Alameda Corridors Pave Way for Jobs

One of the unheralded benefits of Southern California becoming the trade crossroads of the world is that it offers hundreds of local unskilled workers a chance at really good job training.

More than $3.6 billion worth of rail construction projects are now being built in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, with good jobs for construction workers, economic benefits for the region--and an innovation.

The innovation is training. Led by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, the projects are requiring their contractors to train local residents in construction and other trades. It’s a move particularly suited to Southern California, where roughly 800,000 unskilled workers are now unemployed or stuck in low-wage jobs.

The projects, testimony to the great numbers of trains moving goods through this region, were always guaranteed to bring good wages.

Federal and state funds are backing the Alameda Corridor, a $2.4-billion, 20-mile system of rail crossings and underpasses from the ports in San Pedro and Long Beach to rail yards near downtown Los Angeles that is now under construction.

Government funds also will back Alameda Corridor East, a $900-million system that will facilitate freight passage to rail yards at Colton and San Bernardino, where it will flow to the Eastern United States. And federal and state money will help finance the Placentia Corridor, a $350-million sunken rail trench that will allow 100 trains a day to run through Orange County cities without stalling other traffic.

In addition, Los Angeles International Airport will shortly commence a modernization.

All those projects have a need for laborers and hod carriers, cement masons, carpenters, electricians and other construction workers, who will earn pay and benefits starting at $27 an hour.

The workers earn that pay because federal and state financing requires that union-scale wages be paid to all workers on public projects. Such requirements are often criticized by experts for driving up costs. But if such wages also carry a requirement that the unskilled be trained, then taxpayers get their money’s worth in long-term benefits to the whole community.

And that is why the Alameda and other projects stand out. They require training for underprivileged local residents. “Jobs for local residents was a policy we followed from the very beginning,” says Gill Hicks, chief operating officer of the Alameda Transportation Authority, which governs the corridor running up Alameda Street through Compton, Lynwood, South Gate and other relatively poor cities.

For several reasons, the corridor authority couldn’t simply offer jobs so it offered jobs training. It set aside $5.5 million of a $785-million rail trench construction contract to train 1,000 workers--650 in construction trades and 350 in clerical and other jobs.

The results since work began in early 1999 have been pretty good--374 have been trained in construction, 75 have been put to work on the corridor project and 107 on other construction projects by Tutor-Saliba Co., the main contractor.

Why 182 jobs if 374 were trained? There are several reasons, including the fact that unions are slow to take newcomers because they have members who were waiting for such good jobs. Total employment on the corridor is 1,300, with 295 local workers--specially trained and otherwise--working at any one time. “We can’t shove all apprentices on the project,” is how Larry Wiggs, head of training for Tutor-Saliba, puts it.

Inevitably, there are protests. Drexel Muhammad, head of the Compton-based Young Black Contractors Assn., says that local residents were promised jobs after training and didn’t get them. (The contractor and corridor authority say no jobs were guaranteed.)

Muhammad has a contract for concrete work on the corridor and employs 19 people without formal training. His workers “learn on the job, no need for big training projects,” Muhammad says.

But the kind of instruction given by Century Housing, the Culver City firm that was given the training contract by the corridor authority, reveals the needs of many unskilled workers.

Century conducts an eight-week, eight-hour-a-day program. “We start with job readiness, including work habits and attitude. Often our trainees need to understand fractions before they can go on with carpentry and other trades. So there is supplemental instruction,” explains project manager Robert Norris Jr.

Century Housing began as a public institution related to the building of the Century Freeway, and became a private company in the business of training workers and lending to affordable housing projects.

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Workers who have gone through Century’s training describe it as very thorough and say it has given them a chance at better jobs.

But will the jobs be there after workers have had the training? The prospects look good. Some part of the three corridors will be under construction until 2008. Airport modernization could commence next year.

But taxpayer-financed construction, and opportunities for job training, don’t only occur in big projects. Job training could be a requirement of the affordable housing projects that go on all the time in Los Angeles and other counties. Such housing, the heart of Century Housing’s business, is made possible by tax credits for investors and special financing. Apartment projects in downtown Los Angeles are likewise tax-assisted.

In other words, there is a community component in the financing of affordable housing. So the community could get an extra dividend through training for unskilled workers.

The payoff in an improved work force, and opportunity for poor and unskilled workers, could be immense. The Alameda Corridor is setting an important example.

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James Flanigan can be reached at jim.flanigan@latimes.com.

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More Corridors And Jobs

Special rail crossing and underpasses are being built along Alameda Street in Los Angeles County, through El Monte, Industry, Pomona and other cities in the San Gabriel Valley and through Placentia and Anaheim in Orange County to allow great numbers of trains to carry goods from the seaports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to dispatch points in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.