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WHAT TYPE OF JOBS WILL THE JOB GUARANTEE HAVE?
The proposal herein is to design the JG as a “National Care Act” that will help fill those needs gaps. With input from community groups, ideally emerging from a participatory decision making process, localities and municipalities can determine the specific jobs that will be performed under the JG along the following three strategic objectives:
a) Care for the environment;
b) Care for the community; and
c) Care for the people
Care for the Environment
A revival of FDR’s Tree Army and the formation of a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would create JG jobs in close proximity to the unemployed. Since all communities have acute environmental needs, the camp-based CCC model from the New Deal is not appropriate or desirable. Instead, jobs will be created where the workers live.
The Community Jobs Bank will include a list of monitoring programs, rehabilitation programs, and public investment programs. The jobs will tackle: soil erosion, flood control, environmental surveys, species monitoring, park maintenance and renewal, removal of invasive species, sustainable agriculture practices to address the “food desert”2 problems in the United States, support for local fisheries, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms, community and rooftop gardens, tree planting, fire and other disaster prevention measures, weatherization of homes, and composting.
Care for the Community
Communities are best rebuilt from within. Many communities throughout the United States experience urban blight, poverty, and crime. The JG can employ existing best practices to mobilize the human potential within a community to revive it and make it more resilient. Jobs can include: cleanup of vacant properties, reclamation of materials, restoration of public spaces, and other small infrastructure investments; establishment of school gardens, urban farms, co-working spaces, solar arrays, tool lending libraries, classes and programs, and community theaters; construction of playgrounds; restoration of historical sites; organization of carpooling programs, as well as recycling, reuse, and water-collection initiatives, food waste programs, and oral histories projects.
Care for the People
The JG aims to support individuals and families, filling the particular need gaps they may be facing. Projects would include: elderly care; afterschool programs; and special programs for children, new mothers, at-risk youth, veterans, former inmates, and people with disabilities. One advantage of the JG is that it also provides job opportunities to the very people benefiting from these programs. In other words, the program gives them agency. For example, the at-risk youth themselves participate in the execution of the afterschool activities that aim to benefit them. The veterans themselves can work for and benefit from different veterans’ outreach programs.
Jobs in these projects can include: organizing afterschool activities or adult skill classes in schools or local libraries; facilitating extended-day programs for school children; shadowing teachers, coaches, hospice workers and librarians to learn new skills and assist them in their duties; organizing nutrition surveys in schools; and coordinating health awareness programs for young mothers.
Other examples include organizing urban campuses, co-ops, classes and training, and apprenticeships in sustainable agriculture, and all of the above-mentioned community care jobs, which could produce a new generation of urban teachers, artists and artisans, makers, and inventors.
All of the above-mentioned tasks are already being done in one form or another. And all of them are in short supply. What is needed is more helping hands and a budget to employ them. That is the function of the JG. In other words, the JG can benefit from already-existing best practices in these areas and simply scale-up the production of these public goods and investments in human capital.
The proposal herein is to design the JG as a “National Care Act” that will help fill those needs gaps. With input from community groups, ideally emerging from a participatory decision making process, localities and municipalities can determine the specific jobs that will be performed under the JG along the following three strategic objectives:
a) Care for the environment;
b) Care for the community; and
c) Care for the people
Care for the Environment
A revival of FDR’s Tree Army and the formation of a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) would create JG jobs in close proximity to the unemployed. Since all communities have acute environmental needs, the camp-based CCC model from the New Deal is not appropriate or desirable. Instead, jobs will be created where the workers live.
The Community Jobs Bank will include a list of monitoring programs, rehabilitation programs, and public investment programs. The jobs will tackle: soil erosion, flood control, environmental surveys, species monitoring, park maintenance and renewal, removal of invasive species, sustainable agriculture practices to address the “food desert”2 problems in the United States, support for local fisheries, community supported agriculture (CSA) farms, community and rooftop gardens, tree planting, fire and other disaster prevention measures, weatherization of homes, and composting.
Care for the Community
Communities are best rebuilt from within. Many communities throughout the United States experience urban blight, poverty, and crime. The JG can employ existing best practices to mobilize the human potential within a community to revive it and make it more resilient. Jobs can include: cleanup of vacant properties, reclamation of materials, restoration of public spaces, and other small infrastructure investments; establishment of school gardens, urban farms, co-working spaces, solar arrays, tool lending libraries, classes and programs, and community theaters; construction of playgrounds; restoration of historical sites; organization of carpooling programs, as well as recycling, reuse, and water-collection initiatives, food waste programs, and oral histories projects.
Care for the People
The JG aims to support individuals and families, filling the particular need gaps they may be facing. Projects would include: elderly care; afterschool programs; and special programs for children, new mothers, at-risk youth, veterans, former inmates, and people with disabilities. One advantage of the JG is that it also provides job opportunities to the very people benefiting from these programs. In other words, the program gives them agency. For example, the at-risk youth themselves participate in the execution of the afterschool activities that aim to benefit them. The veterans themselves can work for and benefit from different veterans’ outreach programs.
Jobs in these projects can include: organizing afterschool activities or adult skill classes in schools or local libraries; facilitating extended-day programs for school children; shadowing teachers, coaches, hospice workers and librarians to learn new skills and assist them in their duties; organizing nutrition surveys in schools; and coordinating health awareness programs for young mothers.
Other examples include organizing urban campuses, co-ops, classes and training, and apprenticeships in sustainable agriculture, and all of the above-mentioned community care jobs, which could produce a new generation of urban teachers, artists and artisans, makers, and inventors.
All of the above-mentioned tasks are already being done in one form or another. And all of them are in short supply. What is needed is more helping hands and a budget to employ them. That is the function of the JG. In other words, the JG can benefit from already-existing best practices in these areas and simply scale-up the production of these public goods and investments in human capital.
