Workforce 3One
Transcript of Webinar
Introduction to Joint Partnership with
U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Housing and Urban Development
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2015
Transcript By
ASC Services
BRIAN KEATING: All right. Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Brian Keating. I'm going to be your webinar facilitator today, so I'm here if you need anything technically speaking; hopefully not. I'll get myself out of the way as quickly as I can here today.
But I did want to encourage -- we've got a large crowd today, so thanks everyone for taking time to join us. And I did want to encourage everyone to go ahead and type your name into that welcome chat, if you haven't already done so. So many of you have done that, many of you are doing that. Welcome from Rochester, New York, Honolulu, Wichita and Little Rock and so on and so forth. Thanks everybody for being here today.
And if you haven't, just let us know that you're with us. Go ahead and type that in now so that we know who you are and where you're joining us from. And if you want to let us know the name of your organization or group, we also ask you what group best describes your connection today. So we've got some great answers there and we'll bring that up again in a sec in case you missed it.
For now, I'm going to go ahead and move us over to the main format here so that we can kick things off. I do want to mention before we get started that we are recording today. We're going to be making that webinar recording and written transcript available in a day or two. The slides and a handout today have already been made available, so definitely feel free to download that right here in the webinar room which will be popping up in a second, as well as from the link where you registered for this event as well. We'll be posting that just in case you need that as well.
But welcome everyone to today's U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Labor Partnership Highlights webinar. We are live today, so thanks for joining us.
One more appeal. If you haven't already done so, let us know the name of your organization or group, where you're joining us from, what location you're at today and also how many are joining you if you do happen to be in a group. Thanks for that everyone. And we'll leave that welcome chat up for a moment.
We're going to invite you to ask questions or make comments at any point using that similar chat window throughout today's webinar.
But to kick us off, I'm going to turn things over to our moderator today, Tony Wilson. She's the YouthBuild acting program director with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Toni, take it away.
TONI WILSON: Thank you so much.
And welcome everyone. As Brian said, my name is Toni Wilson and I'm the YouthBuild acting program director. And I'm so excited about this webinar and so excited about the large group that we have attending here today.
First, I did want to just talk a little bit about what you can expect from this webinar. We're going to hear about DOL and HUD's partnership work to date. We're going to talk a little bit about how our participants will be able to learn more about Section 3 guidance letter and partnership opportunities. And we're also going to discuss how participants will learn about all the federal programs involved in building and sustaining a successful hiring partnership.
Well, before we get going, I did want to basically get an idea of who is in the audience. I know today we've targeted the registered apprenticeship community, public housing and other HUD grantees, YouthBuild grantees, and we also have other. So I see that we have good representation from each of our groups. We're looking at close to 30 percent from the registered apprenticeship community, close to 40 percent from the public housing, HUD grantees, 14 percent YouthBuild and about 16 percent in that other category. So great representation.
And we are excited to have everyone here together because this really is about a partnership. And a lot of what you will hear today is about a partnership among this group that you guys are representing. So we are very happy that you are part of today's webinar.
We also have a great opportunity to have some great presenters today. From HUD, we have Rafiq Munir who is a program analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He's with the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity under the Economic Opportunity Division. And as you can see on your screen, that actually is Rafiq.
We also have Franchella Kendall. Franchella is the chief, Division of Standards and National Industry Promotion, Office of Apprenticeship. And she is with the U.S. Department of Labor.
And both of them will be speaking shortly as we get our slides from getting a little ahead of us, so we'll get that together in just a second.
But while we're doing that, I wanted to highlight some of our joint partnerships in reference to work with HUD and DOL.
Just a few things that we've done some partnership work around. We have a partnership tool kit and a webinar “From the Ground Up.” This partnership is a HUD/DOL publication. It is entitled “From the Ground Up: Creating Sustainable Partnerships Between Public Housing Authorities and Workforce Investment Boards.” This document is intended to be a practical tool to support expanded collaboration between the local workforce and public housing systems.
And the publication includes a joint opening message from both of our assistant secretaries, also some examples of partnerships between PHA, which is public housing authorities, and WIBs across three cities, including Boston, Portland and Milwaukee, and also just some resources from DOL and HUD, including some sample MOUs. So I'll show you that tool, how to get to that in just a second.
Another resource we have is Jobs-Plus. The Jobs-Plus NOFA is out, which is, for those that are not familiar with NOFAs, it's kind of in DOL language our SGAs or FLAs, and in the HUD world it's the NOFAs. It's $24 million for a partnership between PHAs and workforce boards.
HUD has worked together on development and dissemination of this notice. And the program is based on a successful demonstration project which significantly increased employment and income of public housing resident in selected cities.
So we'll make sure you get a link to those resources.
One other highlight we wanted to point out are promise zones. We, Department of Labor and HUD, are doing a lot of work around promise zones. In 2013, the president during his State of the Union laid out an initiative, designated a number of high-poverty urban, rural and travel communities as promise zones where the federal government will partner with and invest in communities to create jobs, leverage private investment, increase economic activity, expand education opportunities and reduce violent crime.
