Wages connect to quality of life. . .duh!

People like me, very fortunate and privileged people like me don't worry about housing in terms of "having it" or losing it or the basic quality of it.

In fact, most of us seldom give a thought to the cost of housing as it relates to wages earned in the work place and how this connection drives the quality and reality of the rest of life.

For example, most readers at this site have never considered breaking down their monthly housing costs in terms of hourly wages required to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Take a look at the chart below that indexes housing costs to hourly wages required.

Reactions?
 

Wage injustice

Minimum wage needs to be raised because current value is LOWER than it was in the 1960s.

Seriously!

Minimum wage and cities

U.S. labor secretary urges mayors descending on Dallas to pass resolution supporting minimum wage hike

 

            

 

The U.S. Conference of Mayors kicks off tomorrow morning at 6:30 with a continental breakfast on the Continental Bridge, and will include some after-work-hours performances by the likes of Lyle Lovett, Leann Rimes, Asleep at the Wheel, Marcia Ball, Bonnie Raitt, Los Lonely Boys — even “a special performance by Kool and the Gang,” says Dallas City Hall, like there’s any other kind. And: Kareem! But as you can see from the jam-packed program, there’s also work to be done, and that includes wading through 117 resolutions — everything from creating an International Jazz Day to commemorating the 40th anniversary of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

Somewhere in the middle of Resolution No. 67, its title “In Support of Raising the Federal Minimum Wage” from its current rate of $7.25 an hour. The mayors’ resolution is asking for an increase to $10.10 an hour and says it “supports state and local government efforts to set their own minimum wages above the federal minimum wage to help its lowest paid workers keep pace with the rising cost of living.” It was submitted by 16 mayors, among them Chicago’s Rahm Emanuel, New York City’s Bill deBlasio, Seattle’s Ed Murray and Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti.

Read the entire article here. 

Wages, it's all about wages and labor's share

How do we explain how a place like Dallas, Texas, with its booming economy, continues to grow poorer and poorer at the bottom? 

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that a growing, vibrant economy--like we enjoy in Dallas--would begin to cut into the poverty rate in our city. 

But, it's just not happening. 

Why? 

Read on: 

Growth Has Been Good for Decades.
So Why Hasn’t Poverty Declined?

JUNE 4, 2014

 

campaign: nyt2014_sharetools_mkt_topstories_478QW -- 247890, creative: nyt2014_sharetools_mktg_topstories_478QW -- 373809, page: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/upshot/growth-has-been-good-for-decades-so-why-hasnt-poverty-declined.html, targetedPage: www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/upshot, position: MiddleLeftThe surest way to fight poverty is to achieve stronger economic growth. That, anyway, is a view embedded in the thinking of a lot of politicians and economists.

 

“The federal government,” Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “needs to remember that the best anti-poverty program is economic growth,” which is not so different from the argument put forth by John F. Kennedy (in a somewhat different context) that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

 

In Kennedy’s era, that had the benefit of being true. From 1959 to 1973, the nation’s economy per person grew 82 percent, and that was enough to drive the proportion of the poor population from 22 percent to 11 percent.

 

But over the last generation in the United States, that simply hasn’t happened. Growth has been pretty good, up 147 percent per capita. But rather than decline further, the poverty rate has bounced around in the 12 to 15 percent range — higher than it was even in the early 1970s. The mystery of why — and how to change that — is one of the most fundamental challenges in the nation’s fight against poverty.

 

Read the entire article here.

 

Reactions?

A Seattle Model on Wages

[The story of how Seattle put in place a plan to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour provides much to consider.  What follows is a good report from Think Progress.  Reactions invited!]

How A Millionaire, A Socialist, And Some Taco Bell Workers Brought A Living Wage To Seattle

By Alan Pyke   

When Mayor Ed Murray (D) signed a bill that gradually raises Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour on Tuesday, his choice of location seemed to reflect the complex and cooperative process that produced the document he was signing.

Rather than City Hall, Murray chose to hold the signing ceremony in Cal Anderson Park, which was the starting point for some of the many rallies that activists from groups, like 15 Now, organized over the past year. A ballplayer with a good arm would have no trouble throwing a rock from the park’s northwest corner into Dick’s Drive-In, a local Seattle burger chain. The south end of the park looks onto a multi-block stretch of bars and restaurants that has exploded with development and commerce in the past few years. Business interests like these played an essential role in crafting the aggressive-but-thoughtful law that Murray signed in that park on Tuesday.

