 Okay. Hello everyone. Hello. Hello and welcome to New America. It is such a pleasure to have you here. We're so happy. This is our first in person public events since March of 2020. And we're just so thankful and grateful to be able to share this space with you. So thank you for coming. And welcome to all of our guests online. We are thrilled that you are joining us today. And we're looking forward to engaging with you too in our question and answer periods. So we're here today to talk about jobs and to talk about how states and cities can leverage historic federal investments in infrastructure to create more good jobs and to make sure people in their community from all backgrounds can get into those good jobs. My name is Mary Alice McCarthy and I direct the Center on Education and Labor here at New America and I'll be your driver, your conductor today. At the center, we research the intersection of policies of our, pardon me, let me try that again. At the Center on Education and Labor, we focus our research on the intersection of education and workforce development policies that prepare people for good jobs and careers that can help them access those jobs. And then the labor and employment policies that shape the quality of those jobs and make sure whether or not they're good jobs. We believe that all Americans should have access to high quality, affordable education. We also believe that all Americans should be in jobs that are good family sustaining jobs regardless of their educational level. So it's a great time to be thinking about these issues because over the last two years the federal government has made historic job generating investments in infrastructure, clean energy, manufacturing, broadband access and more. For all of us who are committed to building a more just economy, we have an opportunity and I would even say an obligation to make the most of these investments. And that's what we're going to talk about today and we have a fantastic lineup of speakers who are going to help us think through what does it mean to connect these federal dollars to really good jobs and make sure that lots of people have access to them. We have senior officials from three federal agencies, the departments of labor, transportation and commerce. We have the mayor of Rochester, Minnesota who has already been doing a lot of work on creating a good jobs economy for her residents. And we have a fantastic lineup of worker advocates and community-based practitioners who are also working with their local electeds to make sure that investments state, federal and local go to making good jobs available to all people. So with that I'm going to just do a little bit of table setting around these investments and around this sort of problem and challenge of good jobs. So let me start here. Let me start here. I just don't want to fall off my little stool here. I'm feeling exceptionally tall today. It's very exciting. So as I said, this has been an incredible two years of federal investment and infrastructure, really just unprecedented almost, right? So just quickly, in March of 2021, right after the Biden administration had been sworn in, we got the American Rescue Plan. I came to Congress. I'm assigned by the president. This was a $1.9 trillion investment in many things. Mostly this was an emergency response to the pandemic and to help states and cities or to help their residents whether this very, very difficult time when restaurants and businesses were closing and schools were closing. But there was a significant amount of money in there too that could go to infrastructure investments. And the $350 billion state and local rescue fund, for example, did have funds that can be invested in water, sewer and broadband infrastructure. And we're already seeing some of that happening. The American Rescue Plan also sets aside $500 million for something called the Good Jobs Challenge, which is a competitive grant program run by the Department of Commerce. And we're going to hear more about that and how the Department of Commerce is working with communities to spur good job development. These investments have just started. They're going to be rolling out for the next five to eight years. There's a long tail on all of these investments, right? So we're just beginning to see the impact. But we're really beginning to see the impact of the American Rescue Plan, which has already been credited for restoring and creating 4 million jobs and avoiding a prolonged double-dip recession. And that's from Moody Analytics that comes up with those numbers. So after the American Rescue Plan in 2021 and November, Congress passed and the President signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Act. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, okay? This was a $1.4 trillion investment, and this one very specifically in infrastructure, with $550 billion of new spending on fixing roads, bridges, railways, airports, water ports, clean energy, broadband and more. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that for each year, for the next five years, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act will generate 770,000 new jobs, right? And the majority of those jobs will be subject to federal rules mandating high wages and supporting local unions. And we'll talk a little bit more on that later, okay? Okay, and then next we have the Chips and Science Act, which passed just this last August and has $50 billion that is going to help build the semiconductor manufacturing industry in the United States. And that is very exciting. And again, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, they expect this act to create 180,000 construction jobs each year for the next five years, and then 280,000 permanent jobs in the semiconductor industry. And then finally, we had, at last but hardly least, we had the Inflation Reduction Act, right, which is $74 billion, and is absolutely historic, generation-defining investments in clean energy and climate mitigation strategies, and is expected to generate millions of jobs. According to the Blue-Green Alliance, the law could create up to 9 million jobs over the next decade. So that is a lot of jobs, right, and an incredible opportunity. And as I said, we're already beginning to see the impact specifically of the American Rescue Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, monthly job growth in 2020 has averaged 420,000 jobs a month. That is a tremendous pace of job development, of job growth. And again, these investments are just getting started. So this is a huge opportunity. Good jobs are at the center of the Biden administration's agenda, and we need to think about what that means. And I will say, when they talk about this, they talk about good jobs, and they're not alone. It seems like everyone's talking about good jobs these days. You sort of can't go anywhere in Washington without hearing about good jobs. There's a good jobs initiative, the good jobs principles, the good jobs challenge, and on and on. So why is all of a sudden everybody talking about good jobs? Well, it might sound kind of, at some level it's a lack of originality, and we're all very tired. But I think the bigger reason, I think the bigger reason is that this is really sort of the culmination of a decade's worth of research that has shown without, you know, there's really documented painstakingly the declining quality of jobs in the United States. This term, good jobs, has taken on such salience because the reality is in the United States today a job is no guarantee of avoiding poverty, avoiding bankruptcy, or of not landing in some sort of extreme economic precarity. Just to put some numbers on this, a study by Martha Ross and her partners at the Brookings Institute in 2019 found that 53 million people in the United States, 44% of all workers are low-wage workers. They make $10 or less in our labor market. That's inching up on half of all workers. And more than half of those 53 million workers are prime-age workers. Are those between the ages of 25 and 50? Of course, this is the age group that's most likely to have children and additional responsibilities, and they're making around $10 an hour. Okay, women and black workers are overrepresented among low-wage workers. Those low-wage workers are also a large portion of our care workforce. Economist David Howell at the Washington Center on Equitable Growth has documented the declining quality of jobs in the United States from the 1970s to 2017 that has been particularly hard on young workers and particularly hard on young workers without a college degree. The share of young workers with no college degree who are in what he defines as a decent job, which is a family sustaining job, fell from 47% almost half of all non-college degree workers in 1979 to just 22% of non-college degree workers in 2017. He finds that 50% half of all non-college educated men are employed in what he defines as a lousy job. Okay, and he also defines it primarily via wages. David Howell also finds that since the 1980s there has been a large and persistent decoupling of the number of good jobs from GDP growth, the number of decent jobs, as he says, from GDP growth. So that is why we've experienced tremendous growth. We've also not experienced the creation of good new jobs. And then of course we have David Daniel Albert of Cornell University who maintains his private sector job quality index, and it dates back to 1990. And this is an index that comes out monthly. And you can see it's almost a relentless decline from 1990. There's a little bit of an upswing there around 2015. And then back down again, I will say if you go to 2022, it is coming back up again a little bit, but nowhere near where it was in 1990. I took this snapshot though because it ends in February of 2020. And in February of 2020, the month before everything went crazy, right? Before the pandemic really took hold of our economy. We were at historically low unemployment, 50 year low unemployment, historically low inflation. The stock market was breaking record after record. And the United States in February completed its 128th month of continuous economic growth. A record for the country that was set then of 10 and a half years of uninterrupted economic growth month after month. And at the same time, this is what's happening to our labor market. And again, to come back to Martha Ross's work, we are simultaneously growing millions and millions of low wage workers. So that's a disaster, right? You could plot that other growth trend there against that one, and that tells a very sad story. So what happened? How did this happen? How did we enter a period of sustained growth that didn't make things better for most people? That's a big story, and I'm not going to get into that, and that's not the focus of our event. But I do think there's three things worth mentioning because there are things that we need to address. First was obviously the loss of millions of good paying union jobs and manufacturing that have just never been replaced, right? And people are still talking about what's happened to those manufacturing jobs and what we're going to do about it. Also, this is the result of decades of relentless focus by corporate America on minimizing labor costs and maximizing shareholder value. Sort of a dogma that has taken hold that has led to just constant cost cutting on labor. And then you combine all of that with just a lack of strong public policies over the last 20 years to support workers, right? Our failure to raise the federal minimum wage, for example, which still stands at $7.25 an hour, and the lack of resources to enforce labor standards and worker protections and the erosion of worker collective bargaining rights. So this is a disaster, and it's unsustainable, and it has to change. So how do we reverse course? Well, the first thing that we can do is to come to an agreement about what a good job is. So everybody's working on these good jobs groups, ourselves included. And I think what's really exciting right now is that there's a growing convergence and a growing consensus around what a good job is. And that convergence is around sort of the idea, too, that it's not just about a wage, that a good job is something we need to think about much more comprehensively, and it's something that workers, employers, and government together are all going to be necessary in order to create. So this particular definition was created by the Good Jobs Champion Group earlier this month and published, and there's a group convened by the Aspen Institute and the Families and Workers Fund. And I think it's a very good definition, and this has been signed on to by hundreds of labor, business, and research and other stakeholders, including ourselves here at New America. But what this really does is sort of really round out everything about a good job. Good jobs are jobs that provide stability, mobility, and voice to workers. They pay family sustaining wages, and they include critical benefits such as healthcare and paid leave. They're accessible to all regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or any other demographic consideration. They create opportunities for career advancement and economic mobility, and workers with good jobs have a voice in their workplace, and they are free to organize and advocate for their collective interests. That does not describe the majority of jobs in the United States today. It actually describes a very small share of them. And it's not just the groups outside the government that are interested in defining what a good job is. Now the government has really, under the Biden administration, has gotten into this too, and they're being very vocal about what they think a good job is, and being very vocal about making sure, as they put out these federal dollars, and making sure that the communities where this is going have this definition of what a good job is. So again, what's noteworthy about this definition, which is an abbreviated one of what's online. I encourage you to go check it out. But again, there's so much overlap, again, between these two, and note the similarities. And also the shared emphasis on worker voice and worker agency as part of the definition of a good job. So a definition is a great thing, and it's certainly a starting point, and it gives us a North Star, and it's a good thing to have. But now what's next, and what's next really is what we're going to talk about a little bit more, and some of our speakers are going to talk about it, so I don't want to steal their thunder. But it's that there are ways to use the government's funding and procurement and purchasing power to build a good job strategy, and we're already seeing that in these pieces of legislation, and increasingly we're going to be seeing it in what state and local leaders are doing. Things like the prevailing wage provisions. This is a standard, a practice in the construction trades that goes back many decades, which requires that workers on a federally funded construction project all make the same wage on that project. And this is usually a union negotiated wage, so it's usually a very high wage. So prevailing wage provisions lift up the wages for all workers and create a floor for them, and they really support then good employers who then can't be undercut by not good employers. The administration has extended prevailing wage provisions into their clean energy investments and into the manufacturing sector, and this is a new place outside of just construction, and that is a big development. There are lots of other ones here about making sure, increasing the tax credit that a potential employer can get if they also agree to train their workers through apprenticeships. Engaging in project labor agreements and local hiring ordinances that say, if you take this money, you have to be willing to hire from this community, from people who live here, and specifically from people who have faced structural disadvantages or discrimination in getting to these jobs. Really exciting new innovations around how to link infrastructure investments to childcare subsidies, and this is particularly important for women to be able to get into the skilled trades, but also for all workers with children, and also innovative strategies around subsidized employment that allow people who might otherwise really struggle to get into the labor market to do so. So these are all really important. This was not part of the conversation five years ago. It wasn't part of the conversation 15 years ago. It's a big change in emphasis about how to use federal infrastructure dollars. I just want to end now on my last slide, which is to talk about some work that we're doing here in New America that we've just kicked off and are undertaking with some wonderful partners, and that's focused on the policies, our policies and systems of workforce development. As I noted earlier, part