1. Why The Workforce Investment Act Is Important To Organized Labor

• Signed into law on August 7, 1998, the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) provides increased flexibility for state and local officials to establish broad-based labor market systems using federal job training funds for adults, dislocated workers and youth. With this increased flexibility comes challenges and opportunities for organized labor. While the act did not "block grant" all training programs (as some state advocates had hoped), the law mandates coordination among a range of federal job training programs, including the Employment Service, adult education and literacy programs, welfare-to-work, vocational education and vocational rehabilitation. WIA’s goal is to provide workforce development services to employers and workers through a universally accessible, information-driven, one-stop career center system.

• There are considerable expectations among policy-makers that the new system will be more successful in helping employers find qualified workers and helping workers find better jobs, increase skills and upward mobility. In keeping with past policies under JTPA (and over the objections of the AFL-CIO), Congress determined that employers’ domination and leadership of state and local workforce boards was essential to guide the system toward more efficient training and placing workers to meet labor-market demands. Under the new law, the many partners required in the one-stop delivery system are to work in close coordination and in creative ways to achieve the performance-driven goals mandated in the legislation.

• These are high expectations for a system that, in the past, has had limited resources and limited success in moving people from poverty and unemployment to living wage jobs. Increases in budget authority for adults, dislocated workers and youth may help the system move closer to achieving the goal of universal access. However it will take partnerships among organized labor, signatory employers, government as well as community and faith-based organizations to build WIA-created labor market systems that are worker-centered and support high performing employers, family- and self-sustaining wages and strong communities.

• Although some labor provisions contained in JTPA have been weakened or eliminated, the new law provides the labor movement with opportunities to participate in program planning and operations to increase the quality of training and jobs and to make the system more accountable for its performance in serving workers and communities. Basic labor standards and protections for workers and participants have been maintained.

• The challenge of labor leadership in the new system is to develop strategies that bring labor's connections with the workplace and the community to bear in state and local decision-making... to bring labor's vision of a workforce development system that connects employment and training investments with "high road" economic development strategies that result in family-wage jobs and sustainable communities.

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