What We Are Doing to Get America on the Economic High Road

1. Public Strategies

Helping strengthen America’s economy by ensuring that workers fully participate in—and understand the impact of—public workforce and economic development strategies.

EXAMPLE: The Institute is working to strengthen the voice of workers and their representatives on more than 600 state and local Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs). Created by Congress in 1998 as part of the Workforce Investment Act, these boards help coordinate federal and state resources to address the needs of employers and workers in their communities. The Institute has worked to improve communications among WIB labor representatives and to develop a common agenda for labor’s participation in the public workforce system. WAI’s model agenda encourages Workforce Investment Boards to adopt high self-sufficiency standards, conduct more comprehensive community audits and apply economic development subsidy disclosure practices to public workforce development investments.

2. Sector Strategies

Helping workers and employers succeed by creating sector-based high road partnerships among employers, unions, government agencies and community organizations to retain good jobs and build stronger communities.

EXAMPLE: The Institute has worked closely with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union and its local unions to strengthen the nation’s hospitality sector for both workers and high road employers.The Institute has assisted HERE locals and their employers in developing projects designed to strengthen the higher-paying part of the hospitality industry in New York City, Atlantic City, Minneapolis/St. Paul and the Bay Area of California. The Institute and HERE also have worked closely with the Las Vegas hotel industry to expand the Culinary Training Academy, a national model for helping hospitality workers improve their skills.

3. Individual Success

Helping individual workers succeed through effective lifelong learning, skills development and access to good jobs.

EXAMPLE: When D.C. General Hospital in the Nation’s Capital closed in the summer of 2001, more than 1,500 workers were laid off. The Institute worked with the Metropolitan Washington Council AFL-CIO to create the CareerPath Project, an initiative that serves workers, unions and the area’s better employers by counseling, training and placing workers in family-sustaining jobs in the same or other area industries.

In its first year, CareerPath provided services to more than 300 former D.C. General Hospital workers and met its first-year goal of placing 160 displaced workers into good jobs.