Archive for the ‘Jobs’ Category

East Contra Costa Career & Resource Fair in Pittsburg Aug. 23

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023

By Workforce Development Board of Contra Costa County & Pittsburg Adult Education Center

Get ready for the ultimate East Contra Costa Career & Resource Fair where you’ll have the chance to connect with top employers.

Join us at the East Contra Costa Career & Resource Fair on Wednesday, August 23, 2023! This in-person event is your chance to connect with local employers and explore exciting career opportunities. Located at the Pittsburg Adult Education Center1151 Stoneman Avenue in Pittsburg, this fair promises to be a valuable resource for job seekers in the area. Don’t miss out on the chance to network, learn, and potentially secure your dream job. Mark your calendars and be ready to make a great impression.

Register on Eventbrite.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Antioch Unified School District is hiring

Monday, August 7th, 2023
Paid advertisement

Email your resume to resume@antiochschools.net. For more information visit www.edjoin.org/antiochunified.

Antioch Unified School District Teacher Hiring Fair July 25

Friday, July 14th, 2023

Please join us! Current, new, and aspiring educators welcome! For more information visit www.antiochschools.net.

Antioch Recreation Dept hiring summer staff

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Antioch Senior Center hiring front desk assistants, facility attendants

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023

The Antioch Senior Center is looking for Front Desk Assistants and Facility Attendants! Visit: https://tinyurl.com/AntiochRecJobs for more information.

East Bay Park District seeking lifeguards for 2023 swim season

Tuesday, March 7th, 2023

Photo source: EBRPD

The East Bay Regional Park District is looking to hire over 50 new lifeguards for the 2023 swim season at its 12 East Bay swim facilities, which include lakes, lagoons, and swimming pools. All new lifeguard positions are seasonal, full-time positions from May through September. Anyone ages 16 and over before April 22, 2023, are encouraged to apply. Starting pay is $20.78 per hour. Applications will be accepted through March 27, 2023.

There are six lifeguard testing dates scheduled in March. Participants will be asked to swim 550 yards in under 10 minutes, carry a rescue board 50 feet, retrieve three dive rings under four to seven feet of water, tread water for two minutes using only their legs, and retrieve a 10-pound brick from underwater. There will also be a short informal interview after successful completion of the swim test on the same day.

Testing Schedule:

•    Saturday, March 11, at Buchanan Pool, Pittsburg

•    Sunday, March 12, at Granada High School Pool, Livermore

•    Saturday, March 18, at San Leandro High School Pool, San Leandro

•    Sunday, March 19, at Granada High School Pool, Livermore

•    Saturday, March 25, at Buchanan Pool, Pittsburg

•    Sunday, March 26, at Castro Valley High School Pool, Castro Valley

Participants who pass the tests will be invited to the Park District’s Lifeguard Academy beginning Saturday April 22, 2023, where they will receive paid training and certification in open water lifeguarding. The Lifeguard Academy takes place over five consecutive weekends in April and May, with the swim season beginning in late May for most facilities.

“Working as a lifeguard is one of the few ways a young adult can give back to their community and learn about public service,” said East Bay Regional Park District Aquatics Manager Pete DeQuincy. “Promoting water safety and educating park visitors on how to safely recreate in, on, and around water is paramount in what a lifeguard does.”

Lifeguards can work at any of the Park District’s swim facilities in various cities in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, such as Antioch, Concord, Livermore, Hayward, Castro Valley, Oakland, Alameda, and Berkeley.

For information and how to apply, visit www.ebparks.org/public-safety/lifeguard/jobs.

The East Bay Regional Park District is the largest regional park system in the nation, comprising 73 parks, 55 miles of shoreline, and over 1,300 miles of trails for hiking, biking, horseback riding, and environmental education. The Park District receives more than 25 million visits annually throughout Alameda and Contra Costa counties in the San Francisco Bay Area.

