Suburban Job-Link Corp.
John Plunkett, President
2343 S. Kedzie Ave.
Chicago, Ill. 60623
(312) 522-8700

The mission of Suburban Job-Link is simple and direct: "To link residents of poor inner-city neighborhoods with good employment opportunities."

In Chicago, unfortunately, this fundamental concept isn't as simple as it seems. As the Chicago economist William Julius Wilson observed, the good, high-paying manufacturing jobs that lured a generation of African-American families to the cities in search of a better life have largely fled the city for the suburbs, leaving behind a pool of poor, unemployed or unemployed people -- largely blacks and Hispanics -- who are willing to work but who can't get to where the jobs are.

Suburban Job-Link seeks to change that -- and it has put together a remarkable track record over two dozen years of operation -- by helping residents of West Chicago's low-income neighborhoods find decent temporary jobs that may lead into full-time employment, AND by providing the transportation that gets them to work.

And better still, in one of those remarkable up-by-the-bootstraps propositions that seems so simply but is actually painfully rare, this organization makes enough money through its temporary-employment program to finance almost 100 percent of all its operations, including a fleet of nine express buses that whisk workers between the gritty North Lawndale neigborhood and their jobs around O'Hare International Airport around the clock.

Times have changed, John Plunkett says, since he and a group of friends emerged from the simmering political culture of the '60s to start what they then called Just Jobs Inc. on the city's North Side in 1970. At the time, Chicago was called "the city that worked," and anybody with a strong back and the desire to do so could get a job, even if it was a low-income job of long hours for low pay and ample opportunity for a worker to be cheated out of overtime or worker's compensation benefits. Plunkett's group originally sought to fight worker abuses, and it evolved as a non-profit temporary-job contract agency, operating in direct competition with profit-making job contractors who took advantage of their clients.

Over the years that followed, though, the economy changed and good jobs fled, creating a community of the '90s in which Plunkett says many residents would be more than happy to have the kind of job that was considered exploitative two decades ago. So gradually, more by accident than by conscious plan, the temporary-job agency added a van or two, then a school bus, and now runs nine sleek buses that shuttle some 450 riders a day from Lawndale to businesses around O'Hare and in the Morton Grove neighborhood north of the city at shift-change times: 7 a.m., 3 p.m., and 11 p.m., running even as late as 1 a.m. for the late shift at the Avon plant in Morton Grove, where a hard-working temporary can start at $5 an hour and soon move into a permanent job paying $10 or more. The ride costs $3.50 for a round trip that would cost $12 or more for a complicated, lengthy series of bus and train rides, if it could be done at all. During its 24 years of operation, Suburban Job-Link has found part-time work for more than 20,000 Chicagoans, and has converted those placements into full-time jobs for 5,000. It's also seeking funding to set up car pools and ride-sharing arrangements for many more workers, particularly people who have moved into permanent full-time situations; and it expects to receive city funding to set up a support facility in the O'Hare area to provide training and counseling to inner-city workers looking for jobs there.

A tight, lean operation working out of a small shopping center, Suburban Job-Link's staff includes 22 full-time employees and about 15 part-time workers, many of whom are Chicago Transit Authority supervisors "moonlighting" as drivers on Job-Link's buses. Its budget, around $7 million a year, comes almost entirely from the companies that hire its temporary workers, an income sufficient to pay them at or somewhat above the minimum wage and finance all operations, including the $500,000 annual cost of the bus service.

Industry went to the suburbs for many reasons, Plunkett says, and it isn't likely that it will ever come back to the inner city. "It isn't possible for us to go back to the '50s. We can't turn back the clock." But, he says, we accept it as commonplace for suburbanites to commute in to the city for work. Why should we be surprised at the notion of city residents commuting the other way?

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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