It's been about five years since Steve Emmons was released from prison, and while he's tried to find jobs that would pay him enough to support him and his family, he's been maneuvering between odd jobs that pay him less than $10,000 annually.
The Gary man was ecstatic to hear about an initiative through Major Moves to train 200 pre-apprentices in a 16-week paid program that would lead directly to high-paying construction jobs throughout the region. He thought he'd finally be able to have a respectable job that paid enough to buy meals for himself, his girlfriend and her two children.
Emmons was one of the hopeful preapprenticeship applicants that filled Gary's City Hall Friday afternoon to attend a question-and-answer session designed to explain how the paid apprenticeship worked.
After listening to the officials speak for more than an hour, Emmons let out a loud groan when the politicians revealed they had made a crucial mistake: The majority of the preapprentice program would be unpaid.
"It was a mistake," said state Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary.
To the people crammed into City Hall eager to "Open the door" to a new job opportunity, a new life, as Mayor Rudy Clay described it, it was bigger than a mistake. It was the difference between going another month without paying the bills, living in anxiety, to going home to their families with a paycheck in hand.
"I'm very disappointed," said Syl Williams, a Gary resident who attended the session. "I believe they did that to get people to show up. People take it as a loss."
Rogers explained that there would be a minimum of 80 hours of training that would take at least two weeks to complete before the majority of the applicants would start making money. The training would include classes in math and reading comprehension, and applicants would have to take a three-hour exam to asses their skills before being placed in the correct training program.
After completing the classes, the preapprentices would be moved into training sessions, where they'd be paid for their work on construction sites. The end goal, Rogers said, would be long-term jobs in the building and construction trades.
The program is part of Gov. Mitch Daniels' promise to provide minority construction work as part of the Major Moves project, which takes funds from the Indiana Toll Road lease and uses them to pay workers for construction and highway maintenance.
Job seekers in Northwest Indiana were promised that the plan would bring hundreds of jobs to the region.
"The more jobs we have, the less crime we have," Clay said.