Pom ona Jobs Program Proposal Page 1 of 21
The POMONA JOBS PROGRAM
A Public Jobs Program
to Engage an Anchor Institution Collaborative and High Road Training Partnerships t
o Place Individuals from Low-Income Pomona Households
Who Are Unemployed or Underemployed
in Good-Paying, Local, Green Jobs
Section 1
Project Overview
The Latino-Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley (“LRT”), in partnership with the Institute for Ecological Civilization (“EcoCiv”) and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance California Hub (“WEAll”), seek funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to help launch the Pomona Jobs Program (the “PJP”), a public jobs program that will establish an Anchor Institution Collaborative and industry-led High Road Training Partnerships to create at least 30 to 50 new, high-quality jobs for which program beneficiaries will be prepared and into which they will be hired by the end of the American Rescue Plan Act grant funding deadline in 2026.
1.1 B
eneficiaries and Eligibility
The beneficiaries targeted by this program include Pomona residents who are individuals from low-income households who are unemployed or underemployed.1 The overarching goal of the program is to create at least 30-50 new jobs for these beneficiaries and provide the job training that their new employment requires.
With a median age of 34 and a population that is 72% Latino, 81% of which are without a bachelor’s degree, Pomona is home to many who have been hit particularly hard by the pandemic. By some calculations, the poverty rate in Pomona is 17.9%, in contrast to the nationwide rate of 11.4%.
2 The U.S. Treasury Department’s Final Rule recognizes the employment-related needs and harms that Pomona’s low-income residents have experienced due to the pandemic, and endorses the type of solution that the PJP will provide:3 1 This program will serve beneficiaries who are unemployed and underemployed pursuant to the definitions explained in U.S. Treasury’s Final Rule under the enumerated eligible use section, “Assistance to Unemployed and Underemployed Workers.” Beneficiaries of this program will also be individuals from households that—because they are low income, reside in QCTs, and/or are eligible for programs that require income tests—are presumed to have experienced negative economic impacts resulting from the pandemic and to have been disproportionately impacted.
2 These statistics are from U.S. Census data.
3 Federal Register / Vol 87, No. 18 / Thursday, January 27, 2022 pp. 4356-4358, 4369.
Attachment No.1
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“[T]here is a continued need to respond to the pandemic’s economic effects to ensure a full, broad -based, and equitable recovery. ”
“Rates of unemployment remain particularly severe among workers of color and workers with lower levels of educational attainment. …. Job losses have also been particularly steep among low -wage workers, with these workers remaining
furthest from recovery as of the end of 2020. ”
“As the economy recovers, the effects of the pandemic - related recession may continue to impact households,
including a risk of longer -term effects on earnings and economic potentia l …. These potential long -term economic consequences underscore the continued need for robust policy support. ”
“[L]ow-wage workers experienced job loss at a rate five times higher than middle-wage workers. ”
“[L]ow income families have reported higher lev els of
social isolation, stress, and other negative mental health outcomes during the pandemic. ”
“[P]ublic jobs programs … are … enumerated eligible uses as assistance to unemployed or underemployed workers. ” [Treasury recognizes] that the pandemic has generated
broad workforce disruption …. ”
Section 2
Job Creation & Workforce Development—Strategy and Implementation
2.1 Anchor Collaborative Model for Job Identification and Creation Anchor institutions are the larger, long-term institutions in any given city or region.
Examples of these anchors are city governments, universities, school systems, hospitals, and community foundations. All of these are “place-based, mission-driven entities … that leverage their economic power alongside their human and intellectual resources to improve the long- term health and social welfare of their communities. ”
4 By their very nature, they are motivated
to engage in long-term planning that aligns their institutional interests with those of the comm u nit y. An anchor collaborative is a network of these central institutions.