of what has been happening over the last couple of years is sort of reckoning with the fact that a lot of what we thought about our economy hasn't been true. Economic growth does not automatically translate into lifting all boats. It doesn't automatically translate into shared prosperity. Our current public workforce system and the laws that support it are built on a similar set of assumptions about how our labor market works and what are the best ways to help job seekers, which tends to be by trying to get them into a job as quickly as possible, maybe with some training, but the emphasis is on getting folks into jobs. And the problem with that is that unfortunately it puts our workforce development system and the many fantastic practitioners in it who wish that they could do more, it puts them in the position too often of reinforcing pathologies in our labor market, of mapping on to structural inequities and access to good jobs, particularly for black men and women of color. So this seems like a really good time to revisit some of the assumptions that underlie our policies of workforce development and ask ourselves what would it mean to have a workforce development system that is grounded in principles of economic justice, that intentionally advances racial and gender equity in the labor market, and that builds worker voice and power. So we formed a loose group of people and organizations that you can see here on the slide and we're calling ourselves the Good Jobs Collaborative. And yes, it's not original, but it seems to be working for everyone else, so we are not going to stray from that. And if you'd like to learn more, if you're part of our online audience, just stick your email in the chat and we're happy to follow up with you. And anyone who's here, of course, we're happy to chat with you about it. So with that, let's start hearing from folks who are doing this work out in the field and can share with us just what it looks like to actually do this and to build a good jobs economy in your community. With that, I'm going to turn, I think some people are going to appear at the door here magically, and I am going to do that. And my wonderful colleague, Lul Tesfai, is going to appear along with the Mayor of Rochester, Minnesota, Kim Norton. My name is Lul Tesfai. I'm a senior policy advisor with the Center on Education and Labor here at New America, and I'm thrilled to be joined by Mayor Kim Norton. Mayor Norton is the Mayor of Rochester, Minnesota. She has held this position since January 2019. And before becoming the city's first female mayor, she has a long history of public service and leadership, including 10 years in the Minnesota State Legislature and 10 years on the Rochester Public School Board. Really excited to be in conversation with you today, Mayor Norton, because I know you, just like so many other city leaders, have been focused on how to advance policies and practices that create better jobs for community residents who have really struggled during the pandemic, but even before. And that's for good reason. We know that economic mobility in this country has been declining. Stagnant wages and inflation has made it harder for a lot of residents to really just make ends meet, particularly low-income individuals in communities of color. And so I want to hear a little bit from you today about what you're doing to make sure that people have access to good jobs and are able to advance economically. But first, could you just tell us a little bit about your city and your residents? Sure. So I'm the Mayor of Rochester, Minnesota, which is in the upper Midwest. We have about 124,000 people in our community, and we host the state's largest employer, which is Mayo Clinic. So we are primarily focused on the world of health care. We're about 73% white. We have an average median income because we're a health care community that's actually quite high. It's around $76,000 for an individual or $98,000 for a family. On average, it's the medium. I'm sorry, the medium. We have a 6% poverty rate. I've seen it posted as high as 9%. So relatively low poverty. But if you look at our black population in particular, what you will find is the average median income is closer to 44,000, and 40% of our black population lives in poverty. So we have great disparities in our community, and we also know that those disparities were exacerbated by the pandemic and that women and BIPOC women in particular were the last and are still many of them at home and not back in the workforce. So that was kind of the impetus for what we've done and what we'll talk about. I would say one other thing that you might want to know about our community is we have something called the Destination Medical Center Initiative, which was a $6 billion initiative that Mayo Clinic and private Mayo Clinic, it was their idea, I guess, and they got legislative support for $585 million of infrastructure in order to accommodate a $6 billion economic development and growth in our community. So we were already, prior to the pandemic, starting this infrastructure replacement and upgrades in our city center and a little beyond that between the two Mayo Clinic campuses, the hospital in the downtown area. So we were already poised to have growth and development in the construction. We needed construction workers. We knew that about 2,700 a year for the next 10-plus years and we're also a growing community. Thank you for sharing that background. It was really interesting to hear that you've been thinking about the need to improve your infrastructure and Mary Alice talked a little bit about some of the federal investments that have been made and will flow down to cities and states to support infrastructure development. So I know it'll be an even bigger priority. Could you talk a little bit about what pathways to infrastructure jobs look like in your community? Well, as I said, we have a great need for those jobs, but what we were finding is that we have 16,000 BIPOC women that live in our community and less than 1% of them were working in this area. And so we determined when we had the opportunity to apply for the Global Mayors Challenge Grant for the Bloomberg Philanthropies kind of put out there for Mayors to apply, we decided that let's focus on the people that needed upward mobility that had been impacted the worst during the pandemic and provide them opportunities in an area we knew that we had a need for and that was growing and that provided really good careers. Because when you have a guaranteed investment for 10 or 20 years in your community because of this Destination Medical Center initiative, that's not a job, that's a career. That's 20 years. That's a 20-year plan. We're in year 10 right now. So we know that we had an opportunity for people and what we did then was spend a year researching, looking at quantitative and qualitative data of our community and tried to determine what were the needs. How are we going to get women into that line of work? Because it did, we have healthcare, of course. There's a lot of healthcare jobs and so Mayo Clinic and our community are already working on pathways for healthcare. We have a program called Bridges to Healthcare that's quite successful and we looked at that program and tried replicating it to an extent but we knew that we didn't have the answers. Why weren't women going into construction and built environment careers? So we brought them to the table. And I think that's really the story that's worth telling about the work that we're doing is it wasn't someone in our administration or in the construction industry getting a great idea until they say, here's what you need to do. It was bringing women in our community to the table to say, what do you need? What's missing? And we learned a lot in that eight months to a year of investigation, talking to women, we learned a lot. And then they got to be part of the team to devise our plan moving forward. And this co-design process that you ended up implementing, it was something that you had previously used in the city. Can you talk a little bit more about how you had previously used it and how you thought it fitting to apply in a policy context? Absolutely. So we're committed to the democratic process, of course, which involves getting the community, all members of the community, not just those with the loudest voices or the most ability to reach us. We decided as a community doing this design work on our roads and our city center, we decided to use something called co-design. So we found members of various communities, underrepresented communities including disability and others at various income levels, brought them to the table and did some training and then sent them back to their communities to talk, had a series of questions, had information gathering, if you will, and then they would bring that back to the table. So it's an exchange back and forth. It's having a small cohort of individuals who, when they did their work, were impacting hundreds and hundreds of more individuals that we probably didn't have the time or even place to get together to have a good discussion. So we had been doing that for our road work and our plaza design and we decided to bring it back to the community in a different way in that setting policy. So we brought them to the table on this project and also for our Sustainable Resiliency Task Force and utilized the co-design process there. I did provide, we have one booklet which can be passed around here so you can look at it after we've done this work now for the last couple of years, we do have a booklet but we also have it and I believe you have it online so you can get an electronic copy of what we've done and it has some case studies in there that talks about the process but it was absolutely fabulous. When we started it and we brought the women in to talk with our construction workers and an architect and a union laborer and others, we brought them in, it was like dead silence. It was quiet, it was really uncomfortable. By the end of their eight months or so of working together it was dynamic and they shared information and I should also mention we paid these women to come to the table because the men are already there because they're working and employed and they were getting paid but we decided we're using them as experts of their own experience and helping us design our community and they deserve to be paid too so we did and have continued to pay these co-designers and kind of ironically but wonderfully at least three of them that I know of are current city DEI director one of our Destination Medical Center a new staff member there and someone in the built environment now were co-designers that got hired because people could see the competence they had the opportunity to work one-on-one with them so it's been really exciting women in the built environment called and told us she's just put a down payment on a house for she and her children so that was really exciting even before we have really rolled out the whole plan to see our co-designers benefiting from the experience. I think that's so wonderful and it really speaks to the importance of partnerships which are going to be absolutely critical to make sure that these investments in infrastructure across the country are really benefiting the people who need it the most. Now we typically when we talk about infrastructure we are referring to roads and bridges hard infrastructure but there is an extensive list of other critical forms of infrastructure that are really necessary in communities and I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about some of those other elements of infrastructure that have been really important to your city and your residents. Well I would say throughout this process of bringing our women, our co-designers at the table is we learned a lot about their needs that maybe and it is infrastructure but there are needs and barriers which we can talk about with some of the culture clashes we have a lot of pretty robust immigrant population in town they have special needs that aren't being addressed by our community let alone the workforce issues but childcare, the infrastructure for childcare is just absolutely huge for these families and we talked back in the green room that we really do need to look at culturally competent and culturally specific childcare for these women who want to get into the workforce but really want to make sure that their children are cared for in a manner and a method that is comfortable and familiar to them and their children and so that's one example of an infrastructure that has to be in place in order for women to get to work and to be able to be successful on their jobs flexibility in careers is another that we heard a lot about sometimes our structures are historic and we continue to do them that way because we've always done them that way and we hear from the industries we need employees and yet they're not looking at themselves and saying what might we change is that ours or is there some sort of flexibility that we could put in our role as an employer that would then be more welcoming and convenient to people in order to get new workers on the job and so we're having to work with those kinds of issues as well and I don't know if you have others that you're interested in that I... Well no, that's something that we've heard in conversations with other city leaders and community leaders and workers themselves just the importance of addressing the overall supports and need for childcare in order to really be present and participate in the workforce what do you see as the role of cities in supporting those needs that are pretty much universal? It's been interesting because what I often hear from people who push back is it's all market driven cities shouldn't be involved in business in the market and yet we know that the market has not been successful for everyone and something has to intervene to change that pathway, that historic pathway that has been successful for some but not for everyone so for us the Global Mayors Challenge Grant was an opportunity and believe me it was a stretch to think we could compete against mayors and cities all over the world but we felt passionate about the work that we were doing and apparently they felt that the work we're doing and who knew the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act would pass when we were working on this because our work now is more relevant than we anticipated because we were looking at it really from a very selfish perspective we had $585 million of state funds to fix our infrastructure which we're all suffering from aging infrastructure across the country so we were looking at it very selfishly but now we are laying the groundwork I hope for a replicable process and procedure that other cities can do to see that a city with a little bit of help and support and frankly if we get this moving my hope is that the systems will change whether it be the education systems the training systems the child care systems there's a lot of systems in place and the workforce will change in order to accommodate a new and important and necessary workforce in the future so we're laying the groundwork but the cities can't do it all and we do need partners our nonprofits are huge partners grants philanthropy is also something that is going to have to help us along I think Thank you for that Mayor Norton I know we have an audience in the room it's online I want to pause to see if there are any questions A quiet audience Thank you Bridget if you'd like to You need to repeat it The question was could you talk a little bit more about child care since that was identified as a key barrier to share a little bit more about what your team is doing Yeah we're just getting started on this part we spent a year doing the work then the grant you know the winners were announced we were one of three in the country and we're thrilled and now we're hiring and laying the groundwork to move ahead one of the things that not just in child care but also beyond that that's really important to me is not just getting people in a job in a built environment that's important yes but it's getting those same women able to be entrepreneurs and open their own businesses right so we're starting with one and that's what the grant was for we also won $750,000 in federal earmarks for this project which I hope we can layer on the top of that for these entrepreneur jobs and frankly daycare is an entrepreneur job particularly if we're talking culturally sensitive culturally specific daycare and then the National League of Cities an organization that most cities belong to has a couple programs communities cities of opportunity which we're involved in and inclusive entrepreneurship and so we're having a child we're doing informal entrepreneurship track an ecosystem accelerator track and we didn't get into the early