Craft Entry for Minorities: The Case of Project JUSTICE

Abstract

[Excerpt] Demonstrations in Chicago and Pittsburgh in 1969 focused national attention on the problem of the racial integration of the building trades. Many solutions to the problem have been suggested or tried, including efforts to create equal opportunities for blacks in apprenticeship programs. But apprenticeship programs provide only a limited means of entry to the building trades. Most construction workers who attain journeyman status do so through informal means. As Quinn Mills has observed, “Integration of the building trades will be necessarily slow if it is accomplished only through indenturing apprentices. . . . National policy regarding integration of the trades should concern itself with informal routes of entry as well as with apprenticeship.” One pioneering effort in this direction was Project JUSTICE (Journeymen Under Specific Training in Construction Employment) in Buffalo, New York. The goal of JUSTICE was to make craft journeymen of adult blacks by means of classroom instruction and on-the-job training.