Checklist #2: Connecting Joint Training and Education Initiatives to the Public Workforce System (for partnerships)
Once a partnership is formed and the partners make a decision to address a workforce challenge together, they may find that they want to connect to the public workforce system. These connections can be made for a number of reasons – not only for funding of a particular program, but also to provide training partners, or a source of workers to backfill for positions at the lower ends of a career ladder.
This checklist is designed to outline the steps that unions and their employers should consider to engage the workforce development system in encouraging, participating in, and ultimately, financially supporting their joint training programs.
1. Get Help Understanding the System
There are a series of steps that partners should take prior to making a presentation to the Workforce Development/Investment system. We like to use the analogy of either the union or the employer walking into contract negotiations without having read the contract. Learning the language of the public system and understanding the system’s rules will be helpful in engaging it in your work.
- Become familiar with the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). There is information on WIA in the Resources section of this tool kit. For more about the operation of the public workforce system, see the “WIA Basics” guide in this notebook or at /actionbriefs/basics-01.htm, or contact the Institute about features of your program that may be of interest to the public system.
- Identify the local and state Workforce Investment Boards and One-Stops in the targeted area. Again, the Institute can help with this.
- Review the names and titles of those who serve on the WIB and One-Stops. Consult the Institute for help with this.
- Identify relationships between members of state and local WIBs and other public system stakeholders and members of the partnership.
- Labor representatives
- Business
- Chief Elected Officials
- Government
- Education
- Economic Development
- Become familiar with state and local workforce plans (especially where those plans contain sector-based initiatives). State plans are available on line at http://www.doleta.gov/usworkforce/WIA/planstatus.cfm and local plans should be available on each local board’s website (or if they do not have one, the plan will be available upon request).
- Become familiar with any community audits or other labor market research conducted by the WIB. If the WIB has conducted audits, these will be publicly available.
- Learn the meeting schedules of the WIBs. These may be available on a website, but in all cases this information, and the meetings themselves, are public.
2. Develop a Strategic Plan
Partnerships should have a clear idea of what they want to do, and be sure that they can convey this in terms the public system will understand.
- Assess the needs of your industry. Identify the challenges facing advanced manufacturing in your area. Ask stakeholders to make presentations to the WIB regarding the challenges the industry faces.
- Select the challenge(s) you wish to address (e.g., workers with limited English proficiency, recruiting young people into manufacturing, etc.).
- Identify promising practices for replication or adaptation to the needs of your industry or employer group.
- If possible, involve all stakeholders (employers, unions and their members, education and workforce system) in determining the needs of the industry. Perform any research at the request of those involved and in consultation with them.
3. Educate the Workforce Investment Board about the Partnership’s strategy.
- Have union members communicate the strategy to the labor representatives who sit on the WIBs. These Board members should be involved in any presentation at WIB meetings.
- Involve your employers in the discussion with the Board. By law WIBs are at least 51% business and are eager for active involvement of employers in their work. In fact, if your employers do not already sit on the board, they may be interested in joining (however, members will have to recuse themselves from actual decisions on a proposal that directly affects their firms).
- Encourage WIB members to bring stakeholders in advanced manufacturing to meetings where your proposal is being discussed. For example, employers may want to bring the state or local manufacturing trade association or chamber representative to support their request.
4. Arrange a presentation with the Workforce Investment Boards using the contacts that members of your partnership have with the members of the Board.
- Prior to the actual meeting with the WIB, conduct a pre-meeting session with the Executive Director and Co-Chairs Labor representatives or employer members of the board can help you set up this meeting and going through them can demonstrate a level of support and knowledge on the board for the industry and its needs.
- Articulate the objectives of the joint labor-management training program in terms that will be understood by your Workforce Investment Board. The presentation should be made by both union and employer representatives.
- Relate your interest in involving unionized (i.e., high paying) employers in the workforce investment system.
- Demonstrate how the training will provide family-supporting jobs to the workforce investment system. Point out that union jobs are among the best jobs in the community. Make sure that the WIB understands the potential for higher wage and benefit placements.
- Demonstrate that your program provides quality training with real, good jobs at the end of the training, supported jointly by employers and the workers in the industry.
- The board may want to see the use of Eligible Training Providers (ETP). Using an ETP from the approved list, such as a community college, is one approach. If your program provides the training directly, you may need to apply to become an ETP in accordance with local procedures. These procedures vary widely from state to state and the Institute can help you with this process if it is required. Apprenticeship program and institutions of higher education maintain a “short cut” in the law to become ETPs.
- Emphasize the positive impact the project will have on the community and the local economy in areas such as:
- Layoff aversion.
- Career ladder opportunities.
- Backfill of entry-level positions created by upward mobility of current employees.
- WIB meetings are open to the public. The presenters should endeavor to have as many supporters attend the meeting as possible to demonstrate the importance of the proposal and the industry to the community.
5. Supplementing your proposal with grant funds may also be desirable.
- There are many ways that a WIB may be used to “invest” in your proposed project. The most common methods for incumbent worker programs are customized training, on-the-job training and the use of Individual Training Accounts. These types of arrangements may require a contract to formalize the agreement and provide the WIB with the performance expectations for their investment.There is more in the resources section of the tool kit about these methods, and the Institute can help partnerships focus on which method best suits their needs.
- In some cases the Board may have a competitive grant process through an open “Request for Proposals” (commonly referred to as an RFP) that will require a grant application. This approach may be most common for those incumbent worker proposals that are submitted for funding from the Governor’s 15% set-aside under WIA, a combination of funding sources that provides the Governor with broad leeway to fund projects of importance to the state.
- In other cases, there may be a competitive round of grants at the Federal level that the partnership may be eligible to pursue. The resources section of this guide lists the federal agencies that may have resources that would be available to partnerships based on the strategies they wish to address. Foundation funding may also be available, including funding from local foundations that focus on the needs of a specific community.
If your partnership does decide to submit a proposal for a grant from the local, state, federal or foundation level, you may want to get help from an experienced grant writer, or at least be sure to follow some of the tips in the box below.
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