In Buffalo visit, U.S. labor secretary joins push against racial inequality

With U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and dozens of politicians on hand, a gathering of labor leaders, faith-based groups and advocacy organizations put forth a strategy to address racial disparities in the Western New York job market and asked for pledges of support.

Perez, a Buffalo native, obliged, telling the crowd of about 1,000 in the auditorium at Buffalo's Bennett High School on Tuesday that he has seen progress being made in addressing high unemployment in communities of color, but that it is clear there is still much work to be done in Buffalo and across the nation.

“When the Wall Street bonus pool in 2014 is $28 billion and the total amount that full-time minimum wage workers earn in the United States is barely half of that,” Perez said, “we have an economy that is unbalanced.”

Perez, who was sworn in during the summer of 2013, has been floated as a possible running mate for Hillary Clinton, should the former secretary of state win the Democratic presidential nomination, a fact that was alluded to by several speakers. And while he spent the day downplaying and deflecting questions about the reports, including at an earlier appearance at the Partnership for the Public Good’s offices in downtown Buffalo, where he discussed paid family leave, his evening speech at Bennett High School had the sort of fire and energy that is normally reserved for the campaign trail.

Perez described his encounters with struggling Americans in his years as an Obama cabinet member, receiving rounds of applause as he also recounted some of the success stories he has seen.

One story was of a woman in Los Angeles who had been in and out of the prison system, completed an apprenticeship and was hired onto a crew building light rail. Her face is now plastered on a billboard near the site, he said.

Those stories, he told the crowd, are proof that economic success is possible in any neighborhood and in any city, if the right systems and supports are put in place.

“I’m not being pie in the sky,” Perez said. “I’m telling you, I’ve seen success.”

The local coalition’s broad strategy, spearheaded by the faith-based organizing groups VOICE Buffalo and the Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope, would create training programs in the neighborhoods most in need of jobs. The strategy, laid out in a two-page press release, also called for the “soft skills” training and wraparound services like child care and transportation that many potential trainees need to make it through such programs.

Pastor James Giles, president of VOICE Buffalo, said that while training programs have long been in place, the pressures and barriers felt by people in poverty are often too much to overcome for the very people who need them most.

Giles recounted one man who his group helped gain his high school equivalency so he would qualify for a training program. After some time the man could no longer support his family, so he went back to the streets and ended up arrested, Giles said.

“There are so many challenges they cannot complete (training),” Giles said.

As each politician came to the podium to speak - Rep. Brian Higgins, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and Niagara Falls Mayor Paul Dyster among them - the moderators asked them to pledge their support for the plan, a request they all fulfilled.

But this push is just the latest in a series of proposals as advocacy groups closely monitor the progress on minority hiring in an economy that is seeing growth after decades filled mostly with decline.

In response, many politicians have returned time and again to pledges that they will do everything they can to ensure that all communities benefit from the rise in jobs.

Once again on Tuesday, Brown, who is working with the state to develop a Workforce Development Center on the city’s East Side, stood in front of the crowd and reaffirmed that pledge.

“We need to make sure that nobody’s left out and no one is left behind in the job opportunities that are coming online in the city,” he said.