NEWBURGH – Senator James Skoufis and Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson stood with local elected officials, members of the Workforce Development Institute, and Building and Construction Trades Union representatives, at a union facility in New Windsor, to detail the $200,000 included in the state budget for a pre-apprenticeship program in the City of Newburgh.
The funding, which Skoufis helped secure, could pay for about 50 aspiring Newburgh area constructions trades workers get into a full apprenticeship.
The senator said the program will target disadvantaged Newburgh area residents at risk, including dropouts and even those who have done time in prison.
“This type of program will go out and seek and recruit the people that I just mentioned before who need, not a handout but they need a handup and this pre-apprenticeship program will do just that,” Skoufis said.
Todd Diorio, president of the Hudson Valley Building Trades Council and business manager of Laborers’ Local 17, said the next step is to step up the outreach to contractors and municipal officials to hire locally.
“We need to make sure that we work with the municipalities around us to ensure that when projects do come out, they’re done local,” Diorio said. “City of Newburgh has an apprenticeship requirement already in their requirement for bids. I’d like to even work further on enforcing that more to guarantee we can get some of these apprentices and some of these pre-apprentices to work.”
Diorio and County Legislator James Kulisek, whose district covers much of Newburgh, have something in common. Both decided college was not for them and worked their way up, as union members in the building trades. Kulisek said those who follow the same path can have a “good good life ahead of them.”