4 UCSF Anchor Institution Initiative | UCSF Anchor Institution Initiative Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 3 of 21
Across the United States, anchor collaboratives are strengthening local economic ecosystems by creating community wealth and jobs for low income, unemployed, and under- employed workers. They focus the business activities of the participating anchor institutions on local hiring and purchasing, place-based investing, and the creation of good-paying, green jobs. This focus results in increased incomes and household health and stability for low- income residents who are identified by the collaboratives according to their negative economic circumstances. The strategy also produces other economic development benefits by building community-held wealth and addressing systemic inequities.
The PJP will:
• Build trust and systematic cooperation among our regional anchor institutions; • Identify industries in which they have common purchasing requirements; • Integrate the Anchor Collaborative into the High Road Training Partnerships (“HRTPs;” see Section 2.2 below) by:
o Leveraging the Collaborative’s purchasing power to identify and/or create family-supporting (“high road”) jobs for the beneficiaries;5 o Integrate the anchor institutions into the HRTPs with industry experts and the beneficiaries to develop training, education, and on-the-job support for the beneficiaries so they are hired into and thrive in those jobs; and
o Work with the Anchor Collaborative through the HRTPs to develop pathways for beneficiaries to advance in their careers.
Fortunately , most anchor institutions in the Pomona Valley already contribute their human and intellectual resources to improving Pomona’s community wellbeing. This program will build on those commitments by developing relationships among the institutions, leading to formal agreements to share information with each other and work together to leverage their collective economic resources to identify and create jobs for the beneficiaries.
Hospitals and universities alone make up an estimated 9% of U.S. GDP, and are usually some of the largest purchasers and employers in their regions. In Pomona, as in most regions, the potential for targeted, local job creation in and adjacent to these sectors goes largely untapped because the institutions typically function in isolation, oblivious to the transformations they could effect in the lives of neighboring households if they were to collaborate. This program will develop trust among and commitments from Pomona Valley’s “eds and meds”—municipal governments, K-12 school districts, and other large nonprofits—
5 This means that, in the absence of this program, the 30-50 jobs to which the beneficiaries will be connected either would not exist or would not be available to the beneficiaries.
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to access their combined funding and demand for goods and services on a scale sufficient to create and support good local jobs for our target beneficiaries in stable, sustainable businesses. The model insists that the identified or created jobs be empowering for the workers—jobs that will promote the workers’ health, wealth, safety, and wellbeing—so that they can heal and move on from the financial, physical, social, and mental devastation wrecked on them by the pandemic and its aftermath.
2.1.1 Examples of Successful Anchor Collaboration Models Cities throughout the United States have used anchor institution cooperative models to create good jobs for low-income individuals in a way that keeps significant portions of their economic output local and directs it toward building community wealth. Among the best known of these models is the Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland6, which began in 2007 when the Cleveland Foundation, the Democracy Collaborative, and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center commissioned an assessment of local anchor institutions’ annual expenditures. They found that the purchasing power of the three main anchor institutions was greater than $3 billion, but that most of this money was being spent outside their neighboring communities. By successively incubating a number of worker-owned cooperatives that the anchor institutions had helped develop and agreed to contract with— the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry , Ohio Cooperative Solar, Green City Growers Cooperative, and the Neighborhood V oice—Cleveland was able to create new jobs for its lowest income residents while enriching and empowering the workers’ local communities.
The Evergreen Cooperatives created 81 jobs across the three different worker-owned cooperatives, with the potential for up to 160 jobs in total. In Cleveland, many of these jobs are related directly to green energy and sustainable agriculture, thereby creating resilient, long-term employment opportunities based on sustainable businesses.
The City of Rochester, NY invested City resources to create an office at city hall to spearhead an anchor collaborative. The anchor-institution-convening efforts of that office are synced with those of a nonprofit organization, incubated by the City, called OWN Rochester, that is charged with creating jobs for residents of high-poverty areas of the City by developing, promoting, and supporting for-profit, employee-owned businesses that are linked to sources of high demand (e.g., goods and services required by the local anchor institutions). “OWN Rochester has launched two start-up businesses—an LED retrofitting company and a custodial business—that will soon transition to worker cooperatives. The goal is to establish a portfolio of cooperatives over the next few years. ”
6 The Evergreen, or Cleveland Model, as it has become known, is a means of community wealth building through worker-owned cooperatives that rely on contracts for goods or services from local anchor institutions. In a worker- owned cooperative, each employee of the cooperative owns a portion of the enterprise and participates in decision-making for how the cooperative runs.