childhood track but we're going to mirror it and do it anyway because we feel it is so important and we and I'm not sure how exactly we're still working with National League of Cities to make it work and they're committed to helping us because we have to build on the grant it's not the grant itself that's going to solve all the problems we have to build on that to build this entrepreneurship network in so that's kind of how we're looking at it as entrepreneurs as entrepreneurs as business owners as we move ahead just mention a couple other things that we learned in that phase of meeting with and talking with our community and through that co-design process women prefer to work in cohorts they don't want to be the only one on the work site uncomfortable if there's a problem on the work site they don't want to be the one raising their hand and saying there's a problem because it might affect their ability to keep and maintain that job so one of the things that we're providing is navigators on site both for the business as well as for the women so as we move through this pilot project it's going to be more than a pilot but as we move through the project the starting phase will have navigators for the women that can be on the work site and help be their voice and we're making we're not making our businesses have agreed to go through a diversity assessment prior to bringing the women on and they're going to have a navigator and the two of those navigators will work together you know paying attention to the needs of each of their group that they represent and coming to solutions that are workable for both so that's another component I thought might be worth mentioning and another one was the familial influence we have a pretty robust group of immigrant families in our town with cultural barriers that I wasn't aware of it's like you have to go into this type of field it has to be a helping caring field and we need to find ways to not just the individual the young lady I spoke with was telling me well I may want to do that but if it isn't acceptable or my family doesn't understand that job or think it's appropriate for me or a woman they're not going to pay for it right so we're going to remove that barrier of cost but we also have to know we have to work with the families it's not just that student or that young woman it's working with that woman and her whole family throughout the process so those are just a couple other examples of things of these barriers that I don't think some of the traditional methods being used right now are necessarily addressing that came out in our analysis now it's great feedback to receive I know we have another question Hi my name is Amy Cardell I'm with CompTIA the Computer Trade Industry Association and Mayor Norton I really appreciate your co-design approach it was very interesting for us to hear those insights and I think many of them affect so many of the jobs in the tech sector that we're looking at I was curious as well about the co-design of the community or your research that showed what sectors the jobs will be in because obviously you talked about construction and you're a healthcare hub but you know my secret able plan is of course technology jobs so I'd love to hear what you found there too My community as I mentioned before is definitely healthcare focused we also have been home to the largest IBM manufacturing plant which has now changed over time so it's not manufacturing any longer so we have a lot of technology workers in town and we're trying to work that in I guess I would say we've just had an analysis done of the needs of our city and also are looking at what jobs are going to be out not outsourced work from home in the future and so we're trying to look at our city center all the money we're spending on building that out and saying do we need to make changes based on what we're learning during the pandemic and thinking about the future of city centers and so we know we're going to need more than just construction workers and that is the area that we're focused on but we think the co-design method can be used in other areas as well we think just like we used it for physical infrastructure now we're using it for policy infrastructure for our communities and I think it can be replicated into any industry frankly but it is purposeful it takes time and you have to I think if you're going to this is the message we heard we could ask time and time again this was our community our women saying we could ask time and time again for our opinion and then nothing happens right so people don't want to be asked and then nothing happens so again they are part of the design team not just we want your opinion and then goodbye right I think that's part of what makes this so important but I think it can be transferred and I hope people will try it and as I said we just put together the framework in this booklet or online booklet so I don't really have a hard answer yet because we're just at the beginning but I do think it's transferable but it's really helpful to hear kind of your initial thinking even early on in this process and then we have another question Norton thanks so much for being here Shailen Jotishi from New America my question is about how we can go about funding these kinds of efforts at other cities you know it's really great that your community won the grant and you mentioned partnerships with non-profits and philanthropies but you also mentioned employers and getting them to look inward and think about what they can do and I'm curious if you have advice for mayors and city leaders and other communities and regions who might not have the foundations or the philanthropies but do you have employers as partners have you seen anything that works well to incentivize employer financial contributions to these kinds of efforts and co-design and sort of how do you fund that as a city leader and as a mayor thank you so much I would say we were fortunate and that we had the Destination Medical Center initiative out there which did give us money not for some for people but mostly for the infrastructure so and we had a model in place to do that so I would say the other piece and we talked about this in the back room is that at the start of the pandemic we needed to make sure everyone was taken care of in our community so we met as part of our nonprofit consortium the city jumped in the county jumped in and the chamber frankly came to those meetings as well the Chamber of Commerce and we met every other week with all the nonprofits in our community online and that continued throughout the whole pandemic and what was fascinating and it wasn't so much about an infrastructure change that this may come to bear but I think this idea of building that really strong partnership with all of every one of them but we would have 60 or 70 or 80 people from time to time that major we have a lot of nonprofits in town but the major nonprofits would come and we could talk to each other about where we saw a whole who's going to help this group or we've identified this problem does anyone out there have the capacity to address it and so on these regular meetings these regular calls we were able to say can I help feed that group or I can help provide housing or get a job or you know so because we were all working together I would say the challenge has been keeping that going post pandemic we do meet monthly but I think it's trickled off a little bit and I think you know here moving ahead into the next year we need to make sure that that stays strong we were fortunate that during the pandemic we had that and we need to continue to do it and I do think of course Mayo Clinic is a major employer they know that having a strong community and a strong economy helps them right other businesses know that too and we were so fortunate we had an architect we had a construction company we had the unions who identified their own needs and said we're going to come to the table and help you because it helps us too right so I think yes I think absolutely getting businesses on board it's helping them if we have a if we have a project and there's nobody that can provide the work you know they're in trouble we're in trouble so it takes us all yeah really identifying the common needs that you all have to identify some common solutions together and we've done that in healthcare in our community in the past of course because of Mayo Clinic the Bridges to Healthcare programs have been highly successful they target new immigrants and refugees who come to town help with language training get them through training and again they provide one-on-one supports so if you're struggling at school there's always someone right there who knows and we're going to be doing that as well as we get people into the training whether it be a union training or whether it be RCTCR community college or they want to be an architect and go to a four year university because we know we need architects too there will be someone there that will be there to help support them if they need it do we have another question hi hello I have just a quick question I actually builds on the end of your response there I'm wondering how much of this work is being targeted to young adults and in particular getting young adults into some of these fields that you've mentioned infrastructure here at New America we lead a national working group on youth apprenticeship and work based learning and the skilled trades and we hear from some folks from Minnesota based and from other partners around the country that it can be very difficult to recruit young people into these roles both because they may not necessarily know about them or know how to access them but there are also regulations and sort of insurance barriers to hiring younger people before they graduate from high school so I'd love to hear any strategies that you all have used to try to target younger learners whether it's specifically through this infrastructure activity or you mentioned earlier in your remarks just trying to reduce cost barriers and access barriers to secondary training generally for young adults Yes, all of that We did learn in the interview process early on about we did interviews and I actually have the sheet here of the questions we asked people most people had not even heard the names of probably two-thirds, three-quarters of the trades and the jobs in the industry they didn't know what they were I said well how can I you know do something where they don't even know what the term means it's not a job they don't even know what it is so we identified that early on so we're looking at it at several levels the industry level and getting people that may have gone through the training because we've been trying to do a little training before but working through the K-12 system with career awareness some hands-on experiences we do have a program the tech program in our community so our high school students can come out and do some technical careers some training and some of those are like welding some of the skills that we need in the community so we have that for high school and we need to grow that and also outside of the school setting and that's an area that's really fascinating the Girl Scouts in the state of Minnesota do a wonderful I went this summer, it was up in the Twin Cities it's called Power Girls it's a week-long camp where they stay up in the Twin Cities and it was for southern Minnesota so I went up and experienced it and there was a day on electricity and there was a day on carpentry and each day was a different trade and the girl spent the entire day building something computer cables that they could take home and use for their computer and ethernet cables so it was hands-on what we learned, however and again, the best idea was to bother to ask some of the families what we found out in a different setting in our community is that for many families particularly immigrant families overnights aren't a thing they don't do overnights not to their neighbors, not to their friends it's certainly not to a camp up in the Twin Cities and so the camp was primarily for white children not 100% but you know and that's great because we want all women in construction so that's fine but how are we reaching our BIPOC community? We're not so we are actually going to work with the Girl Scouts this summer in Rochester at a day camp that will be similar but it will be a day camp for kids in the region who can come in and experience the same thing and go home at night so we can remove that barrier of overnights that literally none of us were aware it was a thing so it's that kind of learning and again if you bring people with lived experience and bring people from different cultures to the table they can tell you that and you don't have to wait 10 years to find out that the kids in the class that didn't come to my daughter's overnight for her birthday were because it's culturally uncomfortable and I didn't know that, right? I have one final question for you and this has been such a really great discussion but our conversation is going to be followed by discussion between the deputy secretary of labor, deputy secretary of transportation we will also hear from someone from the department of commerce three agencies that are a part of the broader federal effort to make sure that these historic investments in infrastructure projects are also leading to really wonderful infrastructure jobs for communities, particularly marginalized communities and so I'd love to hear from you your reflections on the role that the federal government should play but also state governments in making sure that we are effectively leveraging these resources that we can expect over the next several years. It really is an exciting time we're working on this and as I said kind of surprise, infrastructure and there's money available for all of us and I'm busy trying to get infrastructure dollars into my communities, you know which means more of a workforce but it's just absolutely vital that we do this and it's not just vital that we have an influx of money for infrastructure or for electrification or for energy transition, yes that's all wonderful but this is an opportunity to make sure that every single person in your community gets to benefit from that and not the same people that have always historically benefited but we have to do the work in the cities and in our communities and in our jobs and in our nonprofits to make sure that we can provide that upward mobility to everybody in this country. We haven't had this kind of opportunity that I am aware of for a long long time maybe ever so my hope is that the work that we're doing can be replicable, that other communities can be, you know, see it as a model that they might want to do in order to take advantage of the wonderful infrastructure that is so vital at a time in our country infrastructure is aging right and we all are going to need to do that work and this will allow us to do it and let everybody in our community benefit. Yeah, thank you. Are there existing structures within your state that you're tapping into or that could be, you know, leveraged to really facilitate the sort of coordination that's necessary not just at the city level but at the regional level and then across the state. Building those out, we've started having meetings with some of the, for instance our state union boards after we were identified as one of the you know, 15 global marriage challenge cities. We made those calls and we've had some of those initial meetings to say how can we all work together and make this not just about Rochester but changing the way we do things to benefit people all over and I would say there have been efforts underway and the one point that I made is well if less than 1% of the construction workers in my community are BIPOC women then we've got a lot more work to do. So it's not to say that anybody who wasn't the best efforts and intents weren't there but it wasn't working and so we're hoping that through our efforts and the co-design model that we can start making sure that the efforts that people are making pay off for the people that we're trying to provide upward mobility to at this extraordinary time in our history. Thank you Mayor Norton, please join me in welcoming Mary Alice. Hi everyone it's so good to be here and we are super lucky to have these really dynamic administration officials who I'm just going to call Julie and Polly because you have long handles so I hope that's okay. So yeah, this is a really interesting time obviously in economic development because a few industries in particular are being supercharged with a lot of federal investment and there is an appropriate focus Mary Alice outlined on making sure those jobs are decent and in the past there has been a focus in federal contracting on the lowest bid wins because that's an efficient way to spend our government