JOBS: Amazon to add 1,000 more jobs

Amazon has announced it will create 1,000 more jobs for its Inland Southern California fulfillment centers.

In addition to 1,000 jobs announced earlier this month, takes the hiring roster to 2,000.

Mike Lee, the community and economic development director for Moreno Valley, says he hasn’t seen this many job

s created in such a short amount of time, ever. “This is huge for our region,” Lee said.

Amazon’s announcement was made at the Moreno Valley City Conference & Recreation Center. The hiring is part of a nationwide recruitment effort by Amazon.

“What we heard was Amazon was impressed with the quality of candidates they are getting from the region,” Lee said.

Amazon, in a statement issued Wednesday by spokeswoman Ashley Robinson, said the firm is proud to continue to hire for 1,000 more newly created permanent, hourly positions at the Inland Empire fulfillment centers in Moreno Valley, Redlands and San Bernardino.

Tuesday, the company held a hiring event with about 400 applicants in Moreno Valley, and each received a contingent offer of employment at facilities there, Robinson said.

Asked to comment on the caliber of the candidates on the whole, Robinson said, “We have found an enthusiastic, dedicated and customer-obsessed workforce in the Inland Empire.”

Moreno Valley Mayor Jesse Molina called the recruitment announcement terrific news.

“Anytime a business says that it is hiring this many people it is a big deal,” Molina said. “When it’s coupled with community investment, it means all that much more.”

Thomas J. Goldsby, a business and logistics professor at Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, said in a Monday symposium for forecasters at Riverside Convention Center that “Amazon is expanding at a pace that is making Wal-Mart very, very nervous.”

Amazon has created thousands of full-time jobs in the Inland region since the first California facility opened in San Bernardino in 2012, Moreno Valley city officials said. Fulfillment centers in Redlands and Moreno Valley began shipping customer orders in 2014.

Amazon is making the news almost daily with innovations like rapid delivery and mail drops with drones, Goldsby said.

Tuesday’s hiring event was an offshoot of the Hire MoVal program and coordinated efforts with Riverside County Workforce Development Agency. Communication networks were shared. Amazon recruitment opportunities were publicized to Moreno Valley businesses.

As an added benefit to Amazon, the company qualifies for a 2 percent discount on electrical rates under the Hire MoVal program if at least 20 percent of the workforce hails from Moreno Valley. The discount rises to 4 percent if the workforce percentage is at least 40 percent.

Fielding Buck contributed to this report.

Via: http://www.pe.com/articles/amazon-771361-moreno-valley.html

Needed: Modern-Day Rosie the Riveters

Ami Rasmussen, interior assembly technician. Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice

By Surnia Khan, CEO of the Women's Foundation of California

Some of us remember Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter, her goggles, her uncanny biceps, the larger-than-life rivet gun in her lap. Most of us, however, remember a different Rosie, her red bandana, her clenched fist and her in-your-face, flexed bicep.

Though both Rosies were a propaganda tool created during WWII to recruit women to work, one thing is undeniable: these Rosies revolutionized the U.S. workforce. Between 1940 and 1945, six million women entered the workforce and, as a result, forever changed the course of our economy, politics and nation.

Today, women comprise 47 percent of our workforce and our numbers are growing. In addition to being primary caretakers for our families, women are becoming primary income-earners, too. According to the Pew Research Center, women are sole or primary breadwinners in more than 40 percent of our households. And if we want women and our families to thrive, we need to dramatically change our workforce policies and workplace conditions.

This month we have a unique opportunity to showcase how women are a critical part of our workforce and economy. Women Can Build: Re-envisioning Rosie is a photography exhibit that celebrates modern-day Rosie the Riveters and invites Los Angelenos, policymakers and the businesses community to work together to give women equal opportunities in the manufacturing industry.

The exhibit was created by Jobs to Move America to accompany a sobering study by the USC's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity.

The study titled "#WomenCanBuild: Including Women in the Resurgence of Good U.S. Manufacturing Jobs" finds that women comprise just 30 percent of the manufacturing industry workforce and that the majority are employed in lower-paying, clerical positions instead of middle class-sustaining jobs.

