Pages tagged "work"
As Ready to Work is Set to Graduate Hundreds, COPS/Metro Presses for Hiring
[Excerpt]
COPS/Metro Alliance, the longtime coalition that advocates for working families and is in many ways responsible for the program’s existence, continues to raise concerns.
Read moreCOPS/Metro Leaders Press City Leadership on SA Ready to Work and Gun Safety
On April 30th, COPS/Metro convened 200 leaders to press Mayor Ron Nirenberg and City Manager Erik Walsh on improving accountability for San Antonio's Ready to Work program by putting jobs on the table, improving the recruitment of quality participants, and holding contractors accountable who receive money for training. (i.e. trained workers are placed in high paying jobs.)
Additionally, leaders pressed Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar and San Antonio Police Chief William McManus on funding for a gun box lock initiative in both the city and county that educate the public about locking up guns and not leaving them in unattended vehicles.
‘Jobs Committed Up Front’: COPS/Metro Presses Mayor for Greater Ready to Work Accountability, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
COPS/Metro Alliance Meeting
Ready to Work SA Earns Its Hype
[Excerpt from San Antonio Report]
U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh heaped praise on San Antonio’s city government for its expansive workforce development program, often called the largest of its kind in the country. He said he wishes the federal government could do more.
At a roundtable discussion with local industry leaders and city officials Monday, Walsh called SA Ready to Work — the city’s $230 million program aiming to train thousands of low-wage workers for middle-class careers over the next five years — innovative and exemplary for its heavy collaboration with industry leaders.....
SA Ready to Work opened for enrollment in May, though many pre-registered. In the nearly four months since then, slightly more than 5,400 applicants have signed up — nearly fulfilling what the city anticipated to be enrollment through its entire first year.
Outpacing both contractors so far is Project Quest, the jobs training nonprofit that (like SA Ready to Work) sprang out of COPS/Metro. Project Quest is managing the cases of 112 participants.
[Photo Credit: Alamo Colleges]
San Antonio’s Ready to Work Jobs Training Program Gets the National Attention Leaders Have Sought, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Labor Secretary Would Like to See Bigger Federal Investments in Ready to Work, San Antonio Report [pdf]
U.S. Secretary of Labor visits the Alamo Colleges District, Alamo Colleges District [pdf]
SA Ready to Work Should Guarantee $20 an Hour
Virginia Mata, Sonia Rodriguez and Mike Phillips -- all key leaders with COPS/Metro -- make their argument:
[Excerpt]
In 2020, COPS/Metro proposed the concept to city of San Antonio officials of a locally funded workforce development program using redirected existing dedicated taxes, then conducted a massive get-out-the-vote campaign in support. The residents of San Antonio responded with a resounding 77 percent voter approval. With the passage of this initiative, our city officials were given a golden opportunity to change the decades-long economic narrative from that of a low-wage town to a high-skill, high-wage city.
Wages matter. Our city needs to set a wage floor for employers that want to receive publicly funded highly trained program graduates at no less than $20 per hour.
Starting wages in our city for beginning workers need to be better than $15 per hour. Do we really think folks will enroll in full-time education training programs when the endgame pays what some fast-food entry-level jobs pay now? During the height of the pandemic, we heard unemployed members of our institutions tell us they didn’t want handouts, and that what they need is an opportunity and training for good jobs. Good jobs that pay a living wage and include benefits. The people of San Antonio expect wages that will change San Antonio’s economic narrative, not sustain it.
[Photo Credit: Josie Norris, San Antonio Express News]
Commentary: SA Ready to Work Should be Guaranteeing $20 Per Hour, San Antonio Express News [pdf]
Historic SA Ready to Work Program Launches with COPS/Metro Support
When the pandemic precipitated a massive unemployment crisis in 2020, COPS/Metro immediately pushed the City Council to pump $75 Million into support of displaced workers as they trained for higher paying jobs.
Leaders then engineered SA Ready to Work as a ballot initiaitve to help 15,000 more residents over the next five years, leading the San Antonio Express-News to call the workforce proposal "COPS/Metro’s baby." That fall, COPS/Metro leaders educated and delivered more than 50,000 voters to the polls, and Prop B passed with 77% support.
Even as they celebrate the launch, leaders continue to call on employers to raise the minimum wage standard for new graduates.