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These initiatives and others like them constitute an increasingly transformative model.7 The PJP will help Pomona benefit from the lessons learned by examining other cities’ efforts.
It will adapt successes from other cities, implementing a program that is unique for Pomona, rooted in the needs of Pomona’s low-income communities and our regional institutions.
When tailored to our region’s strengths and circumstances, and combined with the HRTP worker development model described below, we can expect the Anchor Collaborative to be an enormous catalyst for the creation of quality, stable jobs for the beneficiaries.
Although they are technically tangential to the job-creating focus of this program, our hopes for the collaborative model in Pomona extend beyond providing the 30-50 new jobs by 2026. W e aim for this job creation project to adopt principles of community wealth building that increase income for Pomona residents, keep anchor institution spending in the local community , and offer an ecologically sustainable provision of goods and services to anchor institutions. W e understand this project as part of a larger effort, already taking root in Pomona, to shift the City’s and our region’s economic focus toward the wellbeing of people and the planet.
2.1.2 Our Anchor Institutions
Regional anchor institutions that are expected to join the Anchor Collaborative include:
• Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center
• Casa Colina Hospital and Centers for Healthcare
• Fairplex
• University of La V erne
• The 5 Claremont Colleges
• Cal Poly Pomona
• W estern University
• Mt. San Antonio College
• The school districts of Pomona, Claremont, and Bonita • The city governments of Pomona, La V erne, Claremont, and San Dimas • Other institutions that fit the model of an anchor collaborative To achieve the scale necessary to provide good jobs for the beneficiaries, this region requires the collaboration of its large, public, publicly-funded, and nonprofit (i.e., publicly-
7 See "Anchor Collaboratives Report: Building Bridges with Anchor Institutions," The Democracy Collaborative Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 6 of 21
advantaged) institutions. Jobs that meet the purchasing demands of these local anchor institutions should be available for low-income, unemployed, and under-employed Pomona residents, but they are currently trapped beneath uncoordinated, non-local spending, and contracting and purchasing procedures that are indifferent as to who provides goods and services. This program will create the collaborative infrastructure to open those jobs to the beneficiaries and to prepare the beneficiaries to fill them successfully.
2.2 High Road Training Partnership (“HRTP”) Model for Workforce Development8 / Initial Partnership with CHERP and Regional Anchor Institutions The PJP will integrate the Anchor Collaborative with the essential elements of the HRTP model promoted by the California W orkforce Development Board. “HRTPs are intentional efforts by leaders within a particular industry—including employers and workers—to come together to solve immediate problems and overcome longer term challenges in their industry. ”9 HRTPs focus first and foremost on equity and job quality. Workers, worker organizations, and employers are recognized as industry experts and work alongside community-based organizations and training institutions to provide workforce development solutions with pathways to quality jobs for those from the most disadvantaged communities. To implement High Road Partnerships, intermediary organizations convene workers, unions and other worker organizations, and employers to build committed partnerships based on trust to:
• Convene regularly to identify needs and solutions;
• Design interventions that create jobs and workforce development opportunities for the community;
• Adjust and refine interventions;
• Connect with organizations to develop training;
• Ensure workers receive training customized to their needs; • Determine the operational adjustments each partner will make to implement training and support services.
“The end goal is not a program or curriculum but an industry-led skills infrastructure that builds more robust regional economies. ”
10 8 The White House has endorsed Los Angeles County’s investment of ARPA funds to bolster High Road Training Partnerships. See: FACT SHEET: White House Announces over $40 Billion in American Rescue Plan Investments in Our Workforce – With More Coming | The White House
9 Taking the High Road - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 1. 10 The High Road in Workforce Development - CA Workforce Development Board.
