The TOWES-PD pilot project is important because it quantitatively measures the link between essential skills and safety. The CTHRC can use these results to further promote the importance of essential skills within the trucking sector.
One of the most interesting labour market trends in the United States is the rise of ‘workforce intermediaries’. Over the past decade, a growing number of groups have come together across the country to deal with the problem of workforce development. Many of these partnerships have significantly improved the prospects of low-wage workers in local labour markets. The intermediary approach has proven successful in a wide range of institutional settings, including community colleges, federally mandated Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs), state and local agencies, unions, employer organizations, community development corporations, community development financial institutions, faith-based groups, and community-based organizations (Fischer, 2005). What distinguishes workplace intermediaries from other initiatives is 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 (Giloth, 2003).
Perhaps the most significant intermediary project to date has been the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jobs Initiative. The Jobs Initiative involved a six-city effort to reform local labour markets and help connect low-income, low-skilled young people to good jobs. The foundation chose six diverse large to medium size cities: Denver, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Seattle. The Initiative was designed to show the field what could be achieved given adequate, sustained support. A core principle of the Initiative was that outcomes for low income workers should be related to higher wages, labour market retention, and career advancement. Since the Jobs Initiative’s inception, across the six sites over 10,000 low-income people have been placed in jobs paying wages averaging $4 above the federal minimum wage. While still modest, for the vast majority of participants, these wages represented a substantial increase in their weekly earnings. Moreover, as many as 14 percent of those placed into jobs had no prior work experience (Fischer, 2005).
The overall conclusion of the Jobs Initiative is the finding that strategic partnerships have the potential to alter the way in which local labour markets and workforce development systems operate. Most importantly, these changes can help promote the scale, sustainability, and structural changes that are needed to improve access to good jobs and career ladders for large numbers of low income job seekers (Giloth, 2003). While the concept of ‘workforce intermediaries’ has not yet caught on in Canada, the US experience suggests that it is an area well worth investigating further.