And just a couple hundred feet west of the park sits Seattle Central Community College, a hub of Occupy Seattle activity and the trampoline from which Socialist Kshama Sawant launched her successful city council campaign.

It took a year of activist pressure, a worker-dominated election cycle that put a socialist on the city council, and several months of hard negotiating across ideological lines, but the new law will raise Seattle workers’ standard of living dramatically over the coming years. Some things about that process may be unique to Seattle, and replicating the exact recipe the city’s labor, business, and political communities used might be impossible. But interviews with some of the most prominent participants reveal that the key ingredients for a $15 minimum wage are completely portable, and could soon come to a city near you.

A Confluence Of Pressure

On the evening of May 29, 2013, Taco Bell and Burger King night shift workers walked off the job, forcing a pair of stores to close. They were joined the next morning by dozens more workers from other chain restaurants in other neighborhoods around the city, who planned to converge in the late morning — near Cal Anderson Park, of course — and march together a little more than a mile west to Denny Park for an afternoon rally. A local progressive activist called it “a powerful kickoff” for a movement that didn’t yet know what shape it would take.

Read the entire article here.

 

Another success story to celebrate!

Ocell Donaldson was first introduced and referred to CitySquare by another agency and accessed services through the Resource Center with Neighbor Support Services case management.  He originally came to CitySquare in need of financial assistance, employment, transportation and food assistance.

      In January 2011, at intake, Ocell was unemployed and at risk of homelessness.  He received a notice to vacate from his apartment complex, was about to get evicted, and in desperate need of financial rental assistance and assistance with meeting his other basic needs.

      CitySquare's Neighbor Support Services provided Ocell with:  medium term rental assistance (for 9 months),

Intensive Case Management--working on setting and completing goals, provided hygiene and toiletries, bus passes, clothing vouchers to the CitySquare Thrift Store, money management/life skills and employment workshop classes.  He also received food from the pantry and community resources. 

      Today, Ocell Donaldson is stably housed and able to pay his rent each month.  Ocell is also employed full time at DART and has maintained employment at DART for the last 7 months and now receives full benefits. 

     

      Ocell was referred to CitySquare by West Dallas Multipurpose Center when they could no longer provide Ocell with rental assistance.  CitySquare at that time had Homeless Prevention Rapid-Re-Housing (HPRP) funding, which allowed CitySquare to provide rental assistance to neighbors for up to 18 months, if needed. This funding was designed to provide assistance for a longer period of time, thus allowing a neighbor to get back on their feet, prevent homelessness, and have neighbors keep and maintain their housing by achieving housing stably.  Ocell is the perfect example of what HPRP funding was designed to do. When I first met Ocell in January 2011, he reported that he had been laid off his job in Feb. 2009 and had been struggling to find employment ever since.  Ocell’s unemployment had ran out in Oct. 2010.  

      Unable to find employment Ocell had not been able to pay the rent on his 2-bedroom room apartment.  Ocell is an honest, hard-working neighbor and has even had a poem he wrote published.  He currently is working on writing an entire book of poetry.  

      During the time he received case management through Neighbor Support services, CitySquare was able to provide Ocell with financial assistance with rent and utilities.  We were able to get his landlord to move him into a one-bedroom apartment lowering his rent.  Ocell was dedicated to find employment and provided job search logs, indicating he was willing to do whatever it took to get employed and he was willing to work anywhere.  

       I mailed Ocell a daily bus pass every week so he could attend life skills/employment and money management classes and every week he showed up.  

       During intake, Ocell stated he couldn’t get food stamps and assistance with food.  I referred Ocell to the food stamp representatives downstairs at CitySquare’s food pantry and Ocell began receiving food stamps (SNAP) benefits shortly after.  He also shopped in CitySquare’s pantry to meet his additional food needs.  

      During this time, Ocell had met goals and gained employment, however, he had also experienced set-backs by getting laid off again by his new employer.   When the HPRP grant ended, Ocell had gained employment again allowing him to pay his rent when CitySquare no longer could.  Ocell came in my office a couple of weeks ago and reported that he no longer had that job but has been employed at DART for the last 7 months and receives full benefits, and access to transportation (courtesy of DART).  Ocell is stably housed and pays his rent on time every month.  Ocell is able to meet all his basic needs and more without assistance.  He will frequently stop by CitySquare to say hi and to thank CitySquare for our partnership with him.  During his most recent visit earlier this week, he informed me that his daughter is now enrolled and attending college.

