WORKER EQUITY INITIATIVE RESOURCES
High road training partnerships (HRTPs) aim to create economically resilient communities by focusing first and foremost on equity and job quality. Workers, labor and other worker organizations, and employers are recognized as industry experts and work alongside community-based organizations and training institutions to provide workforce development solutions with pathways to quality jobs for all Californians, especially those from the most disadvantaged communities.
The Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the California Workforce Development Board have adopted High Road Training Partnerships as a way to model partnership strategies for the state. This is a $10M demonstration project that is currently being expanded to address urgent questions of income inequality, economic competitiveness, and climate change through regional skill strategies.
High Road – Overview
Details California Workforce Development Board high road framework consisting of equity, climate and quality jobs. Introduces eight of California’s high road training partnerships.
HRTP Essential Elements
Describes the essential elements of a high road training partnership. The four interrelated elements provide a fundamentally different approach that upends traditional workforce development by putting the employers and workers at the center of skill delivery systems rather than the other way around. HRTPs create an industry-led skills infrastructure that can negotiate the future of work in ongoing needs of employers and workers alike.
HRTP Overviews
Eight labor-management partnerships were funded through the California’s Workforce Development Board’s High Road Training Partnership Initiative in a variety of sectors: healthcare, hospitality, transit, freight, water and wastewater, and building operations. The following project overviews describe each of the partnership models and highlight expected impact and transformation within its industry.
The Labor and Workforce Development Agency and the California Workforce Development Board have adopted High Road Training Partnerships as a way to model partnership strategies for the state. This is a $10M demonstration project that is currently being expanded to address urgent questions of income inequality, economic competitiveness, and climate change through regional skill strategies.
High Road – Overview
Details California Workforce Development Board high road framework consisting of equity, climate and quality jobs. Introduces eight of California’s high road training partnerships.
- High Road Framework: Provides a description of what high road training partnerships aim to do, how they work, and their core components. Also describes the HRTP approach to create an ecosystem of economic prosperity.
- Climate: Defines what climate resistance is, explains the impact of environmental inequities on the economy, health and geography, and details a framework to create a workforce development system that ensures climate resilience. Also describes the HRTP approach to create an ecosystem of economic prosperity.
- Equity: Defines economic equity, provides a framework for how to create a workforce development system that ensures equity, and describes the HRTP approach to create an ecosystem of economic prosperity.
- Job Quality: Defines what is a quality job, provides a profile for California low-wage workers, and establishes a framework to create a workforce development system that ensures job quality. Also describes the HRTP approach to create an ecosystem of economic prosperity.
HRTP Essential Elements
Describes the essential elements of a high road training partnership. The four interrelated elements provide a fundamentally different approach that upends traditional workforce development by putting the employers and workers at the center of skill delivery systems rather than the other way around. HRTPs create an industry-led skills infrastructure that can negotiate the future of work in ongoing needs of employers and workers alike.
- Industry Led Problem Solving: This brief focuses on the essential element of having the industry lead the problem solving for the workforce demands unique to that industry. It describes what is meant by being industry led, why this is essential, and what the critical components of operating in this manner are. A separate companion brief provides more detail on promising practices for this essential element, with examples from the field.
- Partnership as a Priority: This brief focuses on the essential element of making the partnership itself a priority. It describes why this is essential, what is meant by partnership, and what the critical components of operating in partnership are. A separate companion brief provides more detail on promising practices for this essential element, with examples from the field.
- Training Solutions: This brief focuses on the essential element of having the industry partnership drive the training solutions needed for that industry. It describes why this is essential, what is meant by taking an industry driven approach to training solutions, and what the critical components of doing so are. A separate companion brief provides more detail on promising practices for this essential element, with examples from the field.
- Worker Voice: This brief focuses on the essential element of incorporating worker voice and worker wisdom throughout all aspects of industry partnership. It describes why this is essential, what is meant by incorporating worker wisdom, and what the critical components of doing so are.
HRTP Overviews
Eight labor-management partnerships were funded through the California’s Workforce Development Board’s High Road Training Partnership Initiative in a variety of sectors: healthcare, hospitality, transit, freight, water and wastewater, and building operations. The following project overviews describe each of the partnership models and highlight expected impact and transformation within its industry.
- High Road to Distribution and Logistics: Provides overview of West Oakland Job Resource Center’s project to create a high road training partnership to build workforce development programs in West Oakland through the City of Oakland’s Army Base Redevelopment Project and the Port of Oakland. Describes project model to build partnerships and systems to move Oakland residents with systemic barriers to employment into family-supporting jobs in the Transportation, Distribution, and Logistics sector.
- High Road to Healthcare: Provides overview of the Shirley Ware Education Center, a high road training partnership that creates pathways for California residents from disadvantaged backgrounds to access high quality jobs in the healthcare industry. Details High Road to Health Care Careers program goal to support employers, unions, and non-clinical support staff to meet the growing demand in allied health occupations due to population growth, an aging population, and federal healthcare reform.
- High Road to Hospitality: Provides overview of Hospitality Training Academy, a high road training partnership that develops innovative solutions to address the needs of employers and workers in the hospitality, food service, and leisure/tourism industries. Details initiative to expand opportunities to enter the hospitality sector for underserved and underrepresented populations—people of color, immigrants, low-wage workers, the LGBTQ community, and residents with high barriers to employment, including a history of incarceration or homelessness—and improving economic opportunities for incumbent hospitality workers in Los Angeles.
- High Road to Janitorial: Provides overview of Building Skills Partnership, a high road training partnership that builds strong regions workforce development systems to improve the quality of life for workers and their families through engagement in culturally relevant programming. Details Green Jobs, Good Jobs program, which supports building owners, employers, and janitorial industry leaders working in partnership to define and improve skills, standards, training, professionalization, and career ladder opportunities for janitors with limited English proficiency.
- High Road to the Port: Provides overview of Port of Los Angeles, a high road partnership that is creating a model to ensure skilled longshore workers who can manage key industry transitions and to look for opportunities to improve hiring from within the community. Details project focus to improve worker safety to demonstrate the value and impact of taking the high road approach in the goods-movement industry.
- High Road to the Public Sector: Provides overview of Worker Education and Resource Center, a high road training partnership that collaborates with public service employers to improve the lives of workers with multiple barriers in LA County public service jobs, through workforce development and partnership. Details project model that supports people with high barriers securing employment, and brings value to the employer by improving the community-based culturally aligned public service.
- High Road to Public Transit: Provides overview of Joint Workforce Invest, a highroad partnership between Santa Clara Transportation Authority and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 to identify solutions to industry challenges in public transit. Describes the project, California Transit Works!, which is a statewide consortium of transit agencies, labor unions, and community colleges that promotes high road training partnerships to address critical issues in public transit.
- High Road to Water: Provides overview of the Water Utilities Career Pathways Project, a high road training partnership between Jewish Vocational Service and BAYWORK to address critical workforce issues in the water and wastewater sector, offer low-income job seekers access to high-quality jobs, and address the workforce skill gap by creating training programs.
- The High Road to Economic Prosperity: The UCLA Labor Center conducted a process evaluation that provides a macroanalysis of the successes and challenges that the eight HRTPs experienced during the initial eighteen-month period of the HRTP initiative as they worked to develop partnerships and programming that address urgent questions of income inequality, economic competitiveness, and climate change through regional skills strategies designed to support economically and environmentally resilient communities across the state.
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