dollars and I think changing that paradigm is a real challenge and I think it's the sort of generational commitment that's been underway for many years. So I first just thought I would start out broad and ask you guys since your roles are different how do you see your role in this larger project of trying to make sure jobs in general or specifically those supported by federal dollars are family sustaining with you know infused with worker power, well paid with long term retirement security all the things we've talked about. Maybe I'll let the MacArthur genius kick us off here. Hang on her every work. Now Polly can explain to me because we've been working together closely since we came into this administration together but thank you so much for the question thank you for having me it's so good to be here with my friends at New America and also Deputy Secretary Trottenberg and I so let me say a couple of things one is that you know we keep talking about this like unprecedented level of federal investment and just to really like hit home what we're talking about the amount of investment that we are currently making in infrastructure just in roads and bridges and highways is more than what was invested in during the Eisenhower administration when the national highway system was built the amount that we are investing in innovation through like chips and science is more than the investments that were made during President Kennedy's administration when we sent a man to the moon and the amount that we're investing now in just you know climate there's really no comparison to any prior administration so it really is an incredible time I think in a public exciting time to think about how federal investment can really shape private you know other local city, state and community opportunities for us at the Department of Labor we really see ourselves as partners to those to our sister agencies who are charged with putting out that funding and specifically on a couple of fronts one is on what's already been talked about today is job quality right this is a moment in which you know it's the right thing to do at any time but it's the right thing to do sort of by the things that that you mentioned right sometimes you know history tells us the lowest bid is not always the in the long run the lowest cost right it's not always the best investment and so really thinking about how good jobs are part of building this future that we want is you know I think this is an opportunity for that it's also a moment in which workers are you know we've seen a shift in how workers in worker power right we've seen you know people talk about the great resignation but the reality is that more people have been higher there have been higher than there have been resignations in the last couple of years which means that people are really leaving bad jobs for better jobs and leaving better jobs for even better jobs so this is a moment which workers are you know really demanding their see the table they're organizing in unprecedented ways and so job quality becomes a greater imperative because of that so we view our role as helping to support our sister agencies in having good job standards attached to federal funding again recognize that federal funding can really drive behavior that's why our secretary secretary Walsh launched the good jobs initiative which has MOUs with various agencies we talk about that a little bit more today the other piece is our work to make sure that these good jobs that are created are distributed in a way that advances equity equitable outcomes that includes communities that have been for so long excluded even in the best of times and so really looking at how we you know use this moment not just to advance policy goals not just to create good jobs but to really combat systemic racism and other forms of exclusion because a lot of these jobs are being created have not been equitably available to all communities so really thinking about how we do that in a sustained way is very exciting for us well let me just follow on and Mary Alice New America thanks for having us here today it's great to be here with with my colleague Julie and Lydia from the New York Times thank you thanks to all the journalists who are doing amazing work in these challenging political times I think just to underscore a bit of what Julie's talking about in particular I'll speak about it from the transportation context I think you know as a sector transportation is one of the most highly unionized and comes sort of comes to the table even before the big infrastructure bill with some statutory labor protections including a couple that are very well known prevailing wage and Davis Bacon which you know already set sort of a foundational stage in in terms of wages and working closely with the unionized sector in transit so you know we start off luckily in a place where we have a lot of good jobs and the infrastructure bill has given us the opportunity to expand you know sort of the transportation workforce both internally at US DOT for starters and then obviously in transportation agencies all over the country as well as in private construction firms etc you know our focus has particularly been as this extraordinary set of opportunities arises exactly what Julie is talking about how do we make sure that we don't miss this moment to get to all the communities that have not been well served in transportation in terms of employment opportunities training opportunities and also on the procurement side in procurement and wealth building opportunities and that's where I think our partnership with DOL and our two secretaries Buddha judge and Walsh but also particularly Julie because she has been such a leader in this field for so many years of thinking through we've got the money we have at least on the transportation side a strong statutory framework but how do we now sort of overcome you know generations of barriers to women to people of color from getting into those high paid jobs those union jobs and it has been I think one of the most exciting parts of our partnership to really dig in on that question and tackle it in a real kind of multi dimensional way from looking at pre-apprentice training to looking at how the hiring is happening to looking at all the ways that we can in within our statutory authorities use our grant making process to nudge along more diverse workforces local hiring a lot of the practices that we think will move the needle and I would just say one thing Lydia I think the good news is and look I on the New York City side was involved in a lot of procurements and this question about lowest bid and value for money and I think there is now a growing transition into recognizing that really good project delivery is about a lot of different value propositions including what you do to train your local workforce so I'm encouraged that that I think is now starting to become and we're seeing that in places all over the country and not just sort of you know the big cities of California but places you might not expect it a recognition particularly with this level of transformative funding we got to do more in the end and just get a bunch of projects at the lowest possible cost we want to lift up communities and bring a whole new generation of diverse workers into the transportation field and it's really good to have a concrete conversation about what this actually looks like and I'm sure there's lots of local government officials listening and wondering you know how do I crack these proposals and everything so tell me more from both of you guys' ends of this what it actually looks like are you doing requirements is it just sort of nudges is it like a suggestion that maybe we'll look upon this favorably is it a point system how are these principles being infused into the leverage of federal dollars? It varies a lot from program to program you know both the statutory requirements the legislative history and how we do this but I'll give a couple of very affirmative examples that I think are exciting we have a program at our federal transit administration which is called low and no emissions program and it's to give grants particularly now we're really focused on converting the nation's bus fleet from diesel to electric it's going to have huge environmental benefits but as part of that program the grant recipients are allowed to take a proportion of those funds and use them to work with their workforce to train them in these new type of vehicles and that's something we're partnering with DOL on so there it's a very affirmative statutory part of the program with dollars set aside we have another program for rail grants the program's called Chrissy and there we are allowed to give affirmative grants for workforce development we just gave an 8 million dollar grant to Amtrak to work on a whole new training and apprenticeship program for rail workers in our other programs it very much runs the gamut but in a lot of the discretionary grant programs we've been able to put in language where essentially we're talking about you know again training, project labor agreements and a bunch of good labor practices both to grow and diversify the workforce and to ensure that they have appropriate labor protections and we can look at that as a way to sort of give them extra you know basically extra credit in the grant applications and I'm happy to say look we're sort of the first year in on doing some of these grant programs with some of that language and I think we got a great response we probably have seen you know whereas in previous years we might have just a handful of grantees that had written what they were going to do on the labor front we're now seeing probably close to a third doing that and I think in coming years we're going to see a lot more so we're really excited about the progress there it's you know it's a learning experience for all of us but you know and again I think we've seen and I know Julie can talk about what's been exciting is we've seen examples of communities in really diverse places Louisville, Kentucky is doing an incredible project working with their local community so you know not just in the places that we're going to see it I'll just build on that Polly because I always cite to your point that in including language in your notices of funding opportunities you have seen some shift in the applications that you get and again that is the power of leveraging federal investments to reflect the values of this administration and this president has been very very clear that building an economy that's centered on the well-being of workers and finding good union jobs is very much how we build a how we build back and how we you know create not just a strong recovered economy but a resilient one I think the other thing I'll just add to that is the other thing that we've done in addition to working with Polly and our other other departments putting out federal funding in terms of what kind of language can be included in grants is really trying to give concrete examples of what this really looks like on the ground the other good news in addition to everything that Polly said which I agree with is that we don't have to invent a lot of the stuff out of a whole cloth there are examples of what we're talking about sector-based labor management partnerships with true worker voice that's focused on reaching out to communities that would not otherwise get the jobs much less get into the training program there's examples of that and we have an opportunity now we don't need to do it on the federal government level we should reward, incentivize that kind of good work that's happened on the ground so as another example of a place that people might not expect there's been really good work done by Jobs to Move America along with a company called New Flyer where they basically entered into a community benefits agreement to make sure to hire folks from the local community to build electric buses I mean so how do we kind of reward and incentivize that kind of behavior so that it's scaled across the entire economy is really exciting so presenting specific examples of things that are working, connecting people so that they can learn from one another it's something that we've spent a lot of time doing we did a good job summit which Polly very kindly came to speak at where we brought together folks working on the ground at cities in states right between unions and employers and intermediaries and sector leaders to talk about what they're doing and I think sharing those kinds of examples is a key part of how we get where we want to be so I hear a lot of reward, incentivize showcase provide extra grants if you do this thing but not a lot of requiring mandating et cetera and I'm wondering if there's a hesitation to do that if there's a trade off between getting procurement contracts out the door in a timely fashion and making sure that all of these good things are part of them well I just think I think you have to look at carefully for each agency at what we're allowed to do statutorily I mean that's usually the limiting factor here and again as I sort of said at the outset you know we have a couple of long standing statutory tools in the transportation sector I mean we have prevailing wage if you're using federal dollars on a project you have to pay a prevailing wage which is you know typically a very good wage in terms of raising a family and having a middle class Al Ditto Davis Bacon another provision we have 13C which affects how we work with Department of Labor with transit workers so those are very strong statutory foundations beyond that I think you have to be again as a federal agency use every tool in your disposal but you have to be somewhat careful about exceeding your statutory mandate and I think you know one thing some of your audience may have seen something we're very you know we're proud of but it's proved controversial is our our federal highway administration put out actually an internal memo talking about what particularly was the vision for formula dollars where we as an agency have sort of far less discretion talking about the workforce pieces climate pieces you name it and it's it's proved controversial you know with real pushback on Capitol Hill you know accusing us of potentially overstepping our statutory you know authority so I think you have to find that sweet spot and I think one thing I think we're proud of being in this administration I think we've leaned in really hard wherever we can to try and really make the case and set up you know a structure that's going to incentivize what we're all talking about here today which is you know a diverse well-trained workforce that's working on these infrastructure projects and hopefully you know starting a whole new set of career paths for folks as well as again I want to just hit up also on the procurement side doing a lot to up our DBE goals and making sure that women and own a minority owned firms really get a piece of the contracting work and can create that generational wealth so I would say I think we we push as far as we can given our statutory authorities but Congress also obviously has a say in how these programs are designed and implemented to add on that no I mean I think that's right you know for us at the Department of Labor we we didn't get any of the funding in terms of you know these bills and so our work has really been in support I think you know Polly's absolutely right that there are places where there are statutory requirements like prevailing wage which we think are very very important and really invaluable and then there's other places where you know the the nudge the incentivize and then like I said there's the even soft like you know how do we demonstrate what is possible and demonstrate that it's actually really good in community so that even where it's voluntary we're more more folks are likely to do it right I think it's easier that people are not going to be able to enjoy the safe roads and new bridges and you know infrastructure in this administration is broader than roads and bridges right the broadband and the clean water flowing from your pipes if you don't have the economic security that comes with a good job and so recognizing that that is ultimately what's best for you know to make the investments go as far as they can you know we're hopeful that if we show how it can be done that there will be more that you know that it will be done and it will be looking back my ten years from now we will say that you know it didn't happen just because we required it but it did happen because it was the right thing to do and it made it easy to yeah so I mean um well taken that there are statutory limits and that Davis Bacon and the service contract actors were super powerful and have made these jobs better jobs over the years and and not to the transportation sector that one of the most unionized