Manufacturers Find a Workforce Friend in Black Churches

Freedman has hosted a healthy cross-section of visitors at his plant in its 25 years in the neighborhood. Students and teachers visit for Manufacturing Day, as well as civic leaders, business groups and high-school counselors.

Neighborhood church pastors, too, have toured the plant. Freedman finds it’s important to connect with Black churches in the predominately Black neighborhood to spread the word about manufacturing careers and the jobs he’s trying to fill.

“The respect that people have for their clergy is enormous,” he says. “And [clergy] can point people in the right direction. That’s why we support it and feel it’s an important element—one of many elements.”

In cities like Chicago and Cleveland, the manufacturing community is reaching out to clergy to help meet workforce needs, and feel it’s a model that others may want to replicate. Manufacturers need workers, and people in underserved communities need jobs. Churches are a community hub where people come not just for worship but also to meet up with their neighbors and connect with services.

Getting People to Work

In Cleveland’s Union-Miles neighborhood on the Southeast Side, getting to work can take hours. About 22% of households lack even one car, according to 2020 Census data, and bus routes from Union-Miles to the suburbs or the other side of town tend to require multiple waits and transfers.

“Unfortunately, there aren’t many manufacturers left in the city of Cleveland,” says Brianna Schultz, vice president of workforce development for Manufacturing Works, a business nonprofit that trains and connects Clevelanders with manufacturing jobs. “They’re in the suburbs now.”

In Union-Miles, the poverty rate was 34.5% in 2022, and 47% of people over age 16 were not in the workforce, according to data from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

Schultz and her manufacturing colleagues know about the proximity mismatch between manufacturers and the pool of unemployed and underemployed workers in the city. In 2019, a board member of Manufacturing Works put Schultz in touch with the Rev. Aaron Phillips, who had been trying to help members of his community get jobs. Phillips is the pastor of Sure House Baptist Church in Union-Miles and director of the Cleveland Clergy Coalition, an organization of Black churches that counts “increasing employment opportunities in the African-American Community” as one of its main goals.

Schultz’s organization had never worked with clergy before, but she figured the jobs match would be pretty straightforward. “We thought, ‘Let’s bring together manufacturers who are looking for employees and people who are going through your jobs program,’” she said. “’We can do speed-dating interviews and get some folks some jobs.’

“And you know, the first thing he said was, ‘Wherever it is, it has to be close to the neighborhoods that we’re working in because a lot of people don’t have transportation.’”

The two groups brainstormed and quickly hit on an idea. Phillips had 15-passenger church vans in his parking lot that sat idle most of the week, as they were only used on Sundays and Election Day. Maybe they could use the buses to get people to work.

They applied for and received seed money for the project through the Paradox Prize, a local grant that address the paradox of “No Job, No Car, No Car, No Job.” Manufacturers signed on—Lincoln Electric, Tap Packaging, National Safety Apparel, General Die Casters—agreeing to pay half the transportation cost, with the employees paying the other half (amounting to $5-$10 per employee per ride). Church volunteers drive the vans, picking up passengers at their homes and taking them to work, training programs and job interviews. So far, more than 500 workers have benefited from the program, called Get2Work Now.

Transportation is only part of the puzzle: Through the Clergy Coalition, the Get2Work Now program also provides training in applying and interviewing for jobs. Professionals and retirees in the community (including some of the van drivers), act as sounding boards and advisors for the mentees, “from just keeping them motivated to go to work the next day, to dealing with the issues of the job, like family issues, health issues, pressures of life, mental health,” says Phillips. Mentors also are available to talk with employers.

Burned Many Times

It’s taken Freedman years to build up trust with his community, which is the second-most populous in Chicago and has one of the youngest populations—47% of residents are under age 35.“Our neighborhood has been burned by manufacturing over the years,” he says. “We had Helene Curtis, Brach’s Candy. Many different manufacturers have left, and people have long memories about that.”

In 2022, according to data from the American Community Survey, the Austin neighborhood had a 26% poverty rate, and a 15% unemployment rate among the 57% of residents over 16 who are in the workforce.