The unionized construction trades offer Chicagoans a proven pathway to economic security, providing workers with marketable skills, competitive wages, and full benefits. However, there are systemic barriers that have historically excluded women and people of color – particularly Black individuals – from this workforce. The result: in Cook County less than 5% of apprentices are women, and only 6% of Chicago construction workers are African Americans. Data also shows that two-thirds of minority and women apprentices drop out of union apprentice programs prior to completion.

And our communities are hurting, in part, because of these exclusionary practices. Women and people of color, under-represented in the construction trades, are overrepresented among the ranks of the city’s poor. The poverty rate for Black women in Chicago is nearly three times that of white men, and more than 40% of Chicago’s young Black men are out of school and unemployed. Unionized construction has the potential to contribute a significant number of good paying, high-quality jobs for these marginalized groups.

While billions in infrastructure and capital funding has been committed by the city, state, and federal governments, the new Trump administration has decisively rolled back federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that had asserted that the jobs created by these investments should be available to everyone. The City must stand up and pledge to make concrete efforts so that public and private dollars for construction in Chicago will be leveraged to create actual economic opportunities and family-sustaining careers for the communities most in need.