Advocacy Agenda

A WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT AGENDA:

The Massachusetts Workforce Alliance supports the policy agendas of our member coalitions.

In addition, we seek partnerships with legislators, policymakers, and others to build a comprehensive workforce development system. Our current policy focus is on:

Creating a pilot project that would allow programs the resources and flexibility needed to better integrate ABE and Skills Training services both programmatically and systemically; and
Ensuring that the development of a"green economy" includes jobs and training available to low-income communities.

THE OVERALL NEED: Massachusetts faces major challenges to operating the highly effective public workforce development system our residents and employers require.

We need to:

[1] Reduce the number of workers marginalized in our economy and reduce the shortage of skilled workers. This challenge is significant:

a study completed in 2002 indicates that 35% of all adult residents of Massachusetts do not have the skills and credentials to work their way out of poverty¹;
data kept by the state's Department of Education indicates that there are as many people on formal waiting lists as are enrolled in ABE programs;
nationally, we face a labor shortage of 10,033,000 people by 2010².

[2] Put in place the policies and resources required to do the job right. There is a serious shortfall in funding:

over the past 20 years, U.S. Department of Labor funding for skill training has been cut by 33%, public employment by 40%, and youth services 63%³;
Massachusetts now dedicates 1% of federal and state TANF funds to education and training for welfare recipients, when the national average for states is 12%⁴;
in 2000, through the federal Workforce Investment Act, Massachusetts provided just 2,564 residents with skill training -- or only slightly over 7 residents for each of our 351 cities and towns⁵.

Building an Effective Workforce Development System

A Long Term Practitioner Policy Agenda

MWA presents the recommendations below as building blocks for a long
term vision of a highly effective system. The term "workforce
development system," as used here, includes skill training, youth
education/employment, and career centers, as well as overlapping with
parts of the adult basic education and higher education systems.

Many stakeholders readily agree on many important
systemic issues which limit the effectiveness of our workforce
development systems:

[A] Our local education and training providers are too
often faced with too little stability and funding to provide effective
services. This means that while our diverse provider system has the
capacity to provide services to those most in need, many programs do
not have the resources to do the job right. The solution includes:

increase state funding for skill training, youth education and employment, and adult basic education (ABE);
continue and increase funding for the state's CBO/Older Worker grant program, now in its first year;
provide incentives for more programs to integrate
education and training services -- so they can better serve applicants
with a wide range of labor market skills and barriers;
increase the availability of longer term services -- to
significantly improve the employment skills of those most marginalized
from the labor market;
make multi-year group contracts the norm across the
system (as they are in ABE) -- in order to stabilize education and
training programs.

[B] Our Career Centers face a universal, but underfunded,
mandate. As a result, many jobseekers and employers are dissatisfied
with Career Centers, and those most in need are too often not served.
The solution includes:

increase state funding for Career Centers;
return responsibility for jobseeker intake and
assessment to education and training providers -- which are better
situated for the broad based outreach required;
mandate consistent procedures for training vouchers -- in order to increase access and timeliness at all Career Centers;
mandate practical links and communications between
Career Centers and education and training programs -- to build
effective pipelines at the local level;
increase access for linguistic minorities, older youth,
and incumbent workers to employment and training services through
Career Centers.

[C] Current public policies too often provide disincentives to serve those who need education and training services the most⁶.
Thus, public workforce development programs do not have adequate
resources to close the income and skills divide nor reduce the extreme
lack of labor market participation in some communities. The solution
includes:

increase monetary incentives and modify performance
standards to provide more support to programs which serve those most in
need of public services;
fund and coordinate the wrap-around and support services (e.g., counseling) required for hard-to-serve participants to succeed;
reward implementation of a service continuum which
meets participants where they are and takes them towards their
workforce goals;
prioritize resources to increase access to entry level jobs and mobility to second level jobs through career ladders;
set out-of-poverty goals as a top priority for all
education and training providers, Career Centers, Workforce Investment
Boards, and other system stakeholders;
ensure that each low income participant in the public
workforce development system has a career plan which includes the steps
and skills required for that person and their family to move out of
poverty.

[D] We currently have a fragmented system with 15+ state
agencies, made worse by regional systems with too few centrally guided
policies and practices. This means that we do not yet have a workforce
development system, and implementation of federal and state policy is far too often inconsistent across the state. The solution includes:

operate a system which is clearly organized and stable at a state level, centrally guided and locally implemented at the regional level, and competitive, diverse, locally based, and collaborative⁷ at the local service delivery level. (The Department of Education and ABE providers have developed useful models in this regard.);
ensure that minimum performance requirements do not
become the highest level performance sought, in part by providing new
and substantial incentives to reward program success, in addition to
penalties for program failure;
adopt the model used by the state Department of
Education programs of allocating a set percentage of ABE funds to
professional development, training, and technical assistance for
service providers;
increase the percentage of staff working full-time in workforce development programs.

[E] Most public workforce development services are underfunded.
Current state and federal programs often serve about 5% of those
eligible, particularly for skill training and youth
education/employment services. This shortfall worsens the labor market
challenges facing Massachusetts -- with jobs leaving our state and
a lack of skilled workers. The solution includes setting a ten year
goal of an additional $100,000,000 for skill training, youth education/
employment, and adult basic education services and:

identifying new and alternative funding sources dedicated solely to education and training services, such as:
devoting a small percentage of state lottery funds to the workforce development system;
new initiatives to access federal matching and
incentive funds, such as drawing down federal food stamp funds to pay
for additional skill training services;
increased state and federal TANF funds dedicated to education and training from our current 1% to the national average of 12%;
increased WIA funds dedicated to education and training.
establishing statutory mandates that:
at least 90% of new funds available to provide skill
training and youth education/employment services be expended to provide
services for low income and low wage residents;
funds be dispersed through group contracts which are
competitively procured and provided by experienced not for profit and
public providers;
state and local authorities maintain current efforts so
that existing education and training funds are not reallocated to other
uses.

Make Massachusetts THE education & training state!

(March, 2005)

1. See New Skills for a New Economy: Adult Education's Role in Sustaining Economic Growth and Expanding Opportunity, MassINC, Boston, 2002.

2. Projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, as cited in Impending Crisis, Roger Herman et al, Oakhill Press, Winchester, Virginia, 2003.

3. See Skilling the American Workforce "On the Cheap": Ongoing Shortfalls in Federal Funding in Workforce Development, The Workforce Alliance, Washington, 2003.

4. CLASP Annual Report on State TANF Data.

5. See State by State WIA Program Participation Data, PY 2001, Center for Law and Social Policy, Washington, 2003.

6. We refer here to, for example, WIA Performance
Standards which reward service providers that most quickly make job
placements at the highest wages (meaning that those with least skills
are less desired participants in under-funded programs).

7. For an explanation of the value of these four characteristics of a service delivery system, see Workforce Develo