Missouri DOT Joins Labor and Management To Build Road Project's Diverse Craft Force

摘要

The Missouri Dept. of Transportation and a union-management group in St. Louis have embarked on a new effort set to bolster craft labor on the 535-million dollars program to rebuild lnterstate-64 in the city's downtown, and to ensure that the work force recruited and trained reflects local demographics. MoDOT is spending about 2.5 million dollars for the program, launched earlier this month. Participants say it is the first major diversity-related employment and training effort in the state. PRIDE of St. Louis inc., the region's 35-year-old labor-management group, won the contract to run the program. It involves 1.5 million dollars to train about 240 women and minority pre-apprentices for heavy-highway work, and likely for other trades. MoDOT also has committed another 1 million dollars in placement incentives for contractors. Workers will join the projected 500-person I-64 labor force, which will reconstruct 10.5 miles of the Interstate over the next four years (ENR 12/4/06 p. 16).