Krystal Lotspeich

Social worker at CitySquare

Out of poverty via hard work? Not so fast, buddy!

[We've always thought that the way out of poverty is hard work.  Not so fast there.  The way out of poverty is hard work at a living wage job.  Those jobs aren't nearly as available as many of us surmise.  In fact, more and more people are working hard and slipping deeper into poverty.  It's more accurate to say that the way out of poverty is two, full-time jobs!  Read the following report.  You'll see what I mean. LJ]

McDonald's Can't Figure Out How Its Workers Survive on Minimum Wage
JORDAN WEISSMANNJUL

In a financial planning guide for its workers, the company accidentally illustrates precisely how impossible it is to scrape by on a fast food paycheck.

 Well this is both embarrassing and deeply telling. In what appears to have been a gesture of goodwill gone haywire, McDonald's recently teamed up with Visa to create a financial planning site for its low-pay workforce. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the thing seems to have been literally incapable of imagining of how a fast food employee could survive on a minimum wage income.

As ThinkProgress and other outlets have reported, the site includes a sample budget that, among other laughable assumptions, presumes that workers will have a second job.

Read the entire report here. 

Low wage realities. . .

[Many of us don't understand the plight of the working poor in the United States today.  The fact is most of us work.  And, most poor people work.  As a result, millions of our neighbors don't earn enough to provide even the basics for themselves and their families.  We face this harsh reality every day here at CitySquare.  When I saw the following clip from Bill Moyers, it connected for me.  The fact is our national programs that assist the working poor turn out to be wonderful investments in our people.  And, take it from me, far too many of our people need the hand up.  Watch the program and let me know what you think.]

CitySquare Work Paths: Build4Success

CitySquare Work Paths "Build 4 Success" graduation. . .a crude snippet!

The video captures, in a very unprofessional manner, just a snippet of the most encouraging graduation exercises for CitySquare's most recent Build 4 Success class, a 14-week, 310 hour course in hard skills construction training.

This spring's class was a truly great one.

These graduates will be stepping up into living wage jobs thanks to the high-level training they received and of which they took full advantage!

What a great group!

And, again, forgive my crude video.  I just had to give you a glimpse.

As we move forward, employment training will occupy more and more of our time and resources.

Justice at work: Living wage jobs?

This Week in Poverty: The Fiscal Cliff and the Janitors Who Are Already on It

Greg Kaufmann on November 16, 2012 - 9:23 AM ET

“I really want people to understand that we all work just as hard as the next person that’s in a business suit,” says Tamika Maxwell, mother of three, describing her work as a janitor in Cincinnati, her hometown.

Along with 1,000 colleagues in the city, Maxwell hopes that current negotiations between SEIU and the city’s cleaning contractors will raise their $9.80 hourly wage—which, for annual full-time work, still leaves a family of three below the federal poverty line and relying on food stamps and Medicaid. In essence, the state ends up subsidizing corporations to continue paying people a non-living wage.

“My paycheck is the same amount as my Duke Energy bill,” says Maxwell. “And you know they don’t care—they will cut you off if you don’t have their money.”

Maxwell works part-time while also pursuing a business degree at Cincinnati State. She’s now employed byScioto Services, which recently won the contract for the Public Defender’s office building that she has cleaned for four years. The company retained Maxwell but cut back all of the janitors’ hours. Instead of working the 5–10 pm shift five days per week, Maxwell now works only four.

“That’s a big deal when you’re only making $9.80 an hour,” she says.

But perhaps what is most frustrating to Maxwell and her colleagues is that among the cleaning contractors’ clients are some of the richest companies in the world. Macy’s, for example, made $1.25 billion in profits last year; Fifth Third Bancorp took in $1.3 billion; and Kroger netted more than $600 million. In all, thirteen Fortune 1000 companies with their corporate headquarters in Cincinnati earned combined profits of nearly $17 billion in 2011. If any of them told the cleaning contractors to pay a living wage, the contractors would do so, and would pass the additional cost onto the multibillion-dollar corporations.