sectors in the economy and we start off from a place where you know more to do but where transportation jobs are pretty traditionally unionized and therefore good wages, good benefits you know good lifelong training well let me do a slight tangent question before getting to the real other question but um those statutes do tend to um in my experience um fall apart a little bit on when things get to like contracting and subcontracting and enforcement and making sure that everybody truly is um enjoying the benefits of those laws um or sometimes they don't totally extend to like concessionaires you know folks you work at the Pentagon and at the McDonald's inside um so are are you doing as much as you can to make sure that even those laws benefit as many people whose wages are ultimately paid by federal tax dollars as you can well I think you're you're sort of getting into a bigger question here and one that I think is a really good one and it's increasingly I think becoming a campaign I know Unite now and other unions around the country have been looking at you know one place they've been looking at we've been working with them on is what's happening at airports which is exactly that question which is a lot of airports get a lot of federal grants um you know typically you know they'll be an airport operator that is maybe a public authority maybe to private authority and then is contracting out a certain amount of airport uh you know certain more airport concessions and other things and looking at the potential nexus there you know again you have to look a bit at least for DOT at the you know sort of our statutory authorities um you know where an entity is a direct recipient of federal dollars we have a lot of you know a lot of strings we can pull where um you know they're using their dollars for one thing and then they have contracting in another area there's not always the same nexus but listen I think we intellectually we totally get where those campaigns are coming from and we want to see if there are ways that we can make progress there and I think ideally when an entity or an ecosystem is getting a lot of federal dollars we should figure out a way make sure that all the jobs that are involved there um you know are getting the right you know the right set of wages benefits etc but you know statutorily the further removed the dollars sort of get from what an agency is directly given out the less you have necessarily potentially in uh you know the kind of hooks that you have when the dollars are correct I mean it's just such an important point and so I just want to thank you for raising it you know I think as much as we um celebrate the historic investments and the good things that are being done it's important to take a really clear eye view about the you know very real struggles of working people across our economy and part of it due to the things that you've talked about right subcontracting which for decades has been used as a way to those of the top of the chain from responsibility for workers at the end of that chain now you know this president has taken steps to try to address that too right through executive orders um you know $15 minimum wage across the entire you know for all federal contractors um you know misclassification is another big one right which is a part of this where for a very long time not just individual employers but whole industries have made it a business model to basically strip labor laws by calling people who should be employees independent contractors and so we have just um issued proposed rule to try to reverse the last administration's weakening of of um rules about independent contracting um and you know then that requires enforcement so it's just a really it's just an important reminder of the many challenges in the workplace and the importance of a whole country to different pieces right besides you know just the sort of federal investments we need we need strong labor laws we needed enforcement of those labor laws and we need to you know we you know it's we have a president who's been very clear that workers organizing and the freedom to organize is a really really important part of that equation you're not going to make a pitch for extra appropriations to get this all done that was like a wide open I can't remember what I'm allowed to do so I'm not going to do that fair enough um well this might just at the risk of asking you to do something else you're not allowed to do um so I mean we've established there's limitations on what you can do and I'm just curious to know like what would be the obvious statutory changes to allow you to make these dollars work harder for people I mean I want I want to I think Julie will have a lot of thoughts on that I'll just give sort of one thought I mean we do speak about the big infrastructure pillar it was the bipartisan infrastructure law and look I'm I'm super proud to be part of an administration I say this about President Biden he was a legislator and if you look at what we have accomplished legislatively in the past year and a half the bipartisan infrastructure law the inflation reduction act I mean we have done a you know a fantastic list of legislative accomplished and some of them bipartisan which he's proud of so I think you know I can answer that question but I also want to say you know he is a he is a president who is very much grounded in you know sort of working with the Congress and getting the best we can so I think you know politically just to hit on something Julie said I think one thing that we're finding exciting here is that what we're doing on the ground I think is sort of opening up minds and winning over some hearts and you know I have no doubt that our administration will probably be back again with Congress next year trying to perhaps gain more ground on some of these issues but I want to be careful I don't know that I want to say exactly what the agenda would be but I do think I know this president and our administration were fiercely committed to continuing to make advancements on this and we'll see what the legislative landscape looks like next year but I have a hunch and I'm sure Julie has some thoughts on this you know we will be coming back over and over again legislatively well I'm going to shift a little bit to correct me if I should answer the question more directly but one of the things that I say a lot inside the Department of Labor is what are we doing to unleash our full power the full power we've already been given the full power that we've been given legislatively budgetarily and through other and through other rules right I think often times in government there's a sense that we have to have new things in order to do more and while that is certainly true and I agree again with everything that Polly said there's also a tremendous amount of work that can be done within government agencies to just unleash the full power that we've already been given so as an example right part of the whole conversation about workforce is around the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act or WIOA right which is billions of dollars much of it in formula grants to states around building a workforce right trying to answer this question that is all around us how do we make sure we have the workers to do the things that we want to do and again our answer is you make them good jobs and you focus on equity and you make sure that you are tapping to the full talent of the American workforce but part of that is also making sure that there's innovation and bold innovation going on within the workforce world so we've been really like leaning into how do we make sure that WIOA is utilized in the full creative way that it can be used to support some of these we're talking about sector-based labor management partnerships with job quality and equity at their center and so we have launched a campaign that's called Yes WIOA can that is meant to make it clear to everyone in the WIOA world that there's lots of myths and restrictions that have come up around WIOA that are myths and how do we break those down so that we are again utilizing the resources that are already there I love weird acronym puns that's great so well so the previous discussion with Mayor Norton talks a lot about the importance of care and care jobs as an enabler of people doing jobs you know the original build back better plan had a lot of money for that that was not to make it into final version I know that these are not people you employ Secretary Trottenberg but I'm just wondering both of you like do you think the current flight of federal investments can be kind of leveraged to try to lift up those professions as well even though right now they directly pay for hard infrastructure right well so I think I can say this on behalf of the entire administration President Biden, Vice President Harris were very clear that care is infrastructure as you said as my friend Aijin Poo at the National Divestment Workers Alliance it is the work that makes all of the work possible and so the ambitions in build back better around making sure that we truly invest that infrastructure the same way we invest in other infrastructure was really broad and unfortunately Congress didn't pass it so for us that has meant that we have shifted to try to find other ways of utilizing powers that we have to make sure that there is an investment in care workers that we as we look at who's getting job this whole conversation about making sure that there are women, people of color in these good jobs that we're making does require some amount of making sure that there's a care infrastructure so that people can go to work right and that's partly why in all these workforce development training partnerships that we care about we're also interested in investments in support systems right funding for things like care like transportation and tools other things that are sort of work adjacent things that make work possible and so we have been trying to look at ways to do that we are utilizing and encouraging investments of WIOA dollars and others into care training programs that will both again make sure that we meet the need for care and elevate those care jobs and so there's frankly just a lot more work that needs to be done there and we are we're deeply aware of it and looking at creative ways to certainly one of the other things is coming from California and seeing what local and state entities are doing in creative ways to lean into the need for a strong infrastructure I think there's also again I believe that the federal government should do it all need to do it all or you know or can do it all and so figuring out how we support creative work on the local level in this space is also something that's exciting for us got it you know like daycare centers on you know job sites maybe I'm thinking creatively right so I'm going to take questions soon so people start thinking but in the meantime to give you a chance to think so you know there's as we talked about a ton of dollars coming through the pipeline but if I'm an 18 year old and I'm like answering the call to go build bridges and bike lanes etc what confidence could you give me that these jobs will be around after this cycle of investments like that there will be sustained that we will be entering a you know generations long boom in infrastructure spending because that's a fear I would have yeah I mean I think that fear would be very misplaced we in transportation we actually have an aging workforce so even before we got this big influx of infrastructure dollars I would say to all the young people I came across this is a great field to get into and again for some of the reasons we're talking about here it is actually relatively speaking a highly you know a relatively highly paid and unionized sector with you know look I love transportation I also just think it is a great field to get into and you mentioned some of you know if you care about your city and you want to see bike lanes or you know you want to do something about the aerospace industry it offers a lot of opportunities for really diverse set of careers and I think it is a field that will always always always need talent particularly engineers you know it's interesting I issue you know it's noted I ran New York City DOT for seven years and relied heavily on an amazing set of engineers a lot of them came from other countries you know because even in the U.S. as we train a lot of engineers not nearly enough so you know I am not worried that once you know once we're through these dollars that the field is going to contract one I think these dollars will play out over many years two I think if we do our jobs right and I hope we will you know we're going to change the paradigm here a bit and there will always be a continued interest I think in a more robust level of infrastructure investment in this country so please it's a great field to get into and one one pitch I always make go on USA jobs right now and you can see there's a special link that connects to the infrastructure bill with all kinds of job opportunities you know one joke I like to make at US DOT right now if you've ever thought about coming to the federal government if you ever thought about coming to US DOT with a president and a vice president who love and care about infrastructure some great secretaries some great cabinet secretaries in our administration and all these new dollars and programs there's never going to be a better time than right now well can I just build on what Paulie said just to expand that to also right like you know energy policy you know manufacturing I just came this morning there was a meeting at the White House around our like you know what's our industrial strategy around advanced manufacturing and we're not talking in terms of like you know six month year long a couple year strategies we are talking about investments that are going to last for you know decades and you know create infrastructure that's going to need to be updated and maintained and so I think that you know we are looking at jobs that are going to shift the entire way that we build our economy not just you know temporary projects for the moment America panels can get you jobs so questions from the audience please step up we have a microphone thanks so much for the both of you for being here Shailen Jotishi from New America my question is for you Deputy Secretary Sue I love this blog name Yesbioa Can I actually Googled the blog while I was just on my computer definitely recommend folks online check it out my question is actually about that I'm wondering if you can share a little bit not to give away the secret sauce of the series but what are some of the myths around Shailen Jotishi that you'd like the public to know about and the myths you'd like to see dispelled thank you very much Oh I really really appreciate that question I also just want to give some credit where it's due so the person who came up with the name is actually in the room and it's my colleague Monica Vareen who's with our our office of public A but so I really do appreciate that question and it's not meant to be a secret sauce the whole purpose of a campaign is to make sure that everybody knows what we're talking about but I'll give a couple examples one is just very much in line with everything we've talked about here today I think that I like to say this is not your father's workforce development system it's not your grandfather's workforce development system it's not a system where for a long time it was just to train as many people as possible not necessarily connected to jobs and certainly not connected to job quality and so what we measure in the workforce system is what's going to get done and if we do better at measuring what kinds of jobs people got into how long that job was what was it a career what are the intergenerational impacts of our investments I think that it upends the way we thought about workforce investment another reason we came up with this campaign is that in my travels as deputy secretary but also in my time in California I think there are there are just myths people sort of handcuff themselves about what is possible within WIOA are we allowed to prioritize equity are we allowed to say that we want to measure how many black, brown api, lgbtq workers with disabilities came through these programs and we are willing to make sure that again the programs reflect the priorities that we have one of the things that we found when we first came in and did a deep dive on equity is that systematically African-American sort of graduates of WIOA funded training programs end up in jobs where they are getting paid less than their white counterparts so the system has to correct that that is reinforcing systemic barriers it's also not the purpose of the program and so in order for us to be clear eyed and smart about how we do better we have to take a look