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The California W orkforce Development Board (CWDB) identified four interrelated elements that are essential to operating a successful HRTP: 1) Industry-Led Problem Solving; 2) The Partnership Itself is a Priority; 3) Incorporate W orker Wisdom throughout Partnership Efforts; and 4) Industry-Driven Education and Training Solutions. What follows is a description of how the PJP will incorporate each of these elements, along with some specifics as to how each element is likely to work. W e focus in particular on the first HRTP that the PJP intends to develop: a project in the solar energy sector, partnering with CHERP Solar Works, a Pomona-based, nonprofit solar panel manufacturing company that has well- developed plans to lead the growth of the industry in our region to include installation, maintenance, and other follow-on and adjacent careers.
2.2.1 Industry-led problem solving
“Starting with the jobs—the demand side of what is needed in their particular industry— is foundational. …. Responding to demand fundamentally changes training; it goes from something that’s done because it has the potential to increase participants’ chances of getting a job to something that is designed explicitly to help participants get and keep identified and available jobs. ”
11 In the models that the CWDB has funded so far, the “demand” for workers (i.e., the current and imminent availability of jobs for the job-seeking workers who are participating in the models) is assessed, projected, and identified (by monitoring, for example, quantitative data, market analyses, and potential policy changes) by partnerships that include unions and industry representatives. These are typically large private employers or public agencies, for example, statewide health care employers, major commercial buildings and janitorial agencies, the South Bay Transit Authority, Los Angeles County, etc.
The PJP emulates those jobs-first HRTP models, and adds the benefit that the demand for workers (i.e., the specific, open jobs to be filled) will also be, in a sense, created12 at the level of the Anchor Institution Collaborative. The HRTPs play two major roles, depending on the industry and on the timing and level of the Anchor Collaborative’s attention to worker- demand-creation in the industry . The first role is to encourage and assist the Anchor Collaborative to create worker-demand for our beneficiaries in a specific sector. The second role is to organize the beneficiaries and arrange for their training and education so they can take advantage of the worker-demand that the Anchor Collaborative is developing.
The PJP will work to create its first HRTP to employ beneficiaries in the solar energy industry in the Pomona Valley . CHERP Solar W orks, a nonprofit, has built and outfitted a
11 HRTP Essential Element 1: Industry-Led Problem Solving - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 1. 12 Alternative ways to express our intent to use the Anchor Collaborative to “create” worker-demand (i.e., jobs for our beneficiaries) in an industry sector in our region might be to say that we will “unleash” local demand for workers in an industry, or “intensify” the demand for local workers in an industry.
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factory in Pomona that is poised to hire 33 workers. CHERPs solar panels include propriety technology that makes them better than any produced elsewhere in the world because they are easier to manufacture, immune to the “hot-spot” fire hazard, and more efficient. The factory jobs are family-supporting and will provide workplace experience and industry certifications that will allow the workers to move up to even better paying positions, either with CHERP or at other manufacturing and energy-sector businesses. As the initial employees become experienced and certified and move up to more advanced jobs, their former positions will be again open for more hiring. The beneficiaries of the PJP—low- income Pomona residents, especially those with additional barriers to employment—can and should fill these positions. There is an immediate need for the HRTP that the PJP will develop to bring together CHERP’s manufacturing experts with workers from community organizations and low-income neighborhoods in Pomona to “problem solve” the best way to systematically link our beneficiaries to and prepare them to get and keep the manufacturing jobs.