Indeed, Procter & Gamble instructed its cleaning contractor, Compass, that the janitors who clean its headquarters should earn a living wage. Compass then offered the workers healthcare and guaranteed full-time hours, as well as an hourly wage increase of $0.30 in the first year, $0.25 in the second year, and $0.30 in the third year. That would result in a $10.65 hourly wage in 2015, and an average annual salary of $19,863 (just over the poverty line for a family of three). In contrast, the other contractors involved in negotiations with SEIU are offering next to nothing: a wage freeze for two years and a ten-cent increase in 2015.

“We just want to be paid fairly, and treated fairly. And the big businesses need to know that we have families that we want to take care of too,” says Maxwell. “I’m struggling right now, trying to figure out what I’m going to do for my kids’ Christmas. I know the big businesses aren’t worrying about their Christmas.”

Maxwell takes her son to school every morning at 7:45, then gets on a bus to go to school herself. After classes, she is home to help her son with homework, and then takes the kids to day care at 4:30—in time to arrive at work at 5 pm for her five-hour shift.

“By the time we get home it’s bedtime,” she says. “So the only time I really get to spend with my children is on the weekends. It sucks, really. But hopefully it will all be worth it when I finish school and won’t have to struggle as hard.”

Maxwell believes that part of the reason for the plight of the janitors is that “people really don’t understand the work that we do.” In her shift, she cleans forty-three bathrooms on thirteen floors. Half of the bathrooms have two stalls, half of them are singles. That’s about sixty-five toilets a night, or thirteen an hour—about four and a half minutes per toilet. That’s hard enough to do in five hours, and of course the job involves a lot more than cleaning toilets.

“I stock the bathrooms—paper towels, tissue, soap, seat covers. I clean them all, mop them all, and dust them all. Clean the mirrors, the countertops, the sinks, the stainless steel,” she says. “It’s really hard work. I go through more gym shoes than anyone can imagine.”

With so much stress over their reduced hours, one way Maxwell and her colleagues try to make up their lost income is by working overtime to fill-in for someone who can’t make it to work. But she says collecting the extra pay can be a challenge.

“I worked two extra hours over four weeks ago and still haven’t gotten paid,” she says.

She has also been waiting for three months for Scioto to fill out a job verification form that she needs so that her family will not be cut off of food stamps.

“Every time I see the manager and ask him about it he says he’ll get it back to me or the office hasn’t sent it back yet—gives me the runaround,” says Maxwell.

A look at the Scioto website and this kind of treatment of employees—in terms of poor wages, reduced hours and irresponsibility—flies in the face of the image the company is projecting:

It is our human resource investment, however; [sic] that makes us most proud. Scioto Services associates are encouraged to become volunteers with community organizations including the local Chambers of Commerce, Project Parks, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, YMCA, Meals on Wheels, youth sports programs, regional food banks, adult literacy programs and youth tutoring, just to name a few. At Scioto Services, we’re convinced that community involvement is the best way to show our pride in who we are, what we do, and in the communities where we do business.

Another way to invest in human resources and the community is by paying workers enough so that they can eat.

In the meantime, Maxwell hopes that people will rethink their assumptions about janitors and their labor, and get involved in the fight for better pay.

“People think janitors are people who either aren’t trying hard enough, or didn’t try hard enough back when they [were younger], and that’s simply not the case,” says Maxwell. “Somebody has to do these jobs. Workers couldn’t function without our work.”

 

Spent: play the game

CitySquare team members worked with well over 50,000 different people during 2012.

The vast majority of these neighbors are not homeless.  Rather, they are people who work, but who don't earn enough to make ends meet, or they are children, disabled and/or elderly.

The challenges facing these individuals and families define our work and our mission.

During 2013, we've set an audacious goal for ourselves:  to move at least one person onto the road out of poverty or to see a person move above the poverty line every day during the year.  For a family of four success will mean the ability to earn more than $23,050 annually or $1,921 per month.  For a single individual the goal is to earn more than $11,170 a year or $931 monthly.

The benchmark of success for us is objective.  Still, there are a couple of matters that we must keep in mind as we venture out into the new year.

First, earning $1 above the dividing line doesn't really mean that a person is not facing the challenges of poverty any longer!  But $1 above the line is real progress for a family currently earning less than $20,000 per year, which is true of a sizable portion of the inner city population in Dallas.

Second, we must work hard to capture the stories and the data necessary to document success in our rather ambitious goal:  1 person every day above the poverty line during 2013.  But, we are willing to do the work to document the progress and to evaluate our effectiveness.

