Ky. Building Trades, Civil Rights Activists Train Next Generation of Construction Workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.ibew.org/articles/12ElectricalWorker/EW1211/02.1112.html

It only took a couple years of college for 26-year-old Muhammad Al-Bilali to realize that spending four years racking up thousands of dollars in student loans wasn't for him.

"More than anything, I was looking for a skill," says the Louisville, Ky., resident. "I wasn't getting that in college." Moreover, he wasn't interested in running up debt only to end up like many others in his generation: stuck in a dead-end job he was overqualified for because it was the only work he could get. "I don't want to be in debt to somebody," he says. "And I have enough friends with master's degrees working as hostesses."


More than 30 graduates of a program to recruit nontraditional workers into the construction industry worked on the KFC Yum! Center in downtown Louisville, Ky.

Photo credit: Linda Doane


But job prospects for a young high-school graduate are pretty scarce, particularly in today's struggling economy. And for young African-Americans like Al-Bilali, the job picture is grimmer, with unemployment among African Americans under 29 more than triple the national rate.

Al-Bilali decided to leave the high rents and prices of New York City — where he went to high school — behind and moved back to his birthplace, Louisville, in hopes of finding work.

FULL story at link.