at what's possible and what we're allowed to measure what we're allowed to change and so those are some of the examples but there will be more to come I'm with CompTIA the computer trade industry association this is a question for deputy secretary Chalkenberg this historic investment this interesting time we're in is also such a huge opportunity to look at women in jobs and the sectors we've been speaking to infrastructure transportation tech construction tend to be male dominated and when we look at the jobs and look at the data thank you deputy secretary for queuing this up we do see such a disparity in a category that we at CompTIA have been trying to shift for a long time to get women into tech what are some of the best practices you've seen to incorporate solutions that we can use to lift that issue as well thank you thank you for that great question and they don't tend to be male dominated they are male dominated and it just an interesting little statistic so I ran New York City DOT for seven years I was at US DOT as was said in the Obama administration and now in the Biden administration both agencies the gender breakdown is 75% male 25% female so federal and local and it's been that way for over a decade despite a lot of efforts I think to sort of try and change that gender balance so just to sort of underscore and if you look at particular sectors maritime very few women aviation very few women transit actually probably one of the transportation sectors where you see a much more even gender balance so these are long standing challenges in the course of my career tried to work at them both at the local and the federal level and since you're sort of asking for best practices I'll give a couple thoughts on it there is no question that I think at the federal level there's a lot we can do to as you're saying encourage, incentivize and some of the work that we've been doing and working with Julie and DOL has been really exciting it is somewhat bespoke work to get sort of folks that don't see themselves in particular professions into those professions can take really aggressive and thoughtful recruiting, training and working to make sure that the organizations and the companies and questions have that welcoming inclusive culture that's going to keep those employees and you mentioned sort of the care economy I mean this isn't a transportation specific thing but it is also true that obviously women for whom still they are taking on more of the burden of child care or caring for aging parents that can particularly be challenging in fields that have sort of 24-7 potential schedules if you're driving a train or if you are driving a bus or you want to be an air traffic controller there's certain parts of the transportation sector that are very operational and that can be and not much opportunities as we now know for things like remote work 40% of the jobs at U.S. DOT are not remote work they are operational so I think there are things we're trying to incentivize at the federal level I can tell you at the local level it's sort of the same at the local level the transportation commissioner we worked really closely with the local building trades council with the contracting firms with our own city hiring process and tried to chip away at this issue everywhere we went I think we've made some progress but the progress has been still a lot slower than I certainly would like it to be I also do a lot of work with an important group in transportation WTS which is the women's transportation seminar which is kind of the leading women in transportation advocacy group and they do they have chapters all over the country and they are famous you may remember back in the campaign there was the famous talk of kind of for when Romney was governor in Massachusetts and then later presidential campaign that he was given binders full of women they came from the local WTS chapter in Massachusetts but that's part of the process of working is that supporting and promoting of women in the field so I think it's all of those practices but I'll admit we've got a long way to go we are not there yet can I just build on that really quickly first to say thank you I do think again the work that happens completely outside of what the federal government is doing is so key because we are all going to be needed to get this done but a couple of really concrete examples is and without in any way you know I feel like I should let it sit the comment that we have a long way to go because that's really really really important but in the spirit of there are things happening right and like is this a moment where we could really see big shifts because of the investments that are being made but also because of work on the ground is a group called Chicago women in trades are you all here in the room who have been doing incredible work so let me just put the camera on you and acknowledge the amazing work that you all are doing to basically transform you know women in the infrastructure workforce and there's a model that you all have done so successfully and we are supportive of your efforts to expand your technical assistance to 10 other states to try to expand your impact so I'm so glad you're here and we're so proud to support you it's another piece in terms of the partnerships between organizations and this is you know back to Polly's roots but I know that the DOT gave $110 million award to the Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market Intermodal Facility in New York City and that is improving not only the largest food distribution center in the country but will create a thousand new jobs it has PLAs as Polly has already mentioned so much of their funding does but 10% of their apprenticeship slots are actually reserved for public housing residents and 15% are reserved for women trained through an organization called non-traditional employment for women or NEW. NEW is also funded by the Department of Labor as part of our grants to bring women into non-traditional occupations so there's a lot of work that we're trying to do across organizations across agencies to address this issue but there's much more work that we need to do for sure. One last question Hi, thanks. So October is as you know national disability employment awareness month so my question as you know also the population that faces major barriers to employment has one of the highest rates of unemployment and joblessness just curious to know what you're doing to support this population of disabled workers but also what's working out there that you're seeing. Thank you. So I'll just mention again the Department of Labor we have an agency called ODEB the Office of Disability Employment Policy and that work is focused we've been celebrating ending all month but very much about making sure that everything we're talking about includes workers with disabilities training programs how we measure equity hiring within the federal government so there's no question that that's a community that's been left behind also and where there's tremendous talent that we should draw from for all the building that we're doing now. Let me just add to that and sort of dovetailing with everything Julie said and we're working close with DOL we have our own very robust programs to try and get more people with disabilities into the workforce and led by someone if some of you don't know I'm Kelly Bucklin who's our disability advisor DOT who's phenomenal if you don't know him get to know him but I think another piece of it that we're also putting a big focus on of course that has been one of the real barriers for people with disabilities to be fully integrated into educational system so we are very focused one nice thing from the infrastructure bill it gave us incredible new funding to make mass transit systems all around the country fully ADA funding for Amtrak to make all their stations fully ADA compliant so we are looking for ways not only to help do the training and the recruitment but also to make sure once you've got the jobs that as person with disabilities you can access them and that again another reason I'm so excited about the infrastructure bill we've never had those kinds of dollars you know specifically devoted to you know particularly fixing mass transit systems where you know it's a multi-multi-billion dollar endeavor to retrofit a lot of all transit systems I will also just say just another thing we're proud of at DOT we're also very focused on the question of access in the aviation sector it's been a long standing issue with the disability community you know how the treatment they get at airports the treatment get airlines what happens with their wheelchairs, lavatories on board so we're very focused on rule makings on all those issues and have put out a whole people with disabilities bill of rights basically for air travel so thank you for that question really focused on those issues they're super important do you really like that about the infrastructure bill you can comply with the law now so gotta wrap it up thank you so much this was excellent I think we all learned a lot and we will exit the stage thank you New America thank you okay so everyone it's my pleasure to introduce to Lauren Thompson-Starks of the Department of Commerce of the US Department of Commerce which is of course another one of the major departments involved in distributing infrastructure dollars federal infrastructure dollars from across the number of the bills we talked about and our beginning I think I mentioned something called the good jobs challenge which is running through the Department of Commerce and this is the person in charge of the good jobs challenge so we're thrilled for Lauren to be here she, in addition to being the lead for the good jobs challenge of the US Department of Commerce which previously in the Obama administration at the I'm getting my, but the Obama administration in the US Department of Education so it's great to have you back Lauren and thanks for filling us in on the good jobs challenge thank you good afternoon everyone and thank you so much Mary Alice for that kind introduction it's so exciting to be with you today I am glad to be a part of this important dialogue this has been a recovery that has accelerated the focus on job quality elevated the need and urgency for strategies that will advance economic mobility for more workers particularly workers of color women low income workers and others facing labor market barriers what is so exciting is that as we've moved from addressing the immediate crises unfolding earlier on in the pandemic we are seeing an increased opportunity for policy investments that are about meeting this moment longer term and so I see this and I'm excited about this as a moment to think forward a moment to think about strategies that are nationally scalable locally driven and equity centered we have a historic opportunity right now to strengthen job quality and worker voice that really resonates with the comments you've heard today and my colleagues from Department of Labor and to use these investments to build workforce systems that are more aligned more coordinated and that help workers, businesses and communities thrive so I'm excited about this moment and I view this through the prism of a program that was launched at the Department of Commerce and funded through President Biden's American Rescue Plan and this is the Good Jobs Challenge it was announced by Secretary of State that we're going to be launching a partnership-based strategy and launching partnership-based approaches across 15 industries there's a substantial focus in this portfolio over a third of which is focused on infrastructure good jobs and so we're very excited about this investment there's examples on the Economic Development Administration website that you can view but really you know have for example the Ohio Manufacturers Association address demand for firms of all sizes will launch an entry level and earn and learn model across 16 industry-led sector partnerships statewide we also have Philadelphia Works through its infrastructure sector partner launching a building and construction pathway and to well-paying union jobs that's focused on local underserved communities I just also want to note a few key elements of the program design and this resonates with themes you've heard today that are really this is a whole-of-government approach to equity to job quality and how do we create more force multipliers like these funds that are about bringing more stakeholders together and building stronger ecosystems so a central focus of the good job challenge is that it's equity centered we are excited that all of these projects are demonstrating an intentional focus on bringing community-based partners local nonprofits other leaders to the table that this funding can be flexibly applied to deliver wraparound supports like childcare and transportation language supports and we're also excited about how this reflects a focus on strong integrated coalition so we have 99 backbone organizations this includes economic development organizations workforce boards higher education institutions like HBCUs and community colleges local government partners labor unions as I noted these stakeholders coming together with employers we received over 800 letters of commitment from employers across these projects another component as I noted is that this is really about breaking down silos and so I'm excited about this mindset shift this moment to go from competition to collaboration and to a mindset of systems change that's about this is ours to solve together so we're eager to be a part of today's dialogue but also to continue the discussion and to really learn from all of you and your leadership and the models that you're working forward on to ensure that these investments are going to create economic mobility not only for today's community sport but for future generations to come so thank you so much I do want to acknowledge the sort of the variety of different perspectives we've heard so far we've heard from a mayor we've heard from three separate federal agencies and I think it's clear just how much work and how much thought is going into this big challenge of driving good jobs through infrastructure investments and this is especially true I think for the work that we're trying to do around building good jobs for people who've been historically shut out from them and this is something we've heard time and again through this conversation and we should name specifically racially minoritized communities LGBTQ plus workers and women outside of and then alongside of this great work happening at the state federal and local level there are hundreds there's an unbelievable amount of work happening among nonprofits and community based organizations we've been working for decades in many different capacities to drive investment to drive high quality employment through our manufacturing and through our built infrastructure and we've got a great panel again to close us out today we're hoping that their work will show you how good jobs can be produced through infrastructure investments how this work can manifest in practice and then some of the distance that we still have to travel I'll go right down the line with introductions then I'll come back to you to provide like a little bit more granularity on the work that you do of course it's hard to encapsulate it in one 45 minute session Lark Jackson is program director for the National Center for Women's Equity and Apprenticeship and Employment which is a National Technical Assistance Initiative housed within Chicago Women in Trades we met her briefly on the live feed here Chicago Women in Trades we should note has been a key steward of the funding available through the U.S. Department of Labor for many years under the Women in Apprenticeship and non-traditional occupations funding Miranda Nelson, second down here is National Director of Jobs and Move America which is a national research and advocacy organization dedicated to building policies and public decision making to support good jobs in the manufacturing sector especially through community benefits agreements which we'll talk a little bit more about today Nancy Luke is deputy director of Building Pathways a non-profit based in Boston, Massachusetts dedicated to the recruitment the retention and the advancement of marginalized and underrepresented groups in the Union Building Trades Building Pathways and Chicago Women in Trades I should mention are both members of the National Task Force on Trades Women's Issues whose work I'm sure we'll hear about today on the tables throughout the room too you can see some of their work products so I'll go back down the line starting with you Lark just in two minutes or so just the quick broad strokes before we get into discussion of what your organization is working on how your work connects to this