New cycle of paid job-training in Contra Costa that transforms lives

Saturday, February 4th, 2023

Mary Turner (left), a graduate of the WFD program at St. Vincent de Paul, hugs her mentor Gail F. (right) outside of her newly purchased home in Stockton, California. Photo: St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa

From St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa and the Workforce Development Program

A new session of the Workforce Development Program at St. Vincent de Paul is gearing up to help people in need find gainful and meaningful employment. Participants from past sessions note that the program has transformed their lives – given them the training and confidence to enter the workplace. With introductory sessions in Pittsburg, Brentwood, and Pleasant Hill – the WFD program at St. Vincent de Paul is aiming to help the most vulnerable in Contra Costa County develop the personal tools they will need to find and keep a good job. Interested participants are asked to attend 2 introductory sessions, which will take place in:

  • Pittsburg – at St. Vincent de Paul, 2210 Gladstone Drive, 2/22 & 2/27/23 from 2 – 5 pm
  • Pleasant Hill –at Christ the King Church, 195 Brandon Road, 2/23 & 2/28/23 from 10 am – 1 pm
  • Brentwood – at St. Vincent de Paul, 8890 Brentwood Blvd., 2/26 & 3/3/23 from 2 – 5 pm

The WFD program at St. Vincent de Paul is a job-training program which pairs paid on the job training at one of SVdP’s 3 thrift stores with transformative classroom instruction & 1-on-1 mentorship with dedicated community mentors to help people with barriers to employment find and maintain a good job. Compassionate community volunteers lead participants through paid classroom instruction geared toward helping them develop the interpersonal tools needed to navigate today’s working world and offer transformative 1-on-1 mentorship to help participants overcome the obstacles between them and meaningful employment. Many of the WFD program’s participants have overcome the barriers of homelessness, a criminal record, or the uncertainty of being a refugee in a foreign country.

Afghan refugee and WFD program graduate Ajmal Aria now works as the Director of Operations at Opening Doors, a Sacramento based non-profit that helps refugees acclimate to their new home.

“We were living in a small apartment in Concord, two bedrooms for the seven of us. I have a degree, but I had to support my family, so I was working for DoorDash and Uber to do what I could to feed my family,” Ajmal said. “The WFD program at SVdP gave me the breathing room I needed while making sure my family survives. The volunteers at SVdP helped me adjust to this country and find a job that truly utilizes my training and skills – and lets me provide a good income for my family.”

Today, WFD program graduate James Neitte works as a Shipping and Receiving Specialist for Lowe’s Home Improvement. A former construction worker, James found the WFD program after falling into a life of crime. At age 49 and facing multiple felony charges, he could not foresee a happy ending for himself.

“I was convinced I was going to jail for at least 10 year, I thought my story was over,” James said. “It was just so powerful to be surrounded by people who genuinely cared about seeing me succeed. No one in the program cared that I had a past, they just wanted to help me have a future. It taught me a lot. I’m really thankful for the volunteers at SVdP and for the WFD program.”

A senior citizen, Mary Turner was living in her car when she learned about the WFD program at SVdP. Dependent upon a fixed income between SSI and disability, Mary could not keep up with her rising rent. Today, a graduate from the WFD program, Mary not only works as an Advanced Medical Care Specialist with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, helping the county veterans, Mary was able to purchase her first home, and is no longer living in her car.

“I’ve lived a fairly hard life,” Mary said. “There were just certain things I never learned, because when I was young you just didn’t need to know those things to find a job. At SVdP they showed me how to do things I’ve never had to do before, like build a resume. It was a lot of hard work, but I was determined to turn my life around and they were there to help me.”

St. Vincent de Paul of Contra Costa County has provided safety-net services in the county for over 58 years, serving 100,000 people annually and distributing over $1.7 million in direct financial assistance and over $2.3 million of in-kind aid. Over 700 SVdP volunteers and a small staff lead operations in Contra Costa including the SVdP Family Resource Center in Pittsburg, 28 branches, and 3 Thrift Stores. One of the largest charitable organizations in the world, St. Vincent de Paul is an international, nonprofit, Catholic lay organization of more than 800,000 men and women who voluntarily join together to grow spiritually by offering person-to-person service to the needy and suffering in 155 countries on five continents.

Applicants are required to attend both a Part 1 and Part 2 session, at the location most convenient for them. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age. To learn more and download an application, visit svdp-cc.org. To RSVP for a session call (925) 439-5060 or email info@svdp-cc.org

Opinion: Tech workers brace for possible omnibus job-killer bill

Tuesday, November 29th, 2022

The ‘EAGLE’ Act would revise portions of the Immigration Act of 1990 allowing more foreign workers to fill U.S. tech jobs

Co-sponsored by three Congressmen currently representing or will represent Contra Costa County – Thompson, Swalwell and Garamendi

By Joe Guzzardi, Progressives for Immigration Reform

Source: U.S. Techworkers

Like the proverbial bad penny that keeps reappearing, lousy immigration bills are hard to kill off. Consider the EAGLE Act of 2022, also known as Equal Access to Green Cards for Legal Employment, or formally recognized as H.R. 3648. The newest proposed legislation is another iteration of the Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act. Although it passed the House by a 365-65 vote, eventually it stalled in Congress.

Introduced by immigration lawyer, amnesty advocate, enforcement foe and expansionist champion Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the new and the old versions of her proposed legislation both share the same ruinous-to-U.S. tech workers’ feature: the legislation would rob thousands of U.S. tech workers of access to well-paid, white-collar, high-skilled jobs in the science, technology, engineering and math fields, STEM jobs for which they are fully qualified.

Along with her like-minded congressional allies that include Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who was just elected as House Majority Whip for the 118th Congress and thus became the third highest ranking Republican in the House, Lofgren has scheduled a vote on the EAGLE Act, which has bipartisan support, when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess.

Briefly explained, the EAGLE Act would dramatically revise portions of the Immigration Act of 1990. Almost any alien who has been on the visa waiting list for at least two years with an approved petition for an employment-based green card could apply for adjustment of his status which then wouldn’t count against existing numerical caps. Stated another way, employers can sponsor a temporary foreign-born worker for an H-1B nonimmigrant visa and convert that worker to permanent by merely sponsoring him for a green card. Aliens go from temporarily present to permanent residents. With the stroke of a pen, job searches become more challenging for U.S. tech workers – Congress’ twisted idea of sound legislation.

The bill also eliminates the per-country caps for employment-based visas, which means that within about a decade Indian and Chinese nationals will receive virtually all such visas, especially the H-1B; other countries’ nationals would have an uphill climb to obtain a visa. Under current law, no countries’ nationals can comprise more than 7 percent of any visa category. This provision ensures that skilled workers from around the globe have an opportunity to come to America. The EAGLE Act, however, seeks to entirely remove all caps from employment-based visas and more than double the existing family-preference visa from 7 percent to 15 percent, a hike that would, because of family reunification, ensure significant population surges. The proposed visa cap elimination is ironic because Lofgren and the EAGLE Act’s cosponsors claim to embrace diversity, but the bill heavily favors Chinese and Indian citizens to the exclusion of most others.

Moreover, dependent children of the aliens granted the new status would be allowed to retain their legal standing, a form of amnesty, as dependents of their parents for the duration of the green card application process; they would be protected from aging out while their parents move up in the backlog. An estimated 190,000 minors would be protected.

Time was when Democrats purported to care about America’s minority workers. But their empathy toward U.S. workers is long gone, and is now redirected to foreign nationals, particularly Chinese and Indians. Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities aspire to IT jobs, too. But they’ve had little luck in obtaining those coveted STEM jobs. Pew Research found that Black workers make up 9 percent of the STEM workforce, while Hispanics also comprise about 9 percent. The low STEM representation among Blacks and Hispanics is largely unchanged from 2016.

For rational thinkers, few and far between in Congress, a push for liberalized immigration laws and amnesty in light of the border surge and its 2 million-plus encounters in 2022 is beyond the pale. But those sound-of-mind types don’t understand the congressional mindset; nothing stops its amnesty drive. And if the EAGLE Act doesn’t get Senate approval, Lofgren always has the option to attach it to a must-pass Omnibus bill. With the 118th House about to transfer into GOP hands, EAGLE Act supporters view December as their last chance to subvert U.S. tech workers.

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who writes about immigration and related social issues. Joe joined Progressives for Immigration Reform in 2018 as an analyst after a ten-year career directing media relations for Californians for Population Stabilization, where he also was a Senior Writing Fellow. A native Californian, Joe now lives in Pennsylvania. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.