Most of us have no understanding of the day-to-day realities that poverty delivers to thousands and thousands of our neighbors in a city like Dallas.

To get a sense of the difficulty factor try playing a game of "SPENT" by clicking here.

Wages, families, neighborhoods and the economy

At the beginning of this school year, students from the Honors College at Abilene Christian University began their very special three year course of study that will see them focus as a group on poverty in inner city Dallas.

Already my young friends have turned up ugly evidence of what affects our economy so adversely.  These bright students discovered that in several South Dallas zip codes the average household income hovers around $10,000 annually.  Hard to imagine isn't it?

If you and/or your family had to make do with $10,000 a year, what sorts of things would impinge on your life, your decisions, your attitudes and your expectations?  Hard, but very good and fair questions for those of us who are doing so much better to ask and answer honestly.

The Dallas Morning News published a story last Sunday (9/23/2012, 4B) on a group of Wal-Mart workers who have organized against the pay practices and scale of the company's wages.  The group, Organization United for Respect at Walmart, demonstrated in Dallas' Uptown neighborhood the day before the report hit the paper.  Protesters claimed that Wal-Mart didn't pay them enough to purchase the health care plan offered by the company or to participate in the 401 (k) benefit plan.

According to Wal-Mart, the average pay to its employees in Texas is $12.31 an hour.  According to the union, the company's average hourly wage for the nation stands at $8.81.

If the company is correct about its Texas employees, a person working a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job and paid for 52 weeks (both unlikely assumptions) will earn $25,605 annually.

If the union is correct and making the same assumptions, a Wal-Mart employee will earn $18,325 annually.

What is life like for households living on wages at this level?  

How do marriages fair?

What health issues do these families face?

How is the psychological health of these wage earners?

What are neighborhoods like for communities who earn wages at this level?  

How do wages affect housing stock?

Public schools?

Code enforcement and neighborhood amenities?

What  impact do wages at this level have on local economies and on economic development?

What factors are at work here to encourage or discourage the development of retail outlets?

How is job growth in these areas?  

The realities of capitalism force on us tough questions about how we might make changes to help our working poor neighbors  These realities make a strong case for the expansion of public efforts such as the Earned Income Tax Credit program.  They also argue persuasively for increased investment in public education, early childhood programs and workforce training initiatives to enhance and diversify the skills of our labor force.

Things will not improve unless we get involved and begin to insist on the needed changes.

Working, but still poor. . .

Here at CitySquare, we've known the hard truth for a very long time.  Most of the low-income people with whom we work also work at a job, often more than one job. 

The problem is not work. 

The problem is pay and earning power. 

Consider the analysis of Bill Quigley that follows.  Take time to go to the complete text of the report.  Then, tell me what you think. 

Is it realistic to think that everyone who works should be able to sustain themselves by that work?

Working and Poor in the USA
Sunday 22 January 2012
By: Bill Quigley, The Center for Constitutional Rights

"Our nation, so richly endowed with natural resources and with a capable and industrious population, should be able to devise ways and means of insuring to all our able-bodied men and women, a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” -Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1937

Millions of people in the US work and are still poor. Here are eight points that show why the US needs to dedicate itself to making work pay.

To read the entire report click here.

>1/2 of US qualifies for affordable housing at CityWalk in Dallas

Half of all U. S. workers earned less than $26,364 in wages during 2010. 

That's the latest based on payroll taxes reported to the Social Security Administration.  To read a complete analysis of the data click here.

CityWalk, our Downtown affordable housing development here in Dallas, uses "means testing" to qualify residents according to tax credit rules that are tied to a major source of the funding used to convert the old office building to homes.  Under these rules a tenant is allowed to earn approximately $27,000 annually.  Anyone earning more than that ceiling cannot live in the building. 

So, over 1/2 of all working Americans are eligible to occupy one of our apartments!  Most people regard the building as "affordable housing" for low-income persons and families. 

This fact illustrates something about the reality and pervasiveness of poverty in our country.  It also forces some questions on us about our attitudes toward "the poor" in our society, don't you think?

Employment and low-skilled fathers

A major and growing priority here at CitySquare involves the provision of hard and soft workforce skills for our unemployed and underemployed neighbors.  Anything that relates to job readiness and job creation attracts our attention.  The following brief focuses on increasing employment options for fathers who attempt to negotiate our economy without the necessary skills to earn a living wage. 

Pathways to Employment

Finding a good job that pays a living wage and offers opportunity for advancement is a value embedded in the American Dream. Despite this promise, many Americans are unable to receive the education and training they need to obtain stable employment with good wages, or end up in low-paying jobs that provide inadequate benefits and little opportunity for advancement. Numerous community colleges, community-based organizations and government entities have developed programs that create a pathway to employment focusing on areas such as job training, job readiness, placement, retention and advancement, and workforce supports.

For a list of key research that summarizes efforts to create a pathway to employment for low-income families click here.

Dandy news for Lone Star State! (No, not an April Fool's joke)

Below you'll find  just dandy news about workers in Texas.  What's that old saying about thanking God for Mississippi?  Now those folks are thanking the good Lord for Texas! 

States with the highest percentage of workers earning at or below minimum wage:


Texas: 9.5 percent, 550,000 workers

Mississippi: 9.5 percent, 63,000

Alabama: 9.3 percent, 106,000

West Virginia: 9.3 percent, 40,000

Louisiana: 8.9 percent, 87,000

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

[Reported by the Houston Chronicle]

Read more here.

Texas tax system: fair or unfair?

Tax Fairness

Fairness of a tax system can be judged by comparing the percentage of income different households pay in taxes. In a state with a fair tax system, households with higher incomes, who can afford to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes, pay more.

In Texas, the households with the lowest incomes pay the highest percentage of their income in taxes; the households with the highest incomes pay the lowest percentage of their income in taxes. In other words, those who can least afford it pay the most. A system that takes a higher percentage of the income of a
lower-income family is called "regressive."

Texas has the fifth most regressive state and local tax system of the 50 states.

Households with the Lowest Income Pay the Highest Percentage in State and Local Taxes

[This report provided by the Center for Public Policy Priorities.  To read the entire, much more extensive report click here.]

Work--Part 3

This post is the final in a 3-part series on work and CitySquare's efforts to provide hard skills, construction training for participants.  The stories are encouraging and are presented here in "raw" case notes.

Cleto Villafana - Cleto was born in Mexico and came to Dallas, Texas when he was 15. He struggled initially with poor English skills but he wasn’t going to let anything as “minor as language” get in his way of achieving the success he sought. Cleto will be quick to tell you one of the reasons he has been able to do the things he has done is because of the support of his girlfriend (who became his wife), they met soon after he came to Dallas. With her help, he greatly improved his English and even though he did not graduate from high school, he did not stop learning. Cleto has his permanent resident card, a social security card and his driver’s license and hopes to eventually become a U. S. Citizen. He lost no time finding work when he married his girlfriend so he could support his “new” family. Things were going well until the economy slowed to a crawl and Cleto was laid off from his job and had been unable to find work. Cleto attended an orientation for Build4Success, thinking he probably didn’t have what it would take to get into the program because he lacked confidence in his ability to read and write English. He was very nervous about the TABE test but the WorkPaths staff, along with his wife, encouraged him to not let the test stop him, so Cleto gathered his courage and took the test. To his surprise he did well on the TABE test; he didn’t lack knowledge, he lacked the confidence in himself. He scored well and was selected to be a part of the program. Completing the coursework was not as easy for Cleto as for those whose native language is English but he worked hard, he’s smart and he was determined. After graduation, Cleto told the WorkPaths staff he was interested in working for a mechanical contractor. One of WorkPaths’ employer partners was interested in hiring Cleto but one of their requirements was new hires had to have a high school diploma or GED, he did not have either of these. During the B4S training, he told the WorkPaths Director he would like to enroll in GED classes and this information was transmitted to the employer. Due in large part to his strong performance during training, his dogged determination, and the recommendation from WorkPaths, the contractor agreed to hire him with the condition he get his GED after he was hired. WorkPaths arranged for him to start GED classes at CEF within a few weeks after graduation and on his own, Cleto also enrolled in ESL classes. He completed his GED with a score of 98 and the contractor is very pleased with him. Some people will allow perceived obstacles to stand in their way of achieving their goals while others will find a way to overcome challenges and succeed. Cleto is proof if you really want to do something and are willing to do what it takes to achieve your goal, you can accomplish it. “Can’t” is an English word he has chosen not to use.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City.  The fire claimed the lives of 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women in their teens and early twenties died in the terrible fire.  Public outcry resulted in numerous labor reforms, building codes and factory inspections. 

Read more here.