I was disgusted to read Jamie Dimon’s new initiative, the “New York Jobs CEO Council,” not because I oppose gainful employment for New Yorkers, but because Dimon completely gives a free pass to the New York education system with this program. He misses an opportunity – and ignores his responsibility – to help improve a clearly broken system.
Dimon spends most of his op-ed talking about “skills-based hiring and matching,” but completely ignores the elephant in the room: New York’s education system is failing our kids. He describes how, “The council will create sustained pathways for opportunities in the city, better aligning educational programs with skills that employers need as the demands of the labor market rapidly evolve. This will alleviate unemployment—filling currently open jobs through skills training and empowering communities for the jobs of the future.” Quite frankly, this is PR-speak nonsense. New Yorkers are bereft of a decent education system, which is strangled by public school unions, and exacerbated by the fact that Mayor de Blasio is abusively hostile to charter and religious schools, even though those schools consistently outperform public schools — especially among black and Hispanic students.
If Dimon really wanted to make a difference, he would blast de Blasio on the sub-standard New York education system, but instead, he’s joining forces with him. This is an embarrassment, a detriment of rank-and-file New Yorkers. You would think Dimon would be smart enough to know that he’s in bed with New York politicians and playing politics with regular New Yorkers, but perhaps he thinks he can get away with being so political just because he’s the CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase.