100% Minority LIUNA-Led Training Class Guarantees Jobs on Local Projects 

Richmond, Va. (October 26, 2018) -- 20 Richmond residents started a four-week long construction raining program created and led by the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) earlier this week.

At the culmination of the program, these men and women who reside in some of Richmond’s most impoverished neighborhoods will be working on jobs that offer family-supporting wages and employer-paid retirement and family health insurance plans.

The curriculum teaches various construction tasks including basic concrete, mason tending/scaffold building training, ATSSA Flagging, Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA10), and more.

Participants will either take part in constructing the Atlantic Coast Pipeline or a new Facebook data center where they will earn anywhere between 19 and 21 dollars an hour plus benefits.

With the program located at the World Overcomers Family Church, this is very much a by-the- community-for-the-community effort. LIUNA is bringing training to the residents who typically have to travel an hour or two outside the city for work.

“A lot of these men and women are working two or three jobs because each job is paying 8 dollars an hour with no benefits,” said Shannon Jones, one of the instructors of this program. “In a growing and developing city like Richmond, no one should be living like that.”

Richmond Mayor, Levar Stoney, has supported LIUNA in this effort. Through the Mayor’s Office of Workforce Development, NAACP, and local religious groups, LIUNA recruited participants for this training.

“At LIUNA, we look for ways to bring good jobs to local residents, said Dennis Martire, Vice President and Regional Manager of LIUNA Mid-Atlantic. “Richmond’s racial and economic climate has deprived Richmond’s predominantly black communities from opportunities like this and we are not going to sit back and let that continue.”

                                                                                            ###
The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Mid-Atlantic Region represents more than 40,000 working men and women predominantly in the construction industry in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, Virginia and North Carolina