• Living wage campaigns
• Regional economic development
• Community organizing and bargaining
• Corporate responsibility campaigns
• Incumbent worker training
• Temporary worker training
• Job training and placement in good jobs.

To bring about these beneficial changes, unions and their allies have used a variety of strategies and tools. Unions, for instance, are in an unparalleled position to determine the facts about low road work. They are closer to workers than any other institutions and have members or former members throughout the workforce.

One key issue that unions and community organizations are exploring around the country is the role of temporary agencies. Currently, a temporary agency, Manpower, Inc. is the nation's largest employer of record. Taken as a group, temporary agencies employ more people than many entire sectors. Most temporary workers earn low pay, few, if any, benefits, and little opportunity for advancement. But some partnerships are devising new approaches to the problem of temp workers, including establishing new forms of temporary employment agencies providing training and benefits, community standards for temporary agencies, a national code of conduct campaign and regional coalitions for training standards.

Workers and their unions often don't realize the financial power they already have. For instance, workers invest hundreds of billions of dollars through their savings, pensions, and charitable contributions. Can these worker generated assets help create good jobs and strong communities? In many cases, yes. The Housing Investment Trust and Building Investment Trust (HITBIT) has a nationwide record of success in investing in union built projects, the Heartlands Project is advocating for national and regional investment pools dedicated to job retention and creation, and the recently established Union Community Fund is helping provide a strategic focus to charitable contributions.

In other cases, the fight is to gain allies and develop issue campaigns that resonate across the community. For many unions and community groups, faith-based partners have proved invaluable allies, both for what they bring and what they stand for. Alliances involving unions, faith-based groups, government and other community and business groups bring basic values to public policy discussions and workplace issues. These broad based partnerships both enrich the democratic process and increase the effectiveness of community voices in shaping social and economic standards.

Unions and community groups working together push each other beyond their previous limits. For example, training has been a staple of unions and community groups, but training only goes so far without access to good jobs. For many, without access and opportunity, good jobs remain only a hope. Standards for good jobs, training and access help assure that people have real opportunities. Some union programs are creating jobs by doing all three: the A. Philip Randolph Institute in Los Angeles is helping skilled African American workers establish small businesses that will expand contacting and employment opportunities; the New York based Consortium for Workers Education five state day care training program provides skills and employment with benefits; and the Painters International Union dual purpose program trains people while rehabilitating buildings in their community.

Some of the larger regional high road alliances have made a public impact on whole communities. Take, for instance, Working Partnerships USA (WPUSA), based in San Jose, California. A 1994 creation of the South Bay Labor Council, WPUSA has sensitized the entire San Jose-Silicon Valley area to the growing divide between high-paid high-tech workers and the subsistence wages of those who service the booming computer-related industries. The partnership has released a series of widely publicized reports. Growing Together, or Drifting Apart? exposed the inequality and social distress in Silicon Valley for working families and the expanding immigrant population. Shock Absorbers for the Flexible Economy formed the basis for WPUSA initiatives aimed at improving wages and working conditions in the temporary employment industry.

As a result of its high profile and aggressive public relations, WPUSA has been able to:

• Help local governments and their unions with modernization.
• Assist women make the transition from welfare to nontraditional residential plumbing jobs.
• Target 100 community leaders a year for a nine-week course through WPUSA's Labor-Community Leadership Institute.
• Link schools, unions, business, and Private Industry Council to provide low-cost training in multimedia fields.
• Create Working Partnerships Staffing Services to provide living pay standards, health care and training for temporary workers.

Regional partnerships cover a wide range of activities, but all of them are aimed at improving jobs and bringing jobs to communities. In many cases, the partnership must confront existing employers to make jobs available to those who need them. That was the case in the Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition in Los Angeles, a massive high-speed rail cargo line under construction between the ports and the manufacturing areas of downtown Los Angeles. Community leaders created the Jobs Coalition to ask the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority for employment and job training guarantees for community residents. To ensure that the goals were met, the coalition enlisted the Carpenters Education Training Institute to train applicants. The result has been not only an area industrial improvement, but improved skills for residents and more than $40 million in wages poured into communities where that kind of money makes a significant difference in people's lives.

The Steel Valley Authority (SVA) is a unique public authority created by union, community, and religious leaders. It works to retain and expand the base of manufacturing jobs and to revitalize communities in western Pennsylvania. SVA was created when the City of Pittsburgh and 11 mill towns in the Monongahela and Turtle Creek Valleys set up the Authority to revitalize the region's manufacturing base and to identify the best means of retaining jobs. The Authority uses a range of industrial retention tools including: early warning systems, worker and manager buy-outs, management consulting and financial packaging, training for labor and management, and, in exceptional cases, the power of eminent domain. Through its nonprofit arm, the union-chaired Regional Jobs Corporation, SVA brings together labor, community, and legislative leaders to develop projects and support policies that will build good jobs. Its Strategic Early Warning Network identifies and assists at-risk manufacturers. In all, SVA has created or preserved more than 7,500 jobs in western Pennsylvania.

Projects such as the Alameda Corridor Jobs Coalition and SVA are essential for high road development. Change doesn't simply occur, it must be shaped and pushed, especially in low-income communities. There, people are outside the all-important informal job-referral networks. Moreover, residents are hampered by language skills, inadequate education and training, and lack of transportation and childcare. High road community alliances can address these issues directly.

When government, employers, unions and community groups actually begin to discuss poverty, wages and services there is a mix of views and solutions. And in pursuit of goals which benefit the entire community, alliances find ways to compromise and to work in coalition. But in order for workers to have a real voice, unions must be present. It's essential, therefore, for unions to be among the players in the alliance. When they are, the whole community gains.

The May 13-16 Working for America 2000 Annual Conference is exploring and analyzing the issues of building regional partnership through the following workshops:

• Setting Standards: Living wages and Corporate Responsibility
  Recent developments in blocking the low road with high road standards
• Standards In Temp World: Temporary Work Initiatives
  Problems and Challenges in blocking the low road
• Reaching Out: Faith, Values and Community Partners
  Interfaith councils for worker justice collaborative efforts with government reaching out to community
• Current Trends in Community Organizations
  New developments, best practice in community organizing
• Creating Good Jobs: Access, Opportunity and Standards
  Unique ways unions are creating jobs CWE NYC/ childcare, APRI/LA business owners, and others
• Better Investing: Union Programs for Direct Investment in Your Community
  Overview of four approaches to worker's money invested in good jobs and strong communities
• Helping Workers Improve their English Language Skills
  Overview of change in AFL-CIO policy, demographics etc.