[Excerpts from San Antonio Report]
San Antonio’s new jobs training and placement program officially launched Monday, opening enrollment to what city leaders hope will help thousands of residents develop lifelong career skills that should immediately lead to good-paying jobs.
SA Ready to Work, a $230 million five-year program...has been cast by advocates as a monumental anti-poverty effort in the wake of the pandemic’s economic shocks that could serve as a role model for cities across the country....
COPS/Metro — a grassroots coalition of congregations, schools and unions that has long advocated for anti-poverty measures and campaigned aggressively for the program’s approval — plans to host around 500 house meetings to encourage residents to enroll in the program. Some have already occurred, said Isaiah Banta, an organizer with the group.
[Photo Credit: Scott Ball, San Antonio Report]
Massive City Job Programs Launched, Open for Enrollment, San Antonio Report [pdf]
As Historic Jobs Program Rolls Out in San Antonio, Do We Still Need It?, Texas Public Radio [pdf]
San Antonio's Ready to Work Job Training Program Begins Taking First Applicants, Texas Public Radio
Virginia Mata & Sonia Rodriguez: Halt Job Program's Slide Into Mediocrity
[Excerpt]
City staff has moved at breakneck speed by self-imposing a timeline that does not consider their need to learn more broadly what works and what does not work. This massive initiative needs a true champion to lead it now. COPS/Metro calls on Mayor Ron Nirenberg to be that champion. He is the person who can halt the drive to mediocrity and invest first in building a strong foundation for a workforce system that can deliver on the promise made to voters last year. That is why he was elected. San Antonio deserves nothing less.
Commentary: Halt Job Program's Slide Into Mediocrity, San Antonio Express News
SA Ready to Work is 'Too Big to Fail'
[Excerpt]
As San Antonio’s job training program lags and officials try to suss out the details of its next phase, a key backer worries the initiative is in trouble.
COPS/Metro, a grassroots advocacy group, aggressively lobbied city leaders to create an emergency program to help some of the thousands of people thrown out of work amid the pandemic get the skills they needed to land higher-paying jobs.
The group’s leaders later threw their weight behind Mayor Ron Nirenberg when he asked voters in November to use sales tax dollars to create an expanded program.
But months after the idea proved victorious at the polls, members of COPS/Metro have grown increasingly disillusioned with how the city’s job training efforts have played out. They feel city officials have all but ignored their concerns. The group’s leaders are disappointed in the meager number of participants who have obtained training certificates and landed jobs through the emergency program — dubbed Train for Jobs SA....
“It’s too important,” [Sonia] Rodriguez said. “This one is too big to fail.”
[Photo Credit: Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express News]
'Too Big to Fail': San Antonio's Fledgling Job Training Program Under Scrutiny, San Antonio Express-News
COPS/Metro Assembly Draws 600 Leaders Online for Accountability Session with Candidates for City Office
[Excerpt from San Antonio Express-News]
More than 600 San Antonio community members tuned in to a virtual accountability session where city politicians and candidates addressed police reform, workforce development, education and February’s power outages.
Communities Organized for Public Service and the Metro Alliance, or COPS/Metro, hosted the session Sunday in the runup for the city election May 1. Early voting starts Monday.
Nearly 40 incumbents and challengers running for mayor, city council and San Antonio Independent School District board seats joined the conversation....
COPS/Metro Assembly Draws Virtual Crowd of 600 to Quiz San Antonio Candidates, San Antonio Express-News [pdf]
Video, NOWCastSA
Solid Advice for City Manager Erik Walsh: Talk to the Nun
Back in 1992, she was an organizer for COPS/Metro Alliance when the powerful community organization designed and persuaded the City to financially back Project Quest, which early on and to this day has been recognized as one of the most successful job training programs in the country. In 2011, when Project Quest was plagued with controversy from failings due not to corruption but to incompetence, Sister Pearl was brought in to turn it around. She did and ran the organization for six years.
Now the City of San Antonio is embarking on SA: Ready to Work, a program approved by the voters last November that will spend $154 million over five or six years in an effort to train the city’s working poor for good-paying jobs that the city is now generating.
[Photo Credit: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report]
Solid Advice For Erik Walsh: Talk To The Nun, San Antonio Report [pdf]