New York City’s 30 largest employers pledged to combine forces and create 100,000 jobs for low-income members of the Black, Latino and Asian communities by 2030, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday.
CEO’s from 27 of the companies, which include Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs CEO Rob Speyer, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg and Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, form a new nonprofit group called the New York CEO Jobs Council which will be led by former President of LaGuardia Community College Gail Mellow.
“Access to quality education and training for in-demand jobs is key to creating economic opportunity for youth and workers in New York,” said Mellow in a statement. “Our mission is to ensure people in New York’s most vulnerable communities can access the skills that they need to pursue promising career pathways and benefit from the city’s economic recovery.”
The council will partner with the City University of New York and the city’s Department of Education and aims to hire at least 25,000 CUNY students by feeding company pipelines with entry-level jobs, apprenticeships and work-based learning opportunities.
“It’s a wonderful pledge because it says let’s focus on coming back,” de Blasio told reporters. While the city has been able to fight back the novel coronavirus, on Monday the mayor reported that 2% of New Yorkers tested postive for the virus on Sunday, recovering from the economic downturn caused by the pandemic is another battle it still faces.
New York City’s unemployment has skyrocketed to slightly over 20 % and although Governor Andrew Cuomo extended his March eviction moratorium until Aug. 20, housing advocates say that thousands still face eviction. According to the Legal Aid Society, the initial number of homes facing eviction during the pandemic was around 400,000, a number that could increase now that Pandemic Unemployment Assistance has ended. The number of cases in housing court when the New York State Pause order went into effect could be close to 100,000.
In addition, the recently passed Tenant Safe Harbor Act only protects renters who can prove that they faced financial hardship during the coronavirus pandemic, leaving some tenants to inevitably fall through the cracks.
On Tuesday, the city also launched a tenant protection portal meant to help those who can not afford their monthly rent payments from being evicted which the mayor described as “one-stop shopping.” The portal connects renters with free legal counsel after answer a series of questions about their current housing situation.
