach City College and trade school, The group is also targeting people who don’t want to go to college. He said wants to “infuse” unions with “apprentice-qualified candidates,” where the candidates will receive training in fields such as construction and plumbing.

“The goal is that they get picked up by the union, once they go through the apprenticeship program, and then they’re in the union,” Browne said. “Then, they’re going to get dispatched to other jobs …. The goal is to create a pathway for a construction career.”

After the Project Labor Agreement was approved by the city council, a local hire policy was introduced by local hire agencies that wish to refine the effectiveness of the agreement.

Jerry  Rueb,  lead pastor at Cornerstone Church, who works closely with local hire coalitions, said that the agreement can address the long-term joblessness in Long Beach, especially for those who are disadvantaged.

“Long Beach’s unemployment numbers are well over the national average,” he said. “When you include the minorities, and when you include just the economics … there [are] many, many people that need jobs and careers, and this seems to be a logical place for people to get started.”