Building Bridges Project

Overview

The late Rev. Richard Bundy, The first salaried director of the Chicago Interfaith Committee on Worker Issues, began laying the groundwork for the Building Bridges project in the fall of 1998, and the first classes began in 2000. Many of the organizing campaigns we supported were led mainly by people of color, including many African American and Hispanic workers. Rev. Bundy was working to build strategic partnerships between unions organizing minority workers and key Chicago area religious bodies.

Because the trade union movement has experienced problems in fully and effectively involving men and women of color in organized labor, especially in the construction trades, building such partnerships between diverse religious bodies and unions has proved to be a very difficult task. Although the construction trades have established programs to recruit various people of color, they have not been as successful as the unions would like. With the growth of the building trades in Chicago recent years-one of the strongest sectors of the local economy even in these difficult times this is the perfect time to organize religious bodies committed to workforce development to bring low-income residents into careers in the building trades.

Building Bridges partners with the carpenters, electricians, painters, bricklayers and many other unions to place graduates into apprenticeship programs. The Project also has the official support of the Cook County Building trades council, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Mid-West AFL-CIO. These important labor organizations are committed to supporting this project and replicating it in other parts of the country.

In Chicago, we have run fifteen classes out of six congregations in Chicago's south, west, and near north sides, four classes out of two congregations in Joliet, one class out of a congregation out of Pembroke.

The Building Bridges Project is an innovative initiative of the Chicago Interfaith that organizes clergy and building trades leadership to collaborate towards two objectives:

1. increasing the communities knowledge of and access to building trades apprenticeship programs and;



2. encouraging local construction projects to use union labor that guarantees prevailing wages, family benefits and safe working conditions.

Building Bridges Project continues to successfully train individuals throughout different parts of the community to prepare to apply and take the test for various building trades construction apprenticeship programs.

Rev. Anthony Haynes has been Director of the Building Bridges Project since January 2001 to present.

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