Building Worker Power Through Workforce Development final 10-4-2024 - Flipbook - Page 2
S U M M A RY
Over the last 50 years a deep imbalance has
been created in the labor market, with the
pursuit of corporate pro昀椀ts taking precedence
over the needs of workers. This is evident in
several troubling trends related to job quality in
the United States, including opaque and unfair
hiring processes, poor health coverage,
unstable scheduling practices, unsafe and
unhealthy working conditions, and unlivable
wages. Beyond the impact on individual
workers, this trend also means workforce
training programs have fewer and fewer
options to connect students with the quality of
jobs they need to sustain themselves and their
families. In this way, the ability of a workforce
development sector to achieve successful
workforce outcomes is heavily in昀氀uenced by
employer practices and the resulting quality of
jobs available in the communities they serve.
economic development, we partnered with UC
Berkeley Labor Center to survey workforce
development organizations across nine Bay
Area counties. We then funded four Bay Area
partnerships of workforce development and
worker organizing groups to develop and test
approaches to incorporating workers’ rights
education and job quality standards into the
programming of existing workforce training
programs.
In October 2021, Rework the Bay initiated a
project to engage workforce training providers
as partners to improve job quality for Bay Area
workers. Counter to most job quality efforts in
the workforce system, our approach was not
aimed at better equipping workforce providers
to advocate for job quality on behalf of their
participants. Instead, we developed and piloted
a strategy focused on developing program
participants as leaders who themselves can
advocate for great pay and protections in their
workplace.
• Black men
To build our understanding of the system’s
current approaches to job quality and equitable
1
Together, project partners trained over two
hundred workers re昀氀ecting the diversity of our
region’s
most
systematically
excluded
communities, including:
• Workers in farming, transportation,
hospitality, climate resilience, domestic
work, landscaping, social services, and
unemployed or underemployed workers
• Returning citizens
• Longstanding and newcomer immigrant
communities
• Indigenous communities
• Youth, young adults, and seniors
• Speakers of English, Spanish, Tagalog,
Mandarin, and Cantonese
We present here a brief overview of this project,
and a rich set of learnings and recommendations
to share with the 昀椀eld as we work to transform
worker training to meet the demands of the
21st century labor market.
B U I L D I N G W O R K E R P O W E R T H RO U G H W O R K FO RC E D E V E LO P M E N T
