Esmerelda De La Rosa’s home in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood is surrounded by places where she would like to work. There are food processing plants and fast food manufacturing companies all around her neighborhood on the city’s Southwest Side.

Those manufacturing sites are there, at least in part, because years ago Chicago made an effort to try and keep industrial jobs within the city limits, setting up Planned Manufacturing Districts zoned specifically for industry.

But in a recent report, a workers rights group says Chicagoans like De La Rosa who live near these districts aren’t getting the benefits. Instead, the group identifies a “disturbing trend of residents being unable to find work within neighboring manufacturing districts.”

De La Rosa said she and her husband are both looking for work after years of commuting to places on the Far South Side, or even Indiana and southwest suburban Bolingbrook.

“Many of my friends and family and I are unhappy that we can’t find work in our neighborhood and that we have to travel so far away,” De La Rosa said in Spanish. “The jobs sometimes go to people from Berwyn, [Ill.,], Indiana and even Michigan.”

Now, the nonprofit Working Family Solidarity is calling on city officials to enact a local hiring policy requiring businesses in the manufacturing districts source at least 40% of their workforce from within city limits.

“There’s a lot of precedent in federal grants, city grants and how they ask people to hire,” said Leone Jose Bicchieri, executive director of Working Family Solidarity. “We were just shocked to find out that that did not include the [manufacturing districts]. Why have they been left out for decades? It’s a little bit of a mystery.”

In a statement, Peter Strazzabosco, deputy commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development, said the suggestion of adding hiring requirements to the manufacturing districts would go “beyond the scope and purpose” of the zoning code, and would require City Council approval. Strazzabasco also said the city would need to see Working Family Solidarity’s data before they could assess the conclusions in the policy brief.

Chicago has 15 Planned Manufacturing Districts. They were created more than 30 years ago to keep industry in town. These areas zoned for manufacturing — and not for residential or retail use — are all over the city, including on coveted land close to downtown.

In 2019, WBEZ took a close look at the manufacturing districts and found some of the zoned areas, like the Kinzie District near the West Loop, were thriving. Others, especially those farther from downtown, remained vacant or underdeveloped. Meanwhile, workers on Chicago’s South and West sides were facing barriers to manufacturing jobs that had left for the suburbs years ago.

“We have these planned manufacturing districts so the city can be revitalized and diversify our economy and so on, but then when you ask, ‘How will that happen?’ ” Bicchieri said.

He believes the solution is more regulation to connect businesses with the people who live in the city.

De La Rosa said a city requirement that factories hire more locally would help not just immigrants like her, but also Black workers throughout the city.

“If the authorities required that businesses hire even just 5% of workers from the nearby neighborhoods, that would be excellent,” De La Rosa said.

Esther Yoon-Ji Kang is a reporter for WBEZ’s Race, Class and Communities desk. Follow her on Twitter @estheryjkang.