This has not been an academic exercise, but rather a strategy for survival. Union and community activists soon realized that it was not enough to react to downsizing and a downward wage spiral. America needed a strategy that would do more than protest. It needed one that would enable communities to build and re-build. That strategy is built on high road partnerships. The investment required to begin a high road partnership is substantial, but so are the gains. Successful high road partnerships lead to raised standards for wages and economic development systems, expanding investment in skill development, and the creation of partnerships which become major players in setting state and local policy for workforce and economic development.

Over the past two years, the AFL-CIO's Working for America Institute has played a critical role in this building by creating a network among high road practitioners and providing technical assistance f or new startups and existing partnerships.

When the Working for America Institute was launched in late 1998, the AFL-CIO urged that it go beyond providing education and training services. Working for America was created to develop strategies and programs to help unions and employers create new high-skill, high wage jobs through coordinated economic development both at regional and sectoral levels.

Turning Off the Road To Nowhere

High road partnerships originated when people and organizations began to understand that the low road—with its low-skill, low-pay and benefit, dead-end jobs—was bringing many of America's communities to their knees. They knew that this was not the road for their communities, their industries, their neighbors, families and their children.

Over the last two decades, in too many communities wages have fallen and families now struggle to survive where once they could build a future. That's because employers have headed down the low road, a road built on a very dangerous foundation. Throughout the country, the same patterns of low road development occur, with the same consequences for workers and their families. There is, for instance:

• Economic uncertainty. Industries move without warning, and a growing trend toward globalization and new technology leave communities without control or influence.
• Failure to invest. Employers have pulled back from investing in training, resulting in lower skills and incomes for most workers.
• A race to the bottom. Companies are competing largely by cutting prices and wages.
• A growing social divide. A few people at the top of the economic ladder are doing well, but for too many the American dream is slipping away.

If some employers see the low road as one to prosperity, they can only be successful in the very short run. Weakened workers and communities cannot contribute to growth, to technological sophistication, or to social stability—all important components of true prosperity. Other, more far-seeing employers recognize that success truly does depend on a skilled workforce, and on stability and good jobs within communities everywhere.

It Doesn't Have To Be This Way

Economic rules are written by people, not by nature, and can be changed by people. It takes work and cooperation, to be sure, but the experience of high road partners is that the results are worth it.

When communities use the right tools, the resulting high road has room for everyone and all parts of the economy. Unlike some other strategies, high road development does not just benefit the already highly skilled and highly paid, but all sectors, from entry-level on up. The benefits accrue not only to the workers, but to the entire community. When high road goals are met:

• Companies compete and succeed by relying on quality, innovation and value, not simply by cutting costs.
• Everyone in the community gains access to education and training.
• More people begin to rise in meaningful careers.
• The entire community participates in molding the region's economy, and ensures that the economy includes jobs with futures and living wages.
• Opportunity and income are more fairly distributed, reducing social inequalities and social tensions.

But, the high road doesn't build itself. It requires an entire community working together to change direction from low road to high road. And frequently, the impetus for change must come from those most directly affected—workers, their families, and their unions.

America's unions have the capacity to change the road, and they can learn to use that capacity. America's union movement has the experience, resources and, above all, the need to move beyond its role in protecting existing jobs and worker rights. Indeed, unions must get entrenched in economic development; otherwise the retention and creation of jobs is left almost solely to corporations, to government and to the mythical free market. Since workers have seen the results of that kind of development, their unions must pitch in to build the high road.

The Right Tools

To begin building, workers and unions, as well as communities and employers, must acquire the tools to build effective high road partnerships. These tools include skills, networks, goals and planning capacity. Many have used these tools, but many more need to learn where to obtain them and how to use them. When union and community leaders ask how to begin building high road partnerships, we now know some of the answers. For instance, we need to determine:

• What's going on in our communities and industries. What jobs have been lost. Where are jobs being created. Are they good or bad jobs?
• How to plan strategically. How to ally the major stakeholders—unions, community groups and high road employers—to change our economic environment.
• How to bring the broader community of working families into the high road partnership.
• How to use government programs, such as the Workforce Investment Act, and influence education and training systems governing youth and adult learners, to increase labor's ability to affect workers, jobs and markets in our communities and industries.

It is this last point which is absolutely critical to high road success. Despite the calls for smaller government, the public sector still has, through control of the education and legal systems, enormous authority over how the economic system develops. So, it is in this arena that unions must maximize their own influence.

There are two challenges. One is to gain control of the tools themselves, through influence over how public funds are spent. For instance, what board determines how job placement and training programs are to allocate their budgets? That's where unions must be.

But in other, less direct, areas, unions also have a role. Various other boards decide on educational goals, on scholastic and vocational standards for programs, on whether and how to grant credit for continuing educational programs. These, too, determine how the money is spent and what it is that workers will learn. Employers can, for instance, pressure boards to teach and accredit low-wage jobs, or they can join unions on the high road. The direction that the road takes is often determined years before the building begins.

Other sections of the high road supply workers and adult learners accreditation for skill, knowledge and further education, and still others give youth the necessary education and training for high-skills, high-wage jobs. Unions have to actively fight to see that the high road reaches those who need it most. In order to see that the road truly pays off, unions need to participate directly in the design and delivery of effective training, education, and job placement services.

Just how to attain this influence often depends on the quality of local politics. But in general, it means gaining power through political activity and participation. In short, unions must devote themselves to:

• Recruiting and training labor representatives to state and local Workforce Investment Boards.
• Developing and implementing language that supports union and community agendas, such as creating good jobs—not just any jobs.
• Connecting labor representatives on boards to each other and to labor federations through internal committee structures and ongoing meetings.
• Engaging directly in the provision of training, education, placement and other services to youth, workers and employers.

Taking Action

Unfortunately, acquiring these tools and this knowledge is not as simple as reading a building plan or following a pattern. Potential partners, and those part way along the road, need to build on the experiences of those who have already moved farther along the high road. Many of these are complex and difficult, although necessary and rewarding.

Take, for instance, the critical area of strategic research. Through strategic research, action-oriented partnerships can better understand where their economy is today, and devise actions to address the problems. Unions—acting on their own or in partnership with community allies or employers—can find out which industries are growing and which are shrinking, where the good jobs are, what are the training systems to fill those good jobs, and how to shape incentives to expand the good jobs.

But even with research in hand, partnerships need money to begin building. Today, over $20 billion in public and philanthropic funding is available for high road initiatives, but few union and community leaders know and take advantage of the full range of resources. Each funding stream, from economic development funding in Department of Commerce, to Pell Grants from the Department of Education, to state funds, to foundation funds, to Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, has its own allowable activities, purposes and procedures. And union and community leaders must learn the rules and procedures.

And then, activists need to be able to carry out plans in the most effective and efficient ways possible. They need to hold together a coalition and move it toward the common goals. They need to account for funds and be accountable to members and the community.

Activists can learn all this, with help from the Working for America Institute and the growing network of high road partners. And, working together, unions, community activists, far-sighted employers and others can begin to build financial resources, acquire the right fiscal management skills, link with state labor federations and central labor councils, and begin the work of building the high road.