Four of Indiana’s seven Black mayors gathered at IU Northwest on Wednesday to discuss the priority of advancing labor interests, particularly in the Black community.
As part of the Black Labor Week Project, Michigan City Mayor Angela Deuitch, Gary Mayor Eddie Melton, Marion Mayor Ronald Morrell, and Elkhart Mayor Rod Roberson engaged the audience for more than an hour on how to attract more minority youth to trades, working with higher education to help build those skill sets, and ensuring equal access to public and private sector jobs in their communities. The event was moderated by Dayna Bennett.
Melton said he is frustrated by the excuses that companies give when they’re challenged on why they’re not hiring residents of the Steel City.
“I’ll hear, ‘We can’t find qualified black workers’ and the one I hate most — ‘they can’t pass the drug test’,” Melton said. “How do you challenge those excuses? Well, first ‘We’ll help you find them’ (because they’re out there).”
Recently, a business approached the city about a possible tax abatement, but when Melton asked how many Gary residents were employed by them, the business responded with an underwhelming number.
“I wasn’t impressed,” he said. But rather than ending the discussion, he used it as a starting point to talk with representatives on ways the business could invest to benefit local schools and help universities deliver the needed workforce.
Roberson, who is in his second term as mayor of Elkhart, stressed the importance of cultural competence, especially in his majority-minority city.
When he entered office, he noticed many municipal employees were family members and weren’t performing at a high level.
“We felt that if we have a level playing field, we will do well,” Roberson said. “Four years later, we have more African Americans and Latinos working for the city than ever before.”
Roberson said members of the Black community will be judged on how they’re able to perform in these positions.
“I want to be the best mayor of the city of Elkhart who happens to be Black,” he said.
Deuitch, who prior to her election worked at NIPSCO and owned a consulting firm, said her own experience at a Purdue high school engineering camp and in her first internship showed her that it’s hard for youth to envision a future when they don’t see it.
“I was speaking with some students yesterday, and I told them I didn’t know what an engineer did for a living growing up,” Deuitch said. “I happened to get picked for minority engineering camp, down at Purdue West Lafayette. But I had zero clue and I think it’s my responsibility as the mayor as an African-American woman to show them options.
“I’m trying to push our kids to take … advantage of those opportunities and we just have not had an advocate to do that and I think I’m kind of the poster child for that, so I think it’s my responsibility to talk about it, as much as I can … but also to bring the unions in.”
Similar to Deuitch, Morrell, the only Republican on the panel, recognized that preparing youth for the jobs of the future should be a priority.
“One of the first things we did is I met with all of our local labor unions and I met with our local Ivy Tech campus and say, ‘What can I do to make sure our next generation is — and specifically African-Americans — getting pushed into the trades?” Morrell said. “So, we created an initiative called the Mayor’s Scholarship, in partnership with Ivy Tech and our unions. Any kid coming out of our high school gets to go to Ivy Tech for free if they’re going to study the trades.”
Black Labor Week Project founder Ephrin Jenkins said he hopes this discussion and other events in Gary this week serve as a catalyst for the labor movement.
“I want the labor movement to see the Black community as a priority, not just an entity, so they’ll say, ‘We could do that’,” Jenkins said.