Furthermore, the study finds that the pay disparity is significant in the manufacturing industry: women make just 74 cents for every dollar men make.

This research is important because manufacturing jobs—and in particular transportation equipment manufacturing jobs—are poised to grow in California due to significant federal and local investments in mass transit systems, including bus and rail. In places like Los Angeles County, voters are taxing themselves to build out their transportation systems. And then there's the voter-approved, albeit highly controversial, California's high-speed rail system and all the jobs that would be needed to build it.

We know that the manufacturing industry is poised to expand and we must ensure that women are poised to enter these new jobs that will pay a living wage.

But if we look at the employment data over the last five years, the outlook is less than encouraging. Post-Great Recession, women entered low-wage and part-time jobs in great numbers and continue to be underemployed. Two-thirds of all minimum wage workers are women and nearly one in five women in California lives in poverty.

The study and the exhibit point out the elephant in the room: California must create opportunities for women to equitably participate in this manufacturing boom—and our economy.

If women are to enter traditionally male-dominated industries like manufacturing, we need to recognize and remove barriers currently in their way. One of the barriers is psychological -- we need to help women see that they can do manufacturing jobs, the way the propaganda machine of the 1940s showed women they could build planes and tanks. Hence the exhibit.

"Women might think they can't lift anything heavy, but they'd be surprised that they can do this—better than half the guys…I want to prove to my girls that they can do anything they put their minds to and commit to. I want to lead by example, to them and to other women," said Ami Rasmussen, US Army veteran, a mother of two teenage daughters and one of the fifteen Rosies featured in the exhibit.

In addition to showing women that they can indeed build as well as men, we must remove the biased, outdated and unresponsive public policies that make it difficult for women to enter male-dominated (and traditionally higher-paying) industries in the first place.

We need to find policy solutions to issues such as unequal pay for equal work, lack of affordable, reliable childcare, unregulated scheduling and lack of paid family and sick leave. A groundbreaking coalition of California women's rights and poverty advocates is tackling many of these important policy challenges at this very moment and the Women's Foundation of California is proud to be one of the members.

We hope more women, especially young women, will be motivated to enter these traditionally male jobs and earn middle class, family-supporting wages.

via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/surina-khan/needed-modernday-rosie-the-riveters_b_7337312.html

The President Proposes to Make Community College Free for Responsible Students for 2 Years

David Hudson

January 08, 2015 
06:16 PM EST

This month, the President unveiled a new proposal: Make two years of community college free for responsible students across America.

In our growing global economy, Americans need to have more knowledge and more skills to compete -- by 2020, an estimated 35 percent of job openings will require at least a bachelor's degree, and 30 percent will require some college or an associate's degree. Students should be able to get the knowledge and the skills they need without taking on decades' worth of student debt.

The numbers:

If all 50 states choose to implement the President's new community college proposal, it could:
Save a full-time community college student $3,800 in tuition per year on average
Benefit roughly 9 million students each year

Under President Obama's new proposal, students would be able to earn the first half of a bachelor's degree, or earn the technical skills needed in the workforce -- all at no cost to them.

The requirements:

What students have to do: Students must attend community college at least half-time, maintain a 2.5 GPA, and make steady progress toward completing their program.
What community colleges have to do: Community colleges will be expected to offer programs that are either 1) academic programs that fully transfer credits to local public four-year colleges and universities, or 2) occupational training programs with high graduation rates and lead to in-demand degrees and certificates. Community colleges must also adopt promising and evidence-based institutional reforms to improve student outcomes.
What the federal government has to do: Federal funding will cover three-quarters of the average cost of community college. Participating states will be expected to contribute the remaining funds necessary to eliminate the tuition for eligible students.

Expanding technical training programs:

President Obama also proposed the new American Technical Training Fund, which will expand innovative, high-quality technical training programs across the country. Specifically, the fund will award programs that:

• Have strong employer partnerships and include work-based learning opportunities
• Provide accelerated training
• Accommodate part-time work

Read the full fact sheet of the President's proposal. 

via: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/08/president-proposes-make-community-college-free-responsible-students-2-years