overall objective of driving good jobs and worker power through our infrastructure investments I know it's hard to do in two minutes what a challenge alright thank you Michael thanks for New America for having me here or having to see what here and also thank you to Deputy Secretary Sue and Deputy Secretary Travenberg for their support so Chicago Women's Trades we've been around since 1981 our local arm which is based in Chicago we run our technical opportunities pre-apprenticeship program that helps give women the foundational skills to enter the unionized building construction trades there we have our welding program which often gets women into careers in manufacturing so we're continuing that work but we also support trades women retention services we even have a trades women leadership council because trades women are at the center of our work and developing their leadership skills is extremely important to us in terms of the infrastructure investments we are a part of the national task force on trades women's issues and we have been a part of amplifying really supporting and finding ways to implement the finding ways to implement the framework for promoting equity and inclusion for women and people of color working in the trades on publicly funded infrastructure projects again that document is probably on your tables it contains 10 components for making sure that equity is embedded in this massive 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure investments right we know that there have to be some goals that we set right so I won't go through all 10 points but I'll go through just three of them really quickly one of the most important ones is we want at least one half of 1% of all federal and state funding infrastructure funding to be devoted to supportive services and when we're thinking about supportive services it goes beyond just transportation assistance it goes beyond just tools and boots all those things are super important but we're thinking about pre-apprenticeship investment because we know that providing those foundational skills through pre-apprenticeship is a strong pipeline for women to get into these non-native industries we also advocate within that 10 point framework investments in technical assistance to make sure that those job sites that general contractors and subcontractors are running are harassment free and safe environments for women people of color to really thrive right we know one thing that Nancy knows trades women are often the last ones hired first ones fired and we want to be a part of transforming that so we know technical assistance is super important the other key third piece that I really want to highlight is community monitoring of the goals that we set on these public funded projects and monitoring them at least twice a month so we want to go beyond best efforts and we want to make sure that the community stakeholder monitoring system so not just federal and state and local agencies monitoring but also trades women led organizations being a part of that monitoring trades women themselves being a part of that monitoring so that's just a snippet of some of the work we're doing we're doing a lot more in terms of expanding our pre-apprenticeship thank you for that introduction luckily we'll be able to get a little more into it too Miranda welcome to join us thanks so much for having me I also want to appreciate Deputy Secretary Sue who is still in the room with us who shouted out Jobs Move America earlier and our work on the new fire community benefits agreement so at Jobs Move America we think about one piece of the infrastructure workforce in particular which is actually the manufacturing workforce which is building lots of equipment that we need to make our infrastructure work building buses and building trains building components for all sorts of new green technology and as Mary Alice said earlier today that workforce has been really depleted over the years and while these manufacturing jobs used to be really good union jobs they're increasingly precarious they're increasingly done by temp workers and they're increasingly non-union and we are really fighting to try to turn that around to make sure that we are manufacturing goods in this country and that they are providing good jobs and that there's equitable access to those jobs and one of the tools that we are using to do that is we're taking the concept of community benefits agreements which were first developed as really a tool to get community benefits out of real estate projects and bring them to the manufacturing world and say hey this is another big development in a community, a factory can we organize to make sure that those factories are bringing good jobs that workers have a voice on the job and that there's equitable access to these jobs and hiring and training programs for them Thank you so much I think it's really important to draw out too we're talking pretty broadly about the skilled trades here and there's a very clear linkage between the jobs to move America is doing around electric vehicles and the sort of climate implications of our infrastructure investments as well it's a really interesting point Nancy, last but not least Hi everyone, Nancy Luke from Building Pathways Thank you everyone who has graced the stage already I was doing a lot of nodding from the audience I was like yep, that's important, yep that's what we're working on too, can't wait to talk to you after So the key things that we work on are trying to get folks that have traditionally left out of the building trades especially union programs into union programs We see it as the fastest way to career a good job with benefits, with union protections for folks even if you go the college route and decide it's not for you we want to make sure that you can not only have a job but a career and thrive, right For us, we work on a supply and demand model so we work to make sure through our pre-apprenticeship program through our northeast center for trades women equity through our build a life campaign we have a lot of programs through a mass girls and trade program that we're creating intentional spaces for folks to learn, grow and thrive to see that they're not alone that there's a movement behind them especially for the girls teenage girls going to a conference where at their school they might be the only in the carpenters program or the only in sheet metal and then they see that there are hundreds of other girls across the state that are also in these programs and that the trades women come and support them and say like no, you're part of the work, you're part of the movement is really important we recognize and people have named it as an issue that sometimes women, people of color if they can't see it they can't see themselves being it outreach is really important in our communities making sure folks are telling their stories is really important in our communities creating a space where once you are in an apprenticeship program as a woman that we have trade talk Tuesdays where you can come and support each other this is what I'm experiencing what are you experiencing and then you stay and talk to those career seekers and tell them like this is my path, this is how I got into trades this is how you can do and working through that is really important and then on the demand side thinking through what policy work right thinking through how do we use city ordinances to move the work in a real way how do we use infrastructure money how do we use PLA agreements to move the work in a real way so yeah, that's what we're in a nutshell working on it's really interesting to hear that specific strategy and one of the things a colleague Taylor White mentioned some of the work that our team has done recently around inclusion in the skilled trades especially with focus on youth and we've heard about the importance of looking at both that sort of bottom up from the worker level perspective empowering workers and then also driving structural change from the top so hopefully we can get a little bit into that today we've already heard a bit about the types of strategies that you've worked on I think the sort of big models that we're hearing from your organizations big topics of conversation already in our discussions today about apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship as racial and gender inclusion strategies we've talked about community benefits agreements we've heard about the importance of childcare for working and learning parents and one of the things that I think is really important to recognize we've already acknowledged it today about these different models is that they've actually been around for quite a long time these different types of work have been going on a long time CBAs have been around 20 or 25 years depending on which you count as the first there was a goal for 6.9% all federally funded contracting hours to be performed by women set in 1978 in the Carter administration there's a printout on the tables here about childcare for apprentices and the Oregon Department of Transportation who unfortunately couldn't be here with us today have provided a $2,500 per month per child subsidy for childcare since 2010 so these are efforts that have been around for quite a long time and I wanted to ask you and I'll start with you Miranda based on your experience working on these strategies as you've done your work over the past few years we've started to have more and more conversations about job quality about inclusion, about worker power and construction and manufacturing what progress have you seen and I can ask you more specific questions but as a general sort of sense have we seen a lot of progress in the past few years well I think for us at Jobs to Move America we absolutely have we have really focused on getting community benefits agreements in the electric bus industry there's five companies in the electric bus industry we now have community benefits agreements at three of them and a fourth company was already providing good union jobs so we didn't focus on that one so we think really good setting for the industry and we really think about that in contrast to the electric car industry in our country which is not is largely becoming a low road industry we have tons of different non union factories opening up and you know while it's incredibly important to transition our cars off of fossil fuels the further investments in the inflation reduction after can continue to go to these non union companies unless we do something about it one reason that we've been able to drive so much change in the electric bus industry is because of government intervention this is an industry that is pretty much exclusively selling to government agencies and so government has so we have worked with a variety of government agencies to demand real standards in their contracts and make sure that when they are contracting that they are asking what kinds of wages and benefits are you paying and rewarding companies that are paying good wages and benefits and rewarding companies that want to really invest in hiring and training programs we without that kind of government investment and government levers it would be so much harder for us to do this job and I think that's really true of CBA's overall a lot of the big successful ones real estate development happened because real estate is something from the government whether it was a rezoning or some sort of investment and so I think that that pairing of the organizing of the grounds and the organizing of community organizations and unions with real government power to drive up these standards I think is a real key to success I wonder if I could just ask another question about that sort of coalition building that you mentioned everybody who we've got in the room today everybody who's watching online obviously are interested in the workforce development aspects of this discussion they're interested in technology they're interested in labor organizing we're also members of communities ourselves so we've got communities that we live in that are going to benefit from infrastructure investments over the next few years how do we do a good job as neighbors of organizing in our communities to make sure that these infrastructure dollars go to support good things for our neighbors and for our communities it's really important to be really intentional about who we're organizing and make sure that a variety of groups have a seat at the table in the coalition we built in Alabama where the new fire factory is located we brought together groups that kind of ran the gamut from labor unions to environmental groups to religious groups to groups that we're focused on on the workforce and I think having all those perspectives at the table really really helped us to push forward and to win the other really important thing and is one that our executive director, violin Janice always highlights is that we shouldn't settle we should make big demands and we should be trying to win the big demands so that everyone can really benefit from from investment in our communities and so like don't when we were negotiating our new fire CBA there were a couple of times when when the company offered something that was good for labor unions but not for the community and then there were times that they offered something that was good for the community and not for workers and so there was a real understanding among the coalition that if we hung together we could get something that could be good for everyone and that is what we eventually got and so I think really being able to build strong organizations that stand in solidarity with each other is important we're a little bit behind time and I wanted to talk about this but I think maybe I'll just let the audience know that Jobs to Move America has some really fantastic resources almost sort of toolkit cookbooks type things for building CBAs and it's the U.S. Employment plan and I think there are some other toolkits available through your website too to talk about. Yeah, so on our website you can read all about the U.S. Employment plan which is the tool that we try to get agencies to adopt when they're buying these manufactured goods where they look at wages and benefits and really reward companies that are doing good things and then we talk about how to organize in community together to negotiate CBAs like the ones we have we really see them as paired as I said we need the government levers to get to the good community benefits. And such a huge part of some of the great CBAs that we've seen of course is apprenticeship training. Apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship is a way to connect neighbors and residents to good jobs so Lark Nancy I want to ask both of you just because you're both doing so much work on apprenticeship and other work-based learning pathways how have you seen work-based learning models serving the communities where you've implemented them? What have been the tangible outputs there? I guess I'm sorry Chicago Women in Trades I talked a lot about or earlier I mentioned that we've been around since 1981 that's locally in Chicago. Our national center which I'm a part of we've been around since 2016 and we've really focused on seeding programs nationally seeding pre-apprenticeship programs nationally providing that technical assistance to industry stakeholders nationally. So one initiative that I want to highlight is the Women in Traditional Careers Initiative located in Philly. It's a multi-stakeholder collaboration that seeks to increase the numbers of women in the skilled construction manufacturing, transit and utilities industries and so I remember four years ago when we were literally you know all meeting in the Philadelphia workforce boards conference room it was maybe 20 of us. Fast forward you know four years we have a mailing list of over 600 people we now have we finished our second cohort of a trades women readiness program and those women are entering careers in the unionized construction trades in Philadelphia right we also developed a mentorship program to a company that trades women readiness programs so every trainee was paired with a current Philadelphia area trades woman right so just think about how that support helps right a prospective trades woman think about the support that they I think about the support that they were able to get through supportive services so like work boots, tools career guidance right career outreach, career education so much of the problem that I see is on the you know at the very like baseline level it's just like lack of career education at outreach like you would be shocked at like how many women you know who come up to me and it's like if only I had known about this career opportunity when I was 18 you know or I've been taken toasters apart my whole life where I've been you know dismantling equipment you know just