Those areas currently they're located in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Hollywood and Kentucky and Oklahoma. There are 15 more that should be coming out by 2016.
We're also going to be talking about Section 3 today, so we'll get into that resource a little bit later.
But these are the links to these joint partnerships that I just discussed. So after this webinar you guys can check that out for further details.
All right. So I did want to touch base on one of the last things is what we're going to be focusing on today, which is the HUD/DOL joint partnership letter. So as part of this, of all these various things that I have described, one of the things that I'm personally most excited about is the HUD/DOL joint partnership letter.
Let me go back and bring the letter up.
So the letter itself, this joint partnership letter, is signed by DOL and HUD and basically -- here's just a copy which you'll be able to see a link of that as part of your attachments there -- but this joint letter itself goes into detail about how YouthBuild specifically is mentioned in HUD's Section 3 regulations as one of the groups to partner with.
So basically, as contractors are bidding for public housing work, this basically helps their package and their chances in reference to funding if they include YouthBuild.
And we're going to provide some more detail on that. I will be talking in more detail. But I just wanted to make sure you see this letter and make sure you're familiar with this because this is something that brings YouthBuild, public housing and the registered apprenticeship community, including contractors, all together. So I want to make sure we do that.
In reference to our next slide, partnerships and guidance, so just talking in reference to really collaborating to bring graduates of these programs together with HUD's funded contractors. So once again, this letter is really strengthening that local apprenticeship opportunity for at-risk youth and those at-risk youth who are trained in construction trades, promotes self-sufficiency for residents of public housing and connects contractors working on HUD-funded projects to DOL-registered apprenticeship program.
And once again, we're really excited about that.
In reference to building our partnerships, we are working with that registered apprenticeship community, also the public housing authorities and other HUD grantees, contractors and YouthBuild. So this is a partnership among all, so it's win-win all around.
And today, we have presenters from some of the federal partners of this partnership we're describing. We're going to hear from the Office of Apprenticeship, DOL's Office of Apprenticeship, HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity and DOL, and I'll talk a little later in this presentation on DOL's Division of Youth Services.
So to get started, I'd like to first introduce the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeship. And I will pass this over to Franchella Kendall.
Franchella?
FRANCHELLA KENDALL: Thanks, Toni.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today. The Office of Apprenticeship is very pleased to be a partner in this partnership and also the opportunity to provide apprenticeship training opportunity to both YouthBuild graduates and Section 3 housing residents.
To help make this partnership successful, we want everyone to be knowledgeable about the resources that are available. Today, I'm going to provide you an overview of registered apprenticeship. I'm also going to touch on the top of the pre-apprenticeship training opportunities as well as another resource, the Step-Up Program.
So let's get started.
Registered apprenticeship -- the most important component of a registered apprenticeship program is that it is employer-driven, it is an employer-driven model. Employers voluntarily develop apprenticeship programs to train their workers. Registered apprenticeship is a job. Employers compensate their employees as they're going through their registered apprenticeship program.
These apprentices receive higher wages when they increase their skill level. This is an earn-and-learn model. And please keep the focus on that this is a job, it is paid employment.
There are five core components of a registered apprenticeship program. Employer participation is key. They provide the on-the-job training. The employer also pairs the apprentice with a mentor or journey worker and the journey worker participates in the training of the apprentice.
The training must be an occupation that requires at least 2,000 hours of training. The training is structured and the apprentice knows what is expected of them from day one.
We have approximately 1,000 occupations and they cover many industries, that we have occupations not only in the construction industry, but IT, health care and manufacturing.
The amount of time required for the training in each occupation is dependent on the job requirements. A minimum can be 2,000 hours, but for more-technical occupations, the training can be as long as five years.
Another core requirement of a registered apprenticeship program is classroom instruction. The classroom instruction or the related instruction supplements the on-the-job training and provides the apprentice with the knowledge of the technical and theoretical subjects related to the occupation.
The training can be delivered in a lot of different ways. It can run parallel to the on-the-job training, the apprentice could receive a majority of their related classroom instruction upfront, we call that front-loaded, or it could be in different segmented options, especially when you're talking about connecting or working with a community college.
And that leads me to the next point. The training can be delivered online or in a community college. If it's delivered in the community college, many of our registered apprenticeship program sponsors have articulation agreements with the community colleges and the apprentices are rewarded with credit toward a college degree.
The apprentices are rewarded for their skill attainment, as I mentioned before, with increased wages. The apprentices are also awarded with a nationally recognized credential, a certificate of completion of apprenticeship. This is awarded to all apprentices once they have completed their apprenticeship program.
The certificate of completion of apprenticeship is recognition that the apprentice has completed the requirements for the apprenticeship program and is fully qualified to have a job. The credential is 100 guaranteed to all employers that the apprentice that they have hired, that they have provided the training for, is able to accomplish the skills and tasks required of the job.
Registered apprenticeship programs benefit both the job seeker and the business. The job seeker is provided the opportunity to get paid while learning a job. Wages are increased as his skill level increases and, of course, the nationally recognized credential. The apprentice may also receive college credit for completion of an apprenticeship program.