For more than a decade, the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute has made significant progress in articulating a vision of a high road economy that competes in today’s global marketplace on the basis of innovation, quality and skill rather than on low wages and few benefits.
Much of the Institute’s work focuses on helping workers and employers succeed by creating sector-based high road partnerships among employers, unions, government agencies and community organizations.
Many of these partnerships go beyond offering standard worker training and re-training programs to include plant modernization and market development help for employers, targeted assistance for minority and women job-seekers, technology-testing operations and high school equivalency and English as a second language (ESL) education.
While the partnerships vary in structure, employ different strategies and have different funding sources, they share a common, broad goal: to rebuild America’s middle class and maintain the nation’s preeminent role in the global economy.
Each player brings to high road partnerships unique assets:
- Unions bring their long history of training and placing workers, their role as a voice for workers who have the greatest insight into how to make their workplaces more effective, political strength and contacts that can leverage public funds and their ability to bargain with employers for good wages, benefits, career ladders and training and education funds.
- Employers bring the ability to strengthen communities by providing good jobs to current and new workers, intimate knowledge of their industries, funds for training and the political strength that can attract public funds for innovative programs.
- Community groups bring long years of service to the most disadvantaged sectors of society, and help recruit unemployed and low-income workers and youths into training and education programs. Some bring important advocacy skills to public policy debates, and the ability to build bridges between unions and constituency groups. Community groups also contribute a long-term perspective of the needs of the community as a whole.
- Government agencies provide much-needed expertise and resources.
At their best, high road partnerships can create lasting improvements in jobs, skills and opportunities. They can achieve scale by reaching many people. They can achieve depth because of their deep roots in communities. And they can achieve broad scope by providing a range of training, modernization and economic development advantages to their participants.
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Over the next year, the Institute plans to build an online network of high road practitioners to improve and expand current high road partnerships and help create new ones.
As a first step, the Institute has launched a national discussion forum exclusively for Labor Representatives serving on approximately 600 Workforce Investment Boards so they can share their own experiences in helping get America get back on the high road.
If you are a WIB Labor Representative and want to join our discussion forum, click here to register.
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