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Economic Development Project
 Established in 2003, Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is working to bring together community, faith, environmental, and labor organizations to improve employment conditions and to advocate and mobilize for responsible economic development policy and practice in Milwaukee and Wisconsin. We are also working to promote accountability in the expenditure of economic recovery (stimulus) money and to promote new large scale federal investments in good jobs. Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods vision is equity in the development of our communities and an economy that works for all. Good Jobs understands stronger policies will only come as the result of organizing to increase political involvement in our democracy.
Please consider joining our work and helping us organize around these issues for the improvement of our community. Contact us.
In July
of 2009 Citizen Action merged with the previously independent Good Jobs
and Livable Neighborhoods. The Good Jobs coalition is now an internal
advisory committee within Citizen Action, guiding and participating in
our economic justice work. Good Jobs is also an affiliate of the Partnership for Working Families.
Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods project will be honored with “Grantee
of
the Year Award” by the Wisconsin Community Fund for our
groundbreaking responsible development work on April 29th, 2010. More
Info
Nationally Recognized Victories
Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is proud of its nationally
recognized legislative victories in Milwaukee. In 2005, Good Jobs lead a
campaign that lead to the passage of the country’s first legislatively
enacted community benefits agreement. The community benefits agreement
established job standards for all development on 16 acres of
County-owned land next to downtown. In 2009, the passage of the MORE Ordinance was the culmination of a two year
Good Jobs campaign in the City of Milwaukee to win job standards on all
publicly financed development projects in the City of $1 million or
more. This national model extends the City's Resident Preference
Program and Emerging Business Enterprise Program provisions to private
development projects seeking more than $1 million in financial
assistance from Milwaukee's taxpayers. The ordinance includes a
prevailing wage requirement as well as increased apprenticeship training
and job opportunities for residents of Milwaukee's poorest
neighborhoods. The ordinance was strongly supported by Milwaukee
Innercity Congregations allied for Hope (MICAH), the NAACP, the
Milwaukee County Labor Council, the Milwaukee Building Trades Council,
the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce, as well as many other local
organizations.
GJLN programs:
• Economic Recovery Transparency and Accountability Program
Beginning in November 2009, Citizen Action and Good Jobs entered into a
consortium with 8 other organizations to undertake a 2 year project to
track American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) investments in
Wisconsin, and work to assure that they are used to maximum benefit.
Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods is one of the leaders of the
project, working on state-wide elements, and especially leading the
Milwaukee organizing pieces.
• A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive
Good Jobs will continue its program to promote a community-centered
redevelopment plan at the former A.O. Smith/Tower Automotive industrial
site in Milwaukee’s central city. The site, which once provided over
10,000 family supporting jobs for Milwaukee residents, and helped create
unprecedented economic opportunities for Milwaukee’s African American
community, is now a blighted symbol of deindustrialization in one of the
City’s most impoverished neighborhoods. The site has iconic
significance in Milwaukee, and is remembered by many residents as a lost
source of economic vitality (many still remember that parents and other
friends and relatives worked at A.O. Smith). We believe the successful
redevelopment of this site to create family supporting jobs that are
ecologically sustainable, with real community input, can serve as a
model for redeveloping other parts of Milwaukee.
Our program will build on the successful multi year effort that led in
late 2009 to the City of Milwaukee purchasing the site and launching a
major redevelopment project that recently resulted in the decision by
Spanish train maker, Talgo to move to the site. We are working in
coalition with Midwest Environmental Advocates, Campaign Against
Violence (Milwaukee’s League of Young Voters affiliate), and the Good
Jobs coalition.
• New Federal Investments in Jobs
Good Jobs believes there in an opportunity to build support for the
crucial idea that there is a vital government role in jobs creation, and
that equal economic opportunity can only be achieved if there is a
fundamental shift in our nation’s economic policy of the magnitude of
the New Deal and the Great Society. Good Jobs is working with a new
national coalition, Jobs for America Now, to build support for another
major round of federal investments in job creation. Good Jobs work on
new federal jobs initiatives will focus on educating the public,
coalition partners, and opinion leaders about major initiatives at the
national level to increase employment or extend benefits to the
unemployed.
Partner Organizations:
The Partnership for Working Families
http://www.communitybenefits.org/
Painters and Allied Trades, District Council 7
http://www.iupatdc7.com/main/main.htm
Laborers International Union, Local 113
http://www.milwlaborers113.org/
Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope (MICAH)
http://www.micahempowers.org/
Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee
http://www.interfaithconference.org/
Sierra Club
http://wisconsin.sierraclub.org/gwg/
Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council
http://www.fairhousingwisconsin.com/
9to5 National Organization of Working Women
http://www.9to5.org/
IBEW Local 494
http://www.ibew494.com/
UFCW Local 1473
http://www.ufcw1473.org/
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