for fun I didn't realize that there was skills that associated with that right and so I have to say really the investment in pre-apprenticeship special shout out to the women's bureau and the Wanto grant that's allowed us to build that multi-stakeholder collaboration to build that programming you know that's the type of progress that we're seeing nationally locally in Chicago we just launched or just finished our first mill rights class with the carpenters in Chicago women only pre-apprenticeship program we are launching a women only pre-apprenticeship program with the iron workers locally in Chicago we are building a national mentorship model with the bricklayers and allied craft workers and also the iron workers international union so you know I've been able to see these things slowly build and obviously you know as an organization we've been able to you know see these victories but I think we're just at this like really momentous moment not only with the infrastructure investments but just with the desire to have pre-apprenticeship programs from registered apprenticeship programs like the companies that want to collaborate absolutely you know I think there have a couple things I think reflections just come from that but I wanted to Nancy I think just ask you the question we discussed a little bit before the presentation you know we were talking a lot about you know how we get women into skilled trades occupations and it's so so important because I think this is a statistic from here to stay from your recent report which I couldn't print out we ran out of paper apologies there's tremendous progress recently getting women into skilled trades still only 3% 3.5% I think of the construction workforce Nancy when you're thinking about the goal of getting more women into the trades how does that connect in with a racial justice agenda in infrastructure investments as well right so we're seeing that while all our efforts to make sure that women know that it's possible to be in the trades their pre-apprenticeship programs like Building Pathways that will help you support you that there's the Northeast Center for Trades Women Equity that will help and support you it's also about what you're experiencing on the job site and there's a lot like the culture we still need to have a lot of work to do on shifting the culture of job sites so for us at Building Pathways we're working with anew we're working with Oregon Trades Women to work on Rise Up which is like a respectful workplace made and designed by the construction industry for the construction industry to address these issues and then also having the intentional spaces of groups like like the Trades Women Tuesdays for folks to talk about what they're experiencing so that we can address it for spaces for like the policy group on trades women issues to talk about what's like in that space there are stakeholders from the construction industry the trades women like government to hear and reflect on this is what's going on what can we do like how could you help us in shifting it so that's what we're seeing as a struggle and ways to overcome that struggle Thank you so much for sharing that I think one of the things that struck me I think from the work of Chicago Women Trades and from the work of Building Pathways and again it seems like you collaborate a lot in really important ways that there's sort of an effort to help women and help communities especially women of color sort of see themselves in skilled trades occupations and then there's also work of getting through it once you see yourself in it just as important it seems because it can even go awry if you've started in it but it doesn't work out well I want to stick to I think this sort of I really appreciate you all diving in again I'm sorry we're a little bit behind time I do want to encourage everyone in person and online to be thinking about questions there's an online chat function you can submit promise we'll get to them as soon as we can but we've talked today a lot about strategies that work that's been I think the main focus of our discussion things that were optimistic will work things that we're pretty sure will work Deputy Secretary Sue mentioned the importance of keeping a clear eye view Deputy Secretary Trottenberg talked about expanding our view of what's possible what's feasible in our work around good jobs and it's important to be honest too about the things that haven't worked or the things that haven't worked quite yet and I wanted to save a little bit of time just to talk about those things briefly we've already sort of touched on some of them in discussion but maybe just sticking with it on the apprenticeship side the apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship side we know that it can be extremely extremely difficult to make construction work sites safe and welcoming especially for women, for LGBTQ plus populations and for people of color what still needs to happen if we're going to fully dismantle these structures of gender and racial equality on construction work sites and on manufacturing work sites in this country and this is a big question I'll let you know what was coming you did I have some suggestions I think we talked about federal money that's coming to the states and what's being written in and required and so requiring programs and cultural change rise up having stuff written in for child care and what that looks like having stuff written in even for pumping stations I know people don't think of that but new moms coming back to work are thinking about that where am I going to pump am I still going to be able to pump I think that the cultural shift will happen when we are not only doing the curriculum and doing the respectful workplace trainings but there's some type of way for there to be accountability if you're not meeting these goals for women and people of color on the job what happens if you're not creating a respectful workplace what happens because then it gives teeth to the legislation gives teeth to the policy for us to really try to push for women to be like no it is a good job no you'll be respected no you will stay and thrive anything you'd like to add Lark we talked a lot about enforcement and monitoring too I think that's obviously part to consider sorry Lark yeah great I agree with everything the man said I would even add just one piece of you know better collaboration between like groups and the OFCCP just making sure that again things have teeth and again I want to kind of think about the micro like community based level like investments in technical assistance is so essential right and making sure that like one thing for instance to see what it does is that you know for our like bystander intervention training or our sexual harassment prevention training like we you know we encourage and often times require leadership to attend those trainings right we provide train the trainer of train and trade their piece for them as well so they know how to also administer those trainings technical assistance has to be taken seriously it has to be valued right it has to be invested in because that is also going to like really change the culture in addition to those that teeth right there also has to be the other side of like training on how to provide like you know just health and safety for women in construction for instance and yeah I think I'll leave it there but I just yeah you want to yeah sorry no I agree I agree with what Lark said like I think that's why it's important that all levels of construction from the workers to the owners are all held accountable and all all trained up in respectful work sites and I also think like I know it came up about like thinking about barriers what are the barriers that would prevent women moms single moms from participating I don't think it can be an afterthought I think it has to be very intentional as well so when we look at child care we're looking at like we sit on the task force right that's trying to address child care so like care that works so we're looking at nontraditional hours we're looking how expensive it is the most expensive state is Massachusetts for child care and thinking of like how can we reduce those barriers but if we're looking at it we're doing a pilot program how can we push the construction industry to look at it with us how can we push them to put money behind it how can we push like money to be written in for infrastructure for that and also like the mayor from Minnesota said Rochester Minnesota said that it also has to be like a good sustaining career so we're also at the table thinking of that because it impacts can women participate in our program if this doesn't exist and some wonderful points about technical assistance and I wanted to just highlight a resource from you all the finishing the job so great resource and this I think it resonates with us thinking about youth apprenticeship we think about different stakeholder communities that you have to engage in different ways you've got this resource which has basically six different sort of I think it's six different targets for managers for frontline supervisors for subcontractors for city government different ways to provide sort of an equity framework and drive equity through construction work site and I mentioned from everyone that everyone that's been on the stage it's going to take us all and so it's like from where I sit in the community what can I do to drive this for it and so then oh you don't know we have a manual for that I just also just really thinking about the lens of like women of color in the trades so the here to stay briefing paper at the very end has a list of like 10 recommendations and one that as I speak with construction registered apprenticeship programs in particular and I'm walking them through these recommendations one that I can almost see like a light bulb go off is like our recommendation that you have an ombuds person like an intermediary person who can help that woman of color navigate any challenges she may be experiencing on a job site or within her apprenticeship program and it seems like on the surface such a simple idea but it's you know I think just us having the ability to provide these recommendations to provide this technical assistance I've seen it really be helpful because you do see those light bulbs go off you do see people it start resonating right oh that is an option and yeah it sounds like a long term projects a lot of different sort of you know areas of technical assistance types of education and learning Miranda I don't want to give short short short trip to CBAs you know as quickly as we can you know JMA and a coalition of your national partners has been really successful in building locally and economically targeted hiring into the infrastructure investment and job that which is a huge huge victory there are still state and federal regulations that keep federal expenditures from doing as much as they can to support communities and local workers including union workers through infrastructure investments and procurement when you're thinking about what's next for CBAs where are you thinking yeah so that is a huge point of concern for us so these federal regulations for a long time made it impossible for cities and states to use federal money and hire locally within their communities we changed that in the infrastructure bill for construction jobs funded through the department of transportation which is a great first step infrastructure bill just itself funds huge investments in broadband and water and sewer infrastructure and there's still these federal regulations are still blocking the ability to do local and economically targeted hire in on those programs which we see as a huge problem and so we're really fighting to to change those regulations to really open up the ability for cities and states to do the kinds of building in those incentives that we've been talking about to make it easier for our communities to thank you so much we have very little time remaining but I know there's probably been a lot of great questions that have come to mind from our fantastic panelists does anybody have a quick one this is a tall order I know hi all someone earlier made a point that we do a really bad job with career education just broadly but as it applies to this panel in particular I agree I used to be a high school teacher so I've got that perspective I'm now on the community college team here in New America but I'm just wondering from you all like where should that burden of career education lie it feels like your groups in a lot of ways are picking up the pieces of like a system that doesn't do that well so I'm just kind of curious of any thoughts there everyone that's my answer it should lie with everyone I think when we talk to guidance counselors or when they come our mass girls and trade conference is specifically for juniors and seniors in high school as they're thinking of what's next for me and for some folks it's not college and so for it's not college does that mean we stop talking to them and we don't find what their career could look like or what their life's going to look like after high school for us it's no and so thinking about for girls that are in like career high schools making sure they know that there are good union jobs out there that you could be a part of and so like the guidance counselors that come sometimes aren't the ones that are working directly with them and so we're educating them too like if you have anyone else if you think of or if it's you know for youth that are not involved in any type of program right the 18 to 24 year olds that are not engaged in stuff you know they were returning citizens or engaged in the justice system who's talking to you about what's next for you if we're thinking about everyone we're thinking about traditional high schools too right I don't I'm very much about like you know like we want to up with the community we want to make sure we're reaching as much of the community as possible and how do we do that and so like you said Michael like we're all part of a community and if it's like you know announcements at the church bulletin if it's flyers at different community centers just thinking about how we're making sure that everyone's thriving in our community I quickly I agree and one example I can give you is actually the Philadelphia workforce board they actually have on their website a tab for the women and non-traditional careers initiative so it's not just hey you know where we just need people to find jobs it's like no this is actually a hub for Philadelphia area perspective trades women to really do a self-assessment to figure out if you know one of these non-traditional male dominated career pathways is for them is for them to hear trades women stories we have a today's rosy podcast on that on that website on that that tab and again special shout out to Philadelphia works like they have taken such a massive leadership role in the career education and outreach piece and I agree like one one thing that seaweed does when we do trainings on outreach and recruitment like best practices and outreach and recruitment is we also work with construction and it not just construction but registered apprenticeship programs to train them how to how to use CBOs to do their outreach and recruitment right how do you educate them about your trade right how do you actually you know give them the the facts of your trade give them the benefits of your trade right so that they can work with their community and essentially be your recruiters right because recruitment is a lot of work but it but it's so important so agreed it has to be a community effort has to be multi-stakeholder because you're just going to reach such a diverse talent pool that way right thank you Miranda any last words no I'm just very inspired by the work of my co-proud and very inspired by you absolutely folks I'm afraid we are just out of time I think we could spend a whole day a whole week on this topic obviously I want to acknowledge the massive amount of you know support that we have for this effort in communities across this country it's hundreds of practitioners I think it should inspire excitement and resolve for what's possible what needs to be done to build our revitalize our built infrastructure secure our climate future secure the future of work for American workers across the country I want to thank the 200 or so people who joined us online and to all of you who joined us in person in the audience thank you so much for spending time with us today before I turn it back to the founder and senior director of New America's Center in Education and Labor Mary Alice McCarthy I want to thank our three panelists Clark Jackson Miranda Nelson Nancy Luke for joining us today for sharing your experience and your expertise and I wonder if I could ask you to join me in a round of applause