Employment

AAWA

AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S AGENDA EDUCATION FOUNDATION

Stabilizing Cleveland Families

I Am Woman, Hear Me...

African American women want a Mayor who recognizes that jobs with living wages and health benefits sustain healthy Cleveland families. With the poverty rate among Blacks in Cleveland at a scandalous 56%; with the percentage of single heads of households in some Cleveland neighborhoods reaching as high as 78%; with the reality that the Black poverty rate for high school graduates is higher than the White poverty rate for high school dropouts, the Mayor must be tenacious in expanding job opportunities that provide living wages, with health benefits, and free from workforce racism and sexism.

Priority Issues for Employment: Facts

The poverty rate among Blacks in Cleveland is 56%; over half the Black population is poor.
The Black poverty rate is twice as high as the White poverty rate of 28% – which is, itself, also unacceptable.
The Black poverty rate for high school graduates is higher than the White poverty rate for high school dropouts.
While the wage gap between men and women continues to exist, there is a significant wage gap between White women and Black women.

Priority Issues for Employment: Action

African American women want a Mayor who recognizes the complex nature of unemployment, and is committed to expanding job opportunities that provide living wages, health benefits, and freedom from workplace racism and sexism.

As Mayor I pledge to:

Create an environment that is conducive to job growth, new business development and retention of existing businesses, that is essential to provide opportunities for all, especially African American Women, and to provide revenues to support desired city programs.
Develop mechanisms through which chronically poor Clevelanders, can gain living wage employment that includes health benefits.
Establish a gender pay equity program, free from racism and sexism, for employers in the City of Cleveland.
Establish apprenticeship programs to help train skilled workers, utilizing the opportunities inherent in the new construction and rehabilitation of Cleveland Municipal School buildings.
Establish and monitor the performance of aggressive, creative and productive job career centers.
Ensure labor market driven city-funded job training programs.
Establish, as the only realistic goal, living wage employment as the outcome for training at career centers, and provide, in order to meet that goal, training center supports that address the needs of women, such as child care and transportation.
Establish home-based service delivery programs that focus on mental health, job readiness, and GED assistance.
Expand programs for women re-entering the community after incarceration, addressing the mental health, substance abuse treatment, education and job training, and records expungement needs of program participants.

Last modified: 08/25/05