But that is just the beginning. The partnership that includes CHERP, other industry experts, and Pomona workers will also include representatives from the Anchor Institutions, because the near-future demand for currently-low-income Pomona workers in this sector in this region will be largely driven by the extent to which Anchor Institutions coordinate their purchasing decisions as they determine, whether, when, and how to increase their clean- energy consumption—especially as they decide how to take advantage of tax credits, grants and other incentives that the federal government is rolling out via the Inflation Reduction Act and other programs. The anchor institutions identified above in Section 2.1.2 can, and should, and are being financially incentivized to, install large numbers of solar panels. This will create a large demand for workers in the solar energy sector, not just in manufacturing, but also in installation, maintenance, etc. W e need the PJP now to organize the conversations and planning that needs to happen immediately to make sure our beneficiaries are linked to, prepared for, and successful in these jobs as they become available. The more systematically the anchor institutions coordinate their timing and their commitments to use locally manufactured (i.e., CHERP) panels, and to source locally for the installation and maintenance of their solar arrays, the more we will be able to ensure that low-income Pomona residents are prepared for and hired locally into good jobs in the industry that will be sustainable over the long-term. Stable commitments by the Anchor Institution Collaborative will provide the foundation on which to build thriving enterprises that will then be able to expand into additional markets—like, for example, residential solar, which the government is also incentivizing. “Striving for scale lifts more of the industry on to the high Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 9 of 21
road path13 and setting standards for how to achieve results ensures that training and education programs are most effective. ”14
The PJP intends that its initial HRTP will encompass the solar energy industry, because of the groundwork that has already been laid by CHERP. But the PJP will work to develop HRTPs in other industries as well. The purpose of the Anchor Institution Collaborative, in addition to cohering around plans to expand and solidify existing worker-demand (as in solar energy manufacturing and its offshoots), will also work to identify industries in which there is latent, untapped worker-demand in the region that can be unleashed and met by our beneficiaries. Those industries will be identified once our PJP has developed the Collaborative and the trust required for information sharing and analysis. It is possible, however, to make some informed speculations. For example, the janitorial industry has been a focus both of HRTPs (e.g., the Building Skills Partnership15) and anchor institution collaboratives (e.g., OWN Rochester16). It is not difficult to imagine that an HRTP in the Pomona Valley that starts by investigating anchor institutions’ janitorial (and/or landscaping) expenditures. The goals will be to determine if these industries are appropriate targets for localization, development into more family-supporting careers, and specialization and training to advance anchor institutions’ commitments to support businesses that prioritize concern for the environment and workers. If so, worker organizations, including labor, and industry experts can be brought into the partnership to problem solve about how to open jobs for our beneficiaries, equip them with necessary skills and training17, and ensure they remain in their jobs and have career advancement pathways.
Another promising sector in Pomona for which the PJP may well organize an HRTP is food production and food service. A model is suggested by the work of Anchors in Resilient Communities, a nonprofit which “is coordinating the procurement and investments of San Francisco Bay Area anchor institutions to bolster the regional food system. ” The initiative “is a collaborative effort with the East Bay’s local government, farmers, food entrepreneurs, food justice organizations, workforce nonprofits, and anchor institutions like Kaiser Permanente.”18 Workers and experts from the quickly growing urban farming movement in Pomona (and/or possibly the expanding street vendor/catering industry) could join anchor institution
13 “High road firms compete on quality of product and service, achieved through innovation and investment in human capital, and thereby are able to generate family-supporting career-track jobs where workers have agency and voice.” (Taking the High Road - UC Berkeley Labor Center) 14 HRTP Essential Element 1: Industry-Led Problem Solving - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 2. 15 Taking the High Road - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 5. 16 "Anchor Collaboratives Report: Building Bridges with Anchor Institutions," The Democracy Collaborative, p.
19. 17 There would be no need to reinvent the wheel here. Building Skills Partnership has developed a Green Janitor Education Program, for example, that certifies workers in green building cleaning practices to help meet the latest energy, water, and environmental sustainability standards: Green Janitor Education Program — B uilding Skills Partnership.
18 Our Work | Anchors in Resilient Communities
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members in an HRTP that assesses and organizes local demand for locally produced food— initially within the anchor institutions. The HRTP would then problem solve to both consolidate and meet the demand for workers that could exist if purchasing is coordinated and commitment secured to source from “high-road” producers who emphasize high-quality jobs and healthy, local food production.
