Workforce Intermediaries
Workforce Intermediaries: For The 21St Century
EDITED BY ROBERT P. GILOTH
Copyright Date: 2004
Published by: Temple University Press
Pages: 432
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bszvp
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Workforce Intermediaries
Book Description:

Confronted with businesses facing a long-term shortage of skilled workers and evaluations showing that job training for the poor over the past 25 years had produced only meager results, a number of groups throughout the country have sought to find a more effective approach. The efforts of these partnerships, which editor Robert Giloth calls "workforce intermediaries," are characterized by a focus on improving business productivity and helping low-income individuals not just find a job, but advance over time to jobs that enable them to support themselves and their families. This book takes stock of the world of workforce intermediaries: entrepreneurial partnerships that include businesses, unions, community colleges, and community organizations. Noted scholars and policy makers examine the development and effectiveness of these intermediaries, and a concluding chapter discusses where we need to go from here, if society is to provide a more coherent approach to increasing the viability and capacity of these important institutions.Published in association with The American Assembly, Columbia University.

eISBN: 978-1-4399-0386-5
Subjects: Political Science
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Foreword
    Foreword (pp. vii-viii)
    David H. Mortimer

    The American economy and society are confronted with the major challenge of how to improve the system of training and job placement. This includes self-sufficiency and career progression for low-skilled and hard-to-employ workers while also providing employers with a workforce that allows them to remain globally competitive. Over the past decade, there has been progress in addressing this “dual customer” orientation. During this period, the field of workforce development has become entrepreneurial and opportunistic, and a recent convergence of strategies, which knits together many policies, procedures, and efforts, and simplifies the workforce field for both employer and jobseeker customers, has...

  4. I INTRODUCTION
    • 1 Introduction: A Case for Workforce Intermediaries
      1 Introduction: A Case for Workforce Intermediaries (pp. 3-30)
      ROBERT P. GILOTH

      The labor and skill shortages of the 1990s foreshadowed the coming workforce crisis of the decades ahead. Recent news accounts of global labor recruiting for trained nurses for our hospitals are reminders of labor shortage desperation, even in these harder times. The near future will bring more retirements of skilled workers, fewer new workers, and minimal growth in new skills. The workforce will become more diverse. Companies and regions are likely to suffer because a skilled workforce is indispensable to local growth. Tight labor markets are good for low-skilled, low-income workers, but opportunities will be lost without adequate training and...

    • 2 Whose Job Is It? Creating Opportunities for Advancement
      2 Whose Job Is It? Creating Opportunities for Advancement (pp. 31-70)
      NAN POPPE, JULIE STRAWN and KARIN MARTINSON

      Over the past decade federally funded workforce development programs have shifted their focus from developing skills to helping individuals find entry-level jobs quickly. There is a well-developed service infrastructure and research base for such rapid job placement services. By contrast, there has been little programmatic focus or research on services to help low-wage workers advance to better jobs. Policy makers have increasingly recognized this gap and are seeking ways to fill it, in part because the welfare reform experience has illustrated both the strengths and limits of the “Work First” approach: many recipients found jobs, but a lack of skills...

  5. II WHO ARE WORKFORCE INTERMEDIARIES AND WHAT DO THEY DO?
    • 3 What Do Workforce Intermediaries Do?
      3 What Do Workforce Intermediaries Do? (pp. 73-92)
      RICHARD KAZIS

      San Francisco Works, a nonprofit organization created to increase business engagement in the city’s welfare-to-work efforts, launched an automotive services program in 1999. Targeted to entry-level automotive technician jobs, the program consisted of a one-week life skills course followed by a five-week introductory course to the automobile and its systems delivered at City College of San Francisco. Graduates were placed in jobs at local service shops. SFWorks and its partnering agencies provided employers and employees with support to help reduce turnover in the first few months of employment. To date, SFWorks has coordinated two cycles of the program.

      At Pennzoil...

    • 4 The Workforce Intermediary: Profiling the Field of Practice and Its Challenges
      4 The Workforce Intermediary: Profiling the Field of Practice and Its Challenges (pp. 93-123)
      CINDY MARANO and KIM TARR

      Workforce development organizations across the United States number in the thousands. They include Workforce Investment Boards, community colleges, One Stop Career Centers, vocational and adult schools, literacy providers, welfare-to-work programs, community based organizations providing workforce services, employer associations, and the Employment Service. Yet many of these organizations provide limited services to those who need assistance and are having limited success. Longitudinal data on the success of the full spectrum of workforce services have not proven impressive—either in terms of earnings gains for clients or in terms of meeting the nation’s workforce shortages. This chapter explores the experience of a...

