Transcript Regional Sector Strategies: Lessons from the WRTP

EWD Partnerships: The WRTP
Joel Rogers & Laura Dresser
COWS/JR Commons
Prepared For the NGA Center for Best Practices, National
Association of State Liaisons for Workforce Development
Partnerships, Milwaukee, August 1, 2006
Getting to living wage jobs
• Entry-level employment that prepares workers
for and connects them to future opportunities
• Reliable and understood methods of access
to decent paying sectors & jobs
• Routine career advancement through
incremental moves
Why is that so hard these days?
• Deregulation, privatization, de-unionization
• Changes in work organization — outsourcing,
contingent/temporary work, cellular production,
etc. — in smaller establishments, generally in
service sector
• End of job ladders, employer-based welfare
state, industry wage norms
Old world vs. new world
New World
Old World
Globalization
Global “economically active population” (M’s)
Global
1980
960
2000 (BD) 1460
2000 (AD) 2930
Adv
LDC
New
370
460
460
590
1000
1000
----1470*
*China, 760; India, 440, Ex-Soviet, 260
Source: http://www.laborsta.ilo.org/
The end of shared prosperity
200.00
180.00
160.00
Productivity
140.00
MedianFamily Income
120.00
100.00
Index 1973=100
80.00
Median Wage
60.00
40.00
20.00
0.00
1947
1955
1963
1971
1979
1987
1995
2003
A nation of sub-minimum wages?
• Minimum wage today is $5.15, down from its 1968
value of $8.85 (2005$)
• Since 1968, productivity has increased 110
percent. A productivity-corrected minimum would
be $18.50 – almost 30 percent higher than today’s
median wage of $14.33
• QED: Vast majority of American workers today are
below the historic (productivity normed) minimum
wage
An iron law of urban decay?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Investment moves out
Revenues decline
Public goods deteriorate
Middle class flees
Tax base erodes
Poverty concentrates
WRTP
• Partnership of 100 employers and unions
• Intermediates employers, community, training
providers, and funding
• Dedicated to “qualified workers for quality jobs”
• Programs in incumbent workers training,
modernization, and recruitment
• Has improved the behavior of employers,
unions, CBOS, and public training system
• Critical to RSA program under Clinton.
• Influential nationally in thinking about sectoral
partnerships.
WRTP roots
• Manufacturing in the early 1990s (apprenticeship a
wreck, international competition growing, labormanagement relations bad to worse)
• Labor and management leaders agree to work together
on training and workplace modernization, shifting
compensation to skills plus, but providing those skills
more broadly
• Agree to do this collectively, to have real labor market
impact and realize economies of scale and scope in
operation
• Gradually WRTP builds enough linkages and trust to
adjust to new workforce issues in the late 1990s (skills
shortages, welfare reform, etc.)
WRTP evolution in a decade
• Worker participants expanded from incumbent to future
workers
• Sector expansion from manufacturing to construction,
healthcare, hospitality, IT, transportation
• Coordinating role expansion from employers/unions to
government/community
• Program expansion from stand-alone project to motor of
system EWD (economic and workforce development)
reform
• Becomes independent of COWS!!
Demand-driven coordination
• Employers certify job demand
• Public system and CBOs identify and evaluate
applicants
• Trainers prepare applicants for available jobs
• WRTP coordinates this and establishes a
common public presence and agenda
• Employers get more certainty, government gets
more leverage on investments, workers get
opportunity and reward to effort, region and
industry gets economies of scale and scope in
coordination in satisfying EWD needs
Example of Milwaukee Jobs Initiative
• Approximately 2000 placed in full time jobs at an
average wage of over $10.50/hour plus family
health benefits
• 73% of participants still working after a year, with
41% at the same or better wage
• Independent verification by Amp Associates
showed MJI projects among most cost-effective
in country at getting and keeping central city
residents into better jobs
Who got the MJI jobs?
23%
43%
• Average annual household
income was $12,000
• 90% non-white
• 32% had high school dipoma
34%
Below $9,000
$9,000 To $20,000
Over $20,000
• 50% had received public
assistance
How to start
• Map the economy (key employers, industry rank, industry practices
on value-added/waste-reduced, major regional liabilities and assets,
problems regional employers cannot solve on their own)
• Engage employers in a value discussion (increasing profits if they
accept higher standards), and make clear what government can offer,
on what terms
• Inside government, establish higher standards for performance of
boards/agencies; provide income maintenance for employer-linked
training programs; concentrate on advancement (and thus retention),
not placement; don’t spend training dollars on dead-end jobs; drive
training toward easily accessed modular training; push skills
standards or at least uniform certification
• Implement regionally through regional EWD “tables” with relevant
stakeholders; go for functional representation, not WIA madness
• Top leadership commitment is key throughout, and staff discipline
Big picture
• Two ways to compete, high road and low, price vs. value
(both profitable, but different effects for employees,
environment, and democracy)
• Won’t get onto the high road through markets alone;
public authority is needed to close off LR and help pave
the HR; meaning standards and the ability to meet them
• HR partnerships must start with a value proposition to
employers “We can add value and reduce waste, and
increase your profitability”
• This can and must be done by industry, in regions, since
that’s how the economy is organized. But it’s more
demanding of al partners, including government and
labor.