This issue brief by PHI analyzes the impacts of recent policy changes in New York state impacting home care aides and defines what a quality job looks like for a caregiver. The elements of a quality job in this occupation are organized in three categories: compensation, opportunity, and supports. While designed for care workers, the framework has relevance across industries and application for all practitioners seeking to define and assess job quality in an organization.
Investments to renew our nation’s infrastructure offer many possible benefits to our economy and our society. One of the most often cited benefits is that these investments will create good jobs. In communities across the country, much has been learned about how to invest in infrastructure projects in ways that support economic development goals and help people in the community connect to good jobs.
In this panel, hosted by the Economic Opportunities Program, speakers discuss the opportunities for work created by infrastructure projects as well as the benefits that renewed infrastructure offer for both workers and business. Panelists share examples from companies and projects around the country, highlighting the business case for investing in workers, training, and safety, not only to benefit workers, but also to improve company operations and America’s critical physical assets.
The Good Companies/Good Jobs Initiative at the Aspen Institute looks to sectors that have the potential to house good companies and good jobs, including health care and manufacturing, as well as retail, hospitality, and other service industries. It also explores tools to better align capital deployment to firms with good jobs outcomes. Mark Popovich, former vice president for The Hitachi Foundation’s Good Companies@Work program, joined EOP to direct this initiative.
This event features examples of companies that intentionally provide jobs that are good for workers and good for companies. We also shared more information about the interrelated goals of all three of The Hitachi Foundation legacy gifts, including to the MIT Sloan School of Management and Investors’ Circle.
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.
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.