Our Local Hire/Targeted Hire Campaign: General Information
Low Income families deserve more access to good local jobs in Chicago
What is Local Hire/Targeted Hire?
In general, Local Hire/Targeted Hire is an approach which attempts to increase the amount of job opportunities for community residents of a specific area – a certain state, county, city, or certain neighborhoods, in order to help those residents to obtain gainful employment and to decrease poverty in targeted areas. Local Hire/Targeted Hire can also focus on a specific population or demography in a certain geographical area. Local Hire/Targeted Hire approaches are already used in some situations, such as in development projects promoted by the City, where certain percentages of targeted populations must be recruited and/or offered jobs.
What is Working Family Solidarity pushing for in our Local Hire/Targeted Hire campaign?
Our mission is to unite low-income working families to struggle together for equitable development, and we focus primarily on jobs – workplace rights to improve jobs, creation of good jobs within Chicago, access to more good jobs by residents of disadvantaged communities/neighborhoods. We have been organizing around Local Hire/Targeted Hire to help more poor and working families in Chicago, especially on the west, southwest, and south sides, to have more opportunities to stabilize their families, resist gentrification, and have greater access to good jobs – especially jobs that are near or not far from their neighborhoods.
How would we implement Local Hire/Targeted Hire?
Our path could be that more companies adopt Local Hire/Targeted Hire policies, particularly companies in special industrial and/or commercial zones (such as Planned Manufacturing Districts/PMD’s, for example), where companies often receive tax-breaks and other incentives, yet often employ few people from the nearby area nor people who come from neighborhoods with high levels of unemployment and underemployment. We need more good local jobs!
What happens next?
We have been meeting with our members, community residents, ally organizations, elected officials, and others, to develop our next step to advance Local Hire/Targeted Hire. Options include a city-wide ordinance, an amendment/s to one or more ordinances, a resolution by the City Council, one or more Community Benefit Agreements, or a combination of these things.
want More information on our campaign to help stabilize our Chicago communities?
Kevin Johnson, Lead Organizer, Working Family Solidarity
Email: kevinj@workingfamilysolidarity.org Telephone: (847)-873-8793