Los Angeles, CA – Thanks to the Los Angeles County Labor Federation and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) Dewayne Hulbert is getting a solid second chance at life. Hulbert spent time behind bars for both drug and robbery crimes.
[Dewayne Hulbert]: “I was out there in the streets doing ‘ things I had no business doin’, got incarcerated. I came home. Once I tried to get hired on with well-known companies, because of my felony I was rejected.
I became a little distraught, disheartened and went back to my old life.”
But he found ARC and got into an “apprentice boot camp” program to become a union apprentice in the building trades.
The Los Angeles /Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, the L.A. County Federation of Labor and Los Angeles Trade-Technical College have all teamed with ARC to run the program.
Dewayne Hulbert is in the third class of formerly incarcerated people to graduate from the apprentice boot camp. He’ll be a Plumber apprentice.
And he’s very grateful to the labor movement for helping give him a second chance at life.
[Dewayne Hulbert]: “There’s a great difference between a job and a career, OK? And working with the unions, it is the career. Something you can grow with and grow in.
And the LA Fed has been instrumental in getting me connected with the people who can get me a career in the unions.
I can’t say enough about them. Being in the union, it’s a brotherhood. It’s longevity. It’s stability. You know, it gives me a second chance on life.”
