Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 11:49:11 -0500 () From: Bruce Nissen To: LABOR-RAP@csf.colorado.edu Subject: Job Posting (fwd) X-X-Sender: nissenb@mailhost.fiu.edu ------------------ JOB POSTING The Calumet Project needs an Executive Director experienced in working with labor/community/religious coalitions. The Calumet Project is an outstanding 14-year-old non-profit coalition with a staff of three that works on economic justice, workers' rights, and community development issues in Northwest Indiana, focusing on Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago. The ideal candidate would have experience either as a union or community activist (preferably both); working with multi-racial organizations; strong leadership experience; fundraising; excellent writing skills; and computer literate. Salary is in the low 30s plus health insurance. Deadline for applications is October 15th. Position is open from November 9th but starting time is negotiable. Call Steven Ashby at (219) 845-5008 or email , or write 7128 Arizona Ave., Hammond IN 46323-2223. BACKGROUND ON CALUMET PROJECT PROGRAMS ** Early warning workshops train workers how to monitor their workplaces so they'll know when the CEO is making plans to shut down the plant, and will have time to strategize and organize a broad community-labor-religious Save Jobs Campaign. ** Monitoring tax abatement policy and challenging abuses where community residents receive no benefits in exchange for corporate tax subsidies. In Lake County this work is linked with our brownfield campaign, where the community is insisting that local people gain family-sustaining jobs with health care benefits, in return for use of government funds to clean up brownfields and for corporate tax cuts. In South Bend we're working for a city ordinance linking tax abatements to quality jobs. ** Holding workshops and helping unions with contract campaigns and strike solidarity to win fair union contracts. Eighty workers at 50 companies have attended Project workshops in recent years. ** Brownfields Into Jobs community organizing to create quality jobs for neighborhood residents by demanding the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields (closed plants or vacant industrial land with environmental contamination). ** In fall 1998 the Calumet Project will release a 60-page Job Training Opportunities Study, that will detail the strengths and weaknesses of school-to-work and job training programs in the region, and make policy recommendations. We can't get good jobs for our youths, nor realistically demand that 50% of jobs of new businesses go to local people, if we don't have adequate job training programs in place. ** The Calumet Project is active in the Northwest Indiana Environmental Justice Task Force, which aims to educate and assist community residents to organize on environmental justice issues in their neighborhoods. ** Jobs and environment workshops are called by the Project to initiate dialogue between the community, environmentalists, and unionists. These parties are too often in conflict, but can find common cause around saving jobs and protecting community health.. ** Interfaith work in support of God's call for dignity and justice in the workplace. For our Faith and Work-Labor Day program this year, unionists from across the region spoke to 37 religious services about faith, work, and unionism. The Calumet Project is an affiliate of the National Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice. ** In 1999 the Project will revise for Indiana distribution a Workers' Rights Manual put out by the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice. The manual will be widely distributed through clergy and congregations to low-income workers. Recent publications include the 50-page study, Report Card on Workers' Rights in Indiana. ** Teaching junior high and high school students about the history of labor and unions, an oft neglected topic. We are working with Indiana University Northwest about initiating this Labor Education in the Schools program in 1998-99. ** This fall the Cal Project will jointly sponsor with the Jesuit-led Heartland Center one or more workshops on the crisis of welfare "reform," since there is only one family-sustaining wage job for every six entry-level applicants in Lake County. ** An annual Jobs and Justice Awards Banquet that draws more than 200 people, raises $5,000 for the Project, and honors local grassroots "Calumet Community Heroes." ** An annual spring conference, "Community and Labor Organizing to Work Together," attended by labor, community, and religious activists. --part0_906732179_boundary--