CTA looks to create good jobs and racial fairness even as it grows

As any lifetime Chicago resident can tell you, our city has its fair share of problems.

But as issues like systemic racism, income inequality and the climate crisis persist, we’re getting smarter about solutions.

Last month, the Chicago Transit Authority took the first step toward crafting an agency-wide good jobs and equity policy.

The CTA’s move to create training and career pathways for workers from historically marginalized communities is proof that we don’t have to choose between tackling the infrastructure issues in our city or the racial wealth gap in our neighborhoods.

Our public dollars can build a better future for all Illinosians.

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.

As a former CTA board member, I know how important it is that the taxpayer dollars we spend on Chicago’s transit system really go the distance for riders and communities alike.

When finalized, this new policy will make sure our under-invested public resources build high-quality transit infrastructure and create much-needed jobs in our communities.

The policy will come at a crucial moment, with the agency poised to spend $2.9 billion on capital improvements over the next five years.

With this policy in place, this injection of capital investment will allow the CTA to create training and apprenticeship opportunities for people who have been historically excluded from access to good, middle-class manufacturing jobs — people of color, specifically black and Latinx people, women, formerly incarcerated people and veterans among others.

Employment is about more than just getting a job — the quality of a job and its location matters, too. The city’s historic tendency to promote job growth downtown has generally not benefited most majority black communities like mine.

With our new mayor’s broad commitment to racial equity, the CTA’s move toward a good jobs and equity policy is one concrete step toward creating high-road, living wage jobs with benefits and training for the many Chicagoans that face barriers to employment.

That’s what I call real job growth.

No one likes an empty promise, which is why the CTA should commit contractors to more transparency and accountability to our communities.

By requiring the businesses bidding for contracts to provide information about the number, type and location of jobs that will be created, the CTA can hold contractors accountable.

Bidders should also have to include details about salaries, benefits and their plan to recruit and train historically marginalized workers.

All of this adds up to more accountability to taxpayers than ever before.

The CTA is the second largest transportation agency in the country: it has tremendous power to shape the national status quo when it comes to how we spend our transit dollars.

Our communities are ready to tackle Illinois’s issues head on — and with this policy, the CTA will lead by example. Other government agencies need to follow suit and put the public back in public contracting.

Jacky Grimshaw, Hyde Park

New season, same Bears

How reassuring in this age of uncertainty. Though humanity is being stalked by killer hurricanes and a petulant leader in the White House edges us closer to a recession, we have something we can count on.

Our beloved Chicago Bears lost to the Green Bay Packers and Mr. Aaron Rodgers yet again, and now we have another quarterback controversy.

It’s nice to know that some things aren’t likely to ever change.

Bob Ory, Elgin