2.2.2 Partnership Itself is a Priority
“Industries typically do not naturally organize themselves, especially in a sustained way beyond particular issues or projects. … [I]n general they have to be brought together—or be helped to hold together—by a dedicated convener or intermediary that can engage the parties, analyze industry needs, provide programmatic capacity, and support leadership development. Intermediaries can also connect the needs and interests within the partnership with the community workforce development system. ”
19 By funding the PJP, the City will locate that convening/intermediary function at the Latina/o Roundtable in its partnerships with the Institute for Ecological Civilization and WEAll. As elaborated in Section 3.3 below, these organizations are well and uniquely positioned in our region to ensure that the key stakeholders (in industry, among workers, and at anchor institutions) are involved in the partnerships, and to build the commitment, trust, collaborative culture, and ongoing capacity the partnerships will require to deliver results over the long term.
The components that have allowed HRTPs to function successfully as industry partnerships are ready to be connected and mobilized with respect to the regional solar energy industry that the PJP is likely to tackle first. Successful HRTPs convene at a minimum three types of major stakeholders: “those representing employers, those representing workers, and an intermediary or sustained convener.”20 The PJP, for the reasons explained in the previous section, will add stakeholders representing anchor institutions. Acting together those stakeholders will “create the strong scaffolding that allows supply and demand in the workforce world to come together in a systemic way. ” 21 CHERP , the solar manufacturing employer, is already committed to participate in a HRTP as soon as it is established. As soon as the PJP is funded, the LRT, as the intermediary, will hire staff dedicated to the establishment and maintenance of the partnerships—i.e., a Backbone Lead and a Community Organizer (see Sections 3.1 and 3.2 below). One of their immediate priorities will be to reach out to worker stakeholders (i.e., potential beneficiaries) through LRT’s established relationships with community organizations and in Pomona neighborhoods to identify, train, and support worker leaders who can formally represent their fellows in the Partnership.
19 HRTP Essential Element 2: The Industry Partnership Itself Is A Priority - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 3. 20 Id. at 2.
21 Id. at 3.
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Another priority will be to ensure that CHERP and the anchor institutions are formally22 and firmly23 committed to the Partnership for the long haul. The Backbone Lead and Community Organizer will help the Partnership establish governance structures, decision-making processes, operational procedures, and leadership training and expectations. They will help the Partnership develop the values, goals, and work plans that will, over time, lead to the trust and collaborative culture needed to sustain the Partnership as it develops, as the industry changes, and as new partners are brought in.
The Backbone Lead will work to ensure that the solar energy industry HRTP, and others that are created through the PJP, have funding—through a diversity of sources, including grants—to continue the intermediary/convening/ partnership prioritization activities beyond the ARPA deadline.
2.2.3 Incorporate Worker Wisdom throughout Partnership Efforts In successful HRTPs, “worker voice is actively included in program design, implementation, and evaluation, ” and for “ongoing support for new workers to succeed once on the job.”24 The Latina/o Roundtable’s commitment to worker voice is expressed in one of the fundamental values of its New Economy Committee, which reads: “W e believe the success of the economy and each of its institutions should be assessed by how well they achieve the collective wellbeing, independence, dignity, and growth of workers. ” The purpose of the PJP is to provide “high road” jobs for the worker-beneficiaries. To do so effectively, the HRTPs will ensure: that they understand the work the beneficiaries want to do and are able to do; that training and education are designed so that the beneficiaries find it beneficial and relevant to the jobs in which they will be hired; and that whole-person supports are developed that enable beneficiaries to stay in, succeed at, and advance in their jobs. The partnerships will seek out and heed input from worker-beneficiaries from the beginning, and will incorporate leadership from their ranks in the development and evaluation of all partnership activities. A central role of the Community Organizer is to organize worker-beneficiaries to participate in the PJP, and to develop worker leaders to assist in strategy and refinement of the partnerships’ programs.
Fortunately , CHERP , which will be the