National attention is increasingly focused on growing inequality, stagnating wages, rising unrest, and economic insecurity and immobility. From Occupy Wall Street to the Fight for $15, workers and their families have raised their voices for change in recent years, calling on society to uphold its values, including equal opportunity to succeed through work. How can these voices to be translated into changes in policies and practices? Can exercises of democratic rights – to free speech and association – provide a means for workers and their families to attain fair wages, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions?

David Rolf, one of the nation’s most successful labor organizers in recent years, discusses his book The Fight for $15: The Right Wage for a Working America. He is joined by local labor leaders who share their experiences in today’s workplace and their efforts to engage their co-workers, advocating for better working conditions and revitalizing the democratic process.

New ways of developing skills, expanding access to jobs, and encouraging the creation of quality jobs are critical for building an economy that works for everyone, including businesses, workers, and communities. To accelerate such strategies, we are pleased to announce the release of the Communities that Work Partnership Playbook. The Playbook emerges from the Communities that Work Partnership, jointly launched by AspenWSI, FutureWorks, and the US Economic Development Administration in April 2015. Since then, the initiative has documented and accelerated the development of employer-led regional workforce partnerships across the country. Seven regional teams — composed of leaders from diverse sectors in Buffalo, New York; Phoenix, Arizona; Houston, Texas; the San Francisco Bay area in California; northwest Georgia; New York City; and Washington, DC — engaged in a learning exchange focused on strengthening local talent pipelines and improving access to quality employment. The Communities that Work Partnership Playbook, published by AspenWSI and FutureWorks, highlights key takeaways from the seven regional teams’ work. The “plays” describe strategies that will be useful for those creating talent development approaches that leverage knowledge, capacity, and resources of not only education, workforce, and economic development partners, but also business partners.

In April 2015, the Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative jointly launched the Communities that Work Partnership with the US Economic Development Administration. The purpose of this initiative was to document and accelerate the development of employer-led regional workforce initiatives across the country. Seven competitively-selected sites — in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Georgia, New York (upstate and NYC), and Texas — participated in a learning exchange focused on bridging economic and workforce development to strengthen local talent pipelines and improve access to quality employment.

The “on-demand” or “1099” economy is reengineering how millions of Americans work, and California’s San Francisco Bay Area is at the forefront of these changes. Four members of the Bay Area team participating in the Communities that Work Partnership (CTWP) set out to understand this challenge and explore how the public workforce development system—the one-stop job centers, community colleges, and publicly funded community-based training programs—could meet the skills/needs of freelancers, and the businesses that hire them, in the region’s 1099 economy.

Restore the Promise of Work: Reducing Inequality by Raising the Floor and Building Ladders, published by the Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program and PHI in February 2016, encourages a broader community beyond workforce development to engage in initiatives that redesign work to expand economic opportunity and address growing social, political, and economic inequality. Restore the Promise of Work underscores that both public and private changes, in both policies and practices, are essential. This new brief calls for leaders from workforce development, education, business, philanthropy, labor, government, and more to forge a powerful, coordinated agenda to promote better quality jobs. A coordinated effort will be critical to sustaining and expanding the successes that members of this community have already attained.RR

This op-ed examines the severing of wealth from work, and what we can do to change course to ensure work leads to economic security.

In “Training That Works,” authors John Colborn and Susan Crane scan the field of apprenticeship and identify areas where coordinated investments of foundations could support high-leverage, actionable ideas that would grow apprenticeship and strengthen its impact on poor and marginalized populations. The report targets 4 aspects of the apprenticeship “eco-system”: Knowledge and Research, Marketing & Outreach, Advocacy & Policy, Capacity Building for Practitioners.

America’s youngest workers are facing their most dire employment prospects in recent history. The report captures the insights of a variety of service providers helping to connect young adults to jobs in today’s labor market. Published by Aspen WSI in January 2016, the report documents the results of a survey in which hundreds of service providers nationwide described their experiences serving young adults. The report also offers key considerations for practitioners and policymakers seeking to assist the large and growing population of disadvantaged young adults seeking to make meaningful connections to work in today’s labor market.

This discussion paper is designed to help Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) define and measure job quality. It defines a quality job as one that contains most (if not all) of five elements: a living wage, basic benefits, career-building opportunities, wealth-building opportunities, and a fair and engaging workplace. The paper offers impact measurement practices to assess and report on job quality to help CDFIs encourage and support their business borrowers to enhance the quality of jobs they offer. While this resource is written for lenders, it has applications for all practitioners seeking to define and measure job quality within a firm.

As work demands more of employees’ time, many are asking: How can I earn a living while making sure my family doesn’t fall behind? Workers across all income brackets struggle with the United States’ outdated work-life policy framework, but the balancing act is particularly challenging and risky for low- and moderate-income workers and their families who have smaller financial margins and a weak safety net.

In her book, Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, Heather Boushey argues that resolving work-life conflicts is as vital for individuals and families as it is essential for realizing the country’s productive potential. Boushey, executive director and chief economist of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, presents detailed innovations — at municipal, state, and company levels — that illustrate how US policy can ease the burden on American families and ensure our country’s economic stability. Through personal anecdotes, real-life profiles, and extensive statistical research, Boushey demonstrates that economic efficiency and equity can be reconciled if we have the vision to forge a new social contract for business, government, and private citizens.