THE BRONX — Mayor Bill de Blasio took a swipe at his predecessor, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on Friday by saying he's overhauled the city's workforce development efforts to place New Yorkers in higher paying jobs.
De Blasio's plan shifts the criteria by which workforce contracts for the $17 billion the city spends on goods and services are judged from the quantity of job placement to the quality.
"The focus now is on skills development for the areas of the economy that are strong," the mayor said.
The Bloomberg Administration's workforce development policy was guided by the ideal that "any job was a good job," Small Business Services Commissioner Maria Torres-Springer said at Lehman College.
"The focus in the previous administration was on quantity versus quality," she later added.
Asked whether he thought Bloomberg did workforce development wrong, de Blasio said: "Yes."
De Blasio's workforce plan calls for companies to give priority hiring consideration to people from the city's workforce development programs and aims to train 30,000 New Yorkers for skilled jobs by tripling the investment in training to $100 million.
"These changes are all overdue — sometime between 12 and 20 years overdue," Public Advocate Letitia James said referring to the combined terms of Bloomberg and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, brushed off the criticism, saying the former mayor created Small Business Services to combine multiple dysfunctional city agencies.
"Mayor Mike Bloomberg increased job placements all across the spectrum from a measly 500 to almost 30,000 a year — even during a global financial crisis — and led the city to the highest ever number of New Yorkers with jobs," Loeser said in a statement. "We wish Mayor de Blasio well in building on our historic achievements."
De Blasio said the changes make sense given that a quarter of the city's workforce makes less than $20,000 per year and 46 percent of residents are at or near the poverty line while fast-growing, high-paying sectors such as technology can't find enough qualified workers who already live here.
Under the changes, the administration will invest $60 million annually to create bridge programs that allow low-skilled workers to enter training programs that will prepare them for entry level jobs in a growing field.
Areas include technology, construction, health care, and manufacturing.
"A lot of people are working hard but not getting the opportunities they deserve," de Blasio said. "A lot of people are trapped in jobs that don't offer a future."
De Blasio's plan received praise from labor, workforce development and business leaders.
Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City said de Blasio's "new approach" to workforce development will "better prepare New Yorkers for jobs in our city's growth industries."