About the Good Jobs Collaborative

The Good Jobs Collaborative is a diverse coalition that brings policy experts and worker advocates into conversation on how to build a workforce development system that is responsive to the needs of workers first. Federal workforce development policy is currently designed to prioritize the needs of employers over workers, with little attention to job quality, workers’ voices, or worker rights. Our goal is to create an alternative framework to guide workforce development policy and practice that is grounded in principles of economic justice, advances racial and gender equity, and builds opportunities for worker voice and power.

The Good Jobs Collaborative includes the following organizations: Advancing Black Strategists Initiative (ABSI), Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), New America, Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (formerly COWS), Jobs to Move America, Jobs With Justice, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), the Roosevelt Institute, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Over the course of 2023, the Good Jobs Collaborative convened researchers, worker advocates and organizers, labor organizations, policy experts, workforce development practitioners, and workers from around the country to listen and learn about the challenges facing workers. Specifically, we held roundtable discussions with worker advocates in Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles to learn about the needs of workers—including unemployed and underemployed workers—in the region and the intersection (or lack thereof) between efforts to meet the needs of workers for quality jobs, protections, and training and the services provided by the regional public workforce system.

The convenings revealed a rich set of findings for how to improve workforce development policy and practice to make it more worker-centered and be a source of worker power, particularly in industries and occupations that rely on the public workforce system. The Collaborative used the findings from the regional convenings as the foundation for a set of guiding principles and shared values that, in turn, provide a guide to a thorough reimagining of workforce development policy, from the underlying narrative driving policy design to specific strategies and activities that generate tangible improvements for workers. We also commissioned a series of papers coming out of each convening that will highlight key findings from the regional discussion, including concrete examples of worker-led workforce development that can serve as a model for future policy.

As of January 2024, members of this growing collaboration include: Advancing Black Strategists Initiative (ABSI), Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program, Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Center on Education & Labor at New America, Healthcare Career Advancement Program (H-CAP), High Road Strategy Center, U-Wisconsin, Jobs to Move America, Jobs with Justice, Joint Center for Political & Economic Studies, Restaurant Opportunities Centers (ROC), Roosevelt Institute, and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

Worker-centered: when workers’ interests, knowledge, and expertise are the driving force in the creation and implementation of policies, practices, structures, and conditions that affect them. Worker-centered systems advance worker power and improve life and job quality for workers and communities.

Worker power: when workers come together to demand, shape, and change the terms of their working conditions within their own jobs; the broader labor market and community; and policies or practices that affect them. Worker power is evident when organized workers’ voices, concerns, and priorities are heard and acted upon and when workplaces, workplace conditions, and the broader community reflect the concerns that workers raise.

Worker-centered workforce development system: when workers are the primary actors and benefactors of the public national, state, and local system of employment and training services and labor protections. A worker-centered workforce development system relies on workers’ voices, actions, and interests; worker-led organizations; and advocates to redress long-standing structural inequity, promote worker power, and raise the floor for all jobs.

A worker-centered workforce development system should:

• Put workers first and build worker power. Public resources and policies should actively be in service to workers first, always center worker interest and needs, and rectify structural inequities in the economy. The system should advance workers’ voices, power, organizing, and unionization.
• Combat the legacy, current conditions, and ongoing impact of structural racism and sexism within our labor market. A worker-centered workforce development system should actively address occupational segregation and systemic and structural racism and sexism in the labor market. The system should advance targeted, race-conscious policies that confront systemic underinvestment in women, workers of color, and immigrants and redress current and past harms.
• Raise the floor on all jobs for all workers. All workers and their families should be able to thrive. A worker-centered workforce development system should engage in activities and direct resources that raise the quality of jobs for all workers, ensure that the full range of workers’ rights are protected, and raise standards across all occupations and industries.
• Connect people to good jobs. A worker-centered workforce development system builds pathways to good jobs for workers who are unemployed or underemployed. This happens through a combination of active labor market policies, high-quality training and career counseling, support services, and prioritizing job quality.