    • 5 Workforce Intermediaries: Recent Experience and Implications for Workforce Development
      5 Workforce Intermediaries: Recent Experience and Implications for Workforce Development (pp. 124-152)
      RICHARD McGAHEY

      In the past several years, policy experts and analysts who concentrate on employment and training issues have paid increasing attention to the role of institutions and organizations that provide a variety of brokering activities to connect employers and workers. Although there are a wide variety of activities and institutions involved, these organizations have come to be known as “intermediaries” because they provide services to make markets work more effectively on both the supply and demand sides.¹

      Although it is not necessitated by the concept, “intermediaries” in the context of labor market institutions have become identified with providing assistance to low-wage,...

  6. III ECONOMIC AND POLICY RATIONALES FOR WORKFORCE INTERMEDIARIES
    • 6 Labor Market Intermediaries in the Modern Labor Market
      6 Labor Market Intermediaries in the Modern Labor Market (pp. 155-169)
      PAUL OSTERMAN

      In the midst of the postwar expansion,THE ORGANIZATION MAN, by William H. Whyte, described a world in which managers spent their lives within the same organization, striving to climb the ladder and never thinking about moving to another firm. During this same period automobile workers, unlike managers, faced layoffs during cyclical downturns, but these layoffs were typically followed by recalls. They too could look forward to spending their careers with the same employer.

      Hard numbers confirm this story. Job tenure data—which measure the years an employee spends at the same firm—showed that the typical American worker averaged...

    • 7 The Political Economy of Labor Market Mediation in the United States
      7 The Political Economy of Labor Market Mediation in the United States (pp. 170-190)
      ANTHONY P. CARNEVALE and DONNA M. DESROCHERS

      Broadly conceived, labor market intermediaries are the set of informal conventions, public and private institutions, as well as public laws and regulations, that link individuals and communities with market economies. In concept, the scope of labor market intermediation includes a broad array of functions such as human capital development, supportive social services, employment services, income security, housing, and healthcare as well as a voice in economic and social decision making. While the dialogue among the European nations on the public role in labor market intermediation has been expansive, the American dialogue on workforce intermediaries has been narrowly focused on facilitating...

  7. IV CUSTOMER VOICES
    • 8 Creating and Sustaining a Coherent Voice for Employers in Workforce Development: The Cleveland Experience
      8 Creating and Sustaining a Coherent Voice for Employers in Workforce Development: The Cleveland Experience (pp. 193-215)
      DANIEL E. BERRY

      Organizing a voice to articulate how workforce development systems could better respond to the needs of employers was the focus of Cleveland’s Jobs and Workforce Initiative. This ongoing initiative is but one example of the national growth of intermediary interventions in workforce development systems that are aimed at serving both the needs of businesses and jobseekers. As the employer voice created in Cleveland grew louder and more coherent, it stimulated a broad agenda of change efforts. These included advocacy with public agencies and others for fundamental systems reform and brokering the creation of new training programs through innovative partnerships. Examining...

    • 9 Perception vs. Reality: Employer Attitudes and the Rebranding of Workforce Intermediaries
      9 Perception vs. Reality: Employer Attitudes and the Rebranding of Workforce Intermediaries (pp. 216-240)
      JESSICA K. LAUFER and SIAN WINSHIP

      The field of workforce development has now extensively documented the “supply side” of the labor equation, studying best practices and longitudinal outcomes for low-income people who receive training, education, and job placement. Less documented, but no less important, is the demand side of the equation: the needs, attitudes, beliefs, and outcomes for employers. In an effort to close that gap, in 2001 the John D. and Catherine T. Mac-Arthur Foundation commissioned Laufer Green Isaac (LGI), a Los Angeles–headquartered strategic marketing communications firm specializing in social issue marketing and corporate-community partnerships, to research the “demand” side of the workforce development...

    • 10 How Do Workers See Advancement?
      10 How Do Workers See Advancement? (pp. 241-262)
      ROBERTA REHNER IVERSEN

      Life deals different hands to different people. Many families whose lives were disadvantaged by past mistakes or incarceration, immigrant or refugee dislocation, too little education, domestic violence, interspersed periods of welfare and work, or workplace racism have persistent difficulty advancing through work. Historically, stand-alone workforce development organizations have been the main source of training and help for jobseekers trying to overcome challenged pasts and gain productive employment, but often with mixed success. In the more recent labor and policy environment, newinterorganizational partnershipshave emerged, generally linked under the auspices of an umbrella organization or entity, to address the needs...

    • 11 Labor Market Intermediaries in the Old and New Economies: A Survey of Worker Experiences in Milwaukee and Silicon Valley
      11 Labor Market Intermediaries in the Old and New Economies: A Survey of Worker Experiences in Milwaukee and Silicon Valley (pp. 263-290)
      LAURA LEETE, CHRIS BENNER, MANUEL PASTOR JR. and SARAH ZIMMERMAN

      Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) are not a new phenomenon. Public sector employment services for unemployed workers, union hiring halls in the building trades, and for-profit temporary agencies have existed for a long time. What seem to be new, however, are the number and variety of LMIs, and the extensive roles they are playing in the restructuring of the U.S. labor market. To date there is little comprehensive quantitative work documenting who uses intermediaries, why they use them, and what their impacts are on labor market outcomes. In this chapter, we attempt to begin filling this gap by reporting on a...

  8. V BUILDING WORKFORCE INTERMEDIARIES
    • 12 Financing Workforce Intermediaries
      12 Financing Workforce Intermediaries (pp. 293-313)
      JERRY RUBIN, MARLENE B. SELTZER and JACK MILLS

      Workforce intermediaries are a critical component of any national effort to advance low-skilled, low-income workers to family-sustaining careers. To achieve this ambitious goal, though, workforce intermediaries must gain substantially greater scale and have the stable resources and support infrastructure that make such scale possible.

      This chapter explores challenges and strategies for creating a sustainable, efficient, and scaleable financing system for workforce intermediaries. First, we offer a rationale for public (and private) investment in intermediaries. Second, we present data from recent surveys and interviews on how they are currently financed, and we identify significant gaps that restrict their ability to promote...

    • 13 The Final Act: The Challenges of Implementing Workforce Development Policy via Nonprofit Organizations
      13 The Final Act: The Challenges of Implementing Workforce Development Policy via Nonprofit Organizations (pp. 314-335)
      WILLIAM P. RYAN

      In the drama of policy making, the first two acts—getting the right policy, and getting public money for that policy—tend to capture all our attention. The third act—in which the right policy with the necessary money is actually implemented is presumed to be a foregone conclusion, a tale of public administration that’s hardly worth staying to watch. As a new round of workforce development policy unfolds, our attention span conforms to these expectations. In conferences and policy papers, we worry about getting the policy right and focus on questions of funding, presuming that implementation is the inevitable...

    • 14 Community Development Intermediation and Its Lessons for the Workforce Field
      14 Community Development Intermediation and Its Lessons for the Workforce Field (pp. 336-364)
      CHRISTOPHER WALKER and JOHN FOSTER-BEY

      Over the 1990s, community development intermediation has come into its own as an important contributor to the ongoing work of improving America’s neighborhoods. Established to help the community based portion of the community development industry solve some of its chronic financial, technical, and political difficulties, community development intermediaries have filled major gaps in the array of funding, capacity building, and policy activities that compose community development systems. They have done so in increasing numbers of cities, drawing on growing government, corporate, and private foundation support.

      This chapter assesses the experience of community development intermediation to determine whether creation of new...

  9. VI CONCLUSION
    • 15 Conclusion: A Future for Workforce Intermediaries
      15 Conclusion: A Future for Workforce Intermediaries (pp. 367-382)
      ROBERT P. GILOTH

      On the weekend of Feb. 6–9, 2003, 70 workforce development professionals brought an advance draft of this volume to a mountaintop retreat for the 102nd American Assembly on the future of workforce intermediaries. Arriving by buses and cars, the participants included business leaders, workforce practitioners, policy makers, academics, journalists, public sector officials, and foundation program officers. Over the next four days, they broke into three discussion groups that considered a set of questions about workforce intermediaries, listened to plenary speakers David Ellwood of the Kennedy School and Jeremy Nowak of The Reinvestment Fund, and participated in panel discussions on...

  10. APPENDIX
    • Final Report of the 102nd American Assembly
      Final Report of the 102nd American Assembly (pp. 385-406)
    • Steering Committee Workforce Intermediaries Project
      Steering Committee Workforce Intermediaries Project (pp. 407-408)
    • About The American Assembly
      About The American Assembly (pp. 409-410)
  11. About the Contributors
    About the Contributors (pp. 411-417)
  12. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. 418-418)
    Robert P. Giloth
  13. Index
    Index (pp. 419-424)