Joerell Johnson was hired to work on the Interstate 81 project in May 2022 after he finished a 10 week pre-apprenticeship program. He is part of the I-81 Local Hire Initiative program. Credit: Debadrita Sur | Central Current

Joerell Johnson was one of the 24 local city residents who graduated the apprenticeship program that led him to find steady work amid the ongoing construction on Interstate 81. 

The state Department of Transportation hired Johnson to work on the project in May 2022 after he finished a 10 week pre-apprenticeship program, which allowed him to pick out the trade he was most interested in. He chose to be an ironworker. 

“Work’s been steady,” Johnson told Central Current during an interview in November. “[I have] been working all year round for the last two years.”

Johnson, originally from Brooklyn, has lived in Syracuse for a decade. He drills holes and sets beams with drill rigs to move the project forward.

Johnson is part of the I-81 Local Hire Initiative, a program that started after the Urban Jobs Task Force of Syracuse began a public campaign to ensure equitable access to work. The program mandated at least 15% of the workforce to include Syracuse residents, especially from neighborhoods that were ravaged by the highway’s construction in the 1960s.

The Urban Jobs Task Force of Syracuse released a report today assessing the impact and outcomes of the local hire initiative. 

The group found from January 2023 through August 2025, that 14.9% of the workers were local residents with nearly 80% of the local hires being workers of color. More than 30% of the apprentices are local residents. Working on the highway project can increase access to union careers that will exist when the project finishes, advocates have said..

“Not only was it a vehicle to address everybody who may have been experiencing poverty or were underemployed or wanting to have an opportunity and a shot into this career, but also a vehicle for racial equity because of the demographic makeup of people who would experience those barriers to employment,” said Deka Eysaman, the executive director of the South Side Community Growth Foundation and the former volunteer president of the Urban Jobs Task Force of Syracuse. 

More than 50 years ago, in the mid-20th century, the 1956 Federal Highway Act made available funds for the construction of the I-81 viaduct. This 1.4-mile elevated viaduct ran through 27 blocks of the historically Black neighborhood on Syracuse’s South side, better known as the 15th Ward, devastating homes and businesses.

More than 1,300 families were displaced with their neighborhoods razed to the ground. The five-year construction project concluded in 1966.

This had long-term socioeconomic impacts on the displaced, predominantly Black residents. As they struggled to look for new places to live, they faced housing discrimination and inequality. 

Before construction started on the removal of the viaduct, the taskforce worked on a Racial Equity Impact Statement, which demonstrated that white male workers who were not Syracuse residents formed a majority of the workforce for publicly funded infrastructure projects. To ensure employment opportunities for women, people of color and Syracuse residents as well as to undo past harm, the taskforce lobbied stakeholders for local hire initiatives and advocated for a direct entry to pre-apprenticeship program via Syracuse Build that would prioritize city residents, especially those living in the shadow of the viaduct.  

The local hire initiative incentivizes contractors to employ a certain percentage of local residents to work on projects funded by public dollars to promote economic and racial equity. 

For every local hire that a contractor hired on a project, they may get back $20 or $30 an hour, Eysaman said. Contractors get $20 if the worker is a Syracuse resident or lives on the Onondaga Nation and $30 if the resident lives in the city or the nation and also experiences a barrier to employment.

Eysaman said that the program has been transformational to improve workforce equity in the construction industry, helping local residents earn over $10 million to date as well as establish long-term careers. 

“It achieved great outcomes, not only in terms of race, but also in terms of new workers, as well as locals, and creating a workforce pipeline tracking outcomes,” Eysaman said. “There’s still more to be done.”

Eysaman was part of a panel of experts discussing the local hire initiatives report, including Mayor Sharon Owens, New York State Department of Transportation Regional Director Betsy Parmley, IBEW Local 43 Business Manager Alan Marzullo and Ebony Farrow who runs the Pathways to Apprenticeship program at Syracuse Build.

Owens said that the local hire initiative was able to transform the economic abilities of the neighborhood, touting Syracuse to have set a “national model” in place.

“We’re not here to pat ourselves on the back but we are absolutely here to celebrate because the work continues,” Owens said.

While Owens did not mention Micron directly, she said that this model could be replicated by “other major initiatives in this community.”

“I got a couple on the back of my mind,” Owens said. “It is a mountain and the guts of it is there. It just needs to be tweaked for a particular project.”

While the program has shown success over the last couple of years, the report produced by the taskforce sets forth recommendations to keep up the momentum: 

  • Expand data collection by conducting surveys and interviews with employees, tracking employee retention and reassess the performance of the local-hire initiative after the completion of the project 
  • Include contractors in these collaboration efforts by tracking and publicly sharing the incentives paid to contractors and engaging them to participate in the Worksmart NY Collaborative and Big Table
  • Reestablish the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise committee as well as create a committee to increase access to childcare
  • Hire independent evaluator to inspect I-81 construction sites, and audit payroll data and contractor financial compensation
  • Use the model as a stepping stone to continue to introduce local hire initiatives for other publicly funded construction projects to further racial and economic equity

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Debadrita Sur is a multimedia journalist and Report for America corps member who reports on the I-81 project and public housing for Central Current. In 2023, Sur graduated with a master’s degree in journalism...