Norton to Address First Class to Benefit from Her Pre-Apprenticeships Stimulus Funding Bill 12/14/09
Norton to Address First Class to Benefit from Her Pre-Apprenticeships Stimulus Funding Bill
December 14, 2009
WASHINGTON, DC - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton(D-DC) at noon today, will join Robert Peck, General Services Administration Commissioner of Public Building Service and Joclyn N. Williams, president, Metropolitan Washington Council, to speak to 20 students who have completed the first class pre-apprenticeship training resulting from an amendment Norton added to the stimulus bill. The graduation will be held 12-2 p.m., at the AFL-CIO building, 815 16th St., NW, in the Samuel Gompers Room. The students began the six-week pre-apprenticeship program Nov. 2 taking classes in blue print reading, tool identification, construction math, safety and health training, and job readiness. The AFL-CIO, which offers the training, also will help graduates with placement in apprenticeships and jobs.
Norton, who chairs the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency, which has jurisdiction over federal construction, included $3 million for pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs in the American Recovery and Restoration Act to make sure women, minorities and others who have not been part of the construction sector, could benefit from the jobs created by stimulus funds Norton included in the stimulus bill for renovating, and greening government buildings here in all the states and territories. Norton secured $1 billion for construction of the new Department of Homeland Security complex in Southeast now underway, and in rehabilitating 22 government buildings, 16 of them located here in the nation's capital.
Norton's pre-apprenticeship funds paved the way for 200 pre-apprenticeship positions in the District of Columbia through the Building Futures program offered with help from GSA, the U.S. Department of Labor, the United Planning Organization, Wider Opportunities for Women, the Community Services Agency, the Community Foundation, Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative, and the Marpat Foundation. The program began in October.