At the Civic Works center in Baltimore’s Bel-Air neighborhood, groups of trainees, mostly men, sit drinking coffee and sitting at attention during their early morning lessons. Classes on offer include certificates for weatherization or OSHA construction safety.

But soon they could have another field of study: broadband infrastructure.

A few months ago, Civic Works Program Director Eli Allen was approached by Paniagua’s Enterprise, a Baltimore-based communications construction company who was struggling to find workers capable of laying out fiber-optics for broadband and doing the accompanying construction work.

“They identified a significant skills gap in being able to hire workers for these critical jobs, and have seen… an increased investment in the work,” explained Allen.

Baltimore City has a digital divide, with around 40% of homes not having wireless high-speed internet access but part of bridging that gap is building out the infrastructure to support it.

Now, $2 million from the federal Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs could close some of that gap. That’s a parcel of $94 million in grants announced by the Biden administration on Tuesday that, in addition to broadband infrastructure, is meant to train workers in "high-quality jobs in renewable energy and transportation.

Over the next five years, Civic Works plans to train 260 people who face barriers to traditional employment including those returning from incarceration or facing unstable housing. They’ll be placed with half a dozen local companies to work on everything from working on the Baltimore City conduit system, to installing new broadband, said Allen.

Paniagua’s Enterprise will be one of the partners working with Civic Works to develop a curriculum for the new training because, as their Vice-President Robin Cornish-Paniagua pointed out, the components of the process are quite involved.

“Not just installing the cable, but engineering, designing it… pulling the wiring and making sure everything turns on,” said Cornish-Paniagua, adding that it’s not just the technology that requires skill but the construction of the underground piping that carries the fiber-optic through the city.

In Baltimore City and elsewhere, Cornish-Paniagua said normally they would just hire the right candidate and train them but that’s a process that typically takes months.

“Typically, when we get the job, the customer is expecting us to be ready with the people and the tools and the equipment to actually execute the job– not to train while we're doing the work,” she said.

An onslaught of broadband infrastructure development through the Federal Infrastructure and Jobs Act, among other government programs, are greenlit in Maryland. In July the state learned it would receive $238 million to address digital equity, part of that includes $30 million for Baltimore Gas and Electric to build 70 miles of fiber-optic to connect households and businesses across the state. That same month, Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. announced a partnership with Comcast to expand broadband access in Baltimore County.

With all of the broadband infrastructure programs planned around the country, including in Baltimore City and county, the US Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su said that the Biden administration recognized a need to prepare workers.

“This workforce infrastructure needs to be in place, so that [as] people are seeing opportunity in their communities, now they're getting trained for jobs. When the shovel hits the ground… the workforce is ready,” said Su in an interview with WYPR.

“Broadband is a part of the physical infrastructure of this country, it's part of the President's vision to… invest in America,” said Su. “I think of the workforce system as infrastructure too. It's the roads and bridges that connect people to the good jobs they want and need.”

Su says that nationally, the Building Pathways program will train around 20,000 people in broadband infrastructure. The funding is meant to support programs that will “create equitable pathways to good-paying infrastructure jobs” especially emphasizing training of “those from rural or historically marginalized, underserved and underrepresented communities” wrote the Department of Labor in a news release.

The partners working with Civic Works in Baltimore are:
Paniagua’s Enterprises Incorporated (PEI)
Apex Advanced Technology
Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE)
Anchor Construction Corporation
Riggs Distler
Utility Lines Construction Services (ULCS)