A new report outlining the first two years of the massive Interstate 81 project show that a 10-year effort to hire local workers on the project has made progress, but officials say there’s more work to be done.
New York State’s major hiring goal for the 81 project is for local workers to make up 15% percent of the workforce. Deka Eysaman, president of the Urban Jobs Task Force, which put together the report, said that’s been met for the most part.
"We've been pretty steady in meeting the 15% local hire goal, give or take, because the data changes month to month, Eysaman said. "But overall, we've been successful in achieving the 15% local hire goal. And also have achieved great workforce equity outcomes in comparison to previous publicly funded infrastructure projects."
The 81 project is the biggest public works project ever in central New York. Workplace equity has been a goal in replacing an aging viaduct that essentially destroyed a black neighborhood when it was first built in the 1050s. And while Eysaman says the 15% goal has been met, the report has suggestions for the future.
"Expand the way that evaluation is done to really look at the impact on the individual. To include contractors, engage contractors in broader collaboration efforts; to convene some dedicated committees around access to childcare and minority contractor participation."
Eysaman hopes this framework can be used in other big projects in central New York.
"We think that this is a model that could be replicated," she said. "So when this project is over, we don't want to lose that, right? All of these things, these systems that have made it be so successful, they didn't exist before. And they took years to build and they've been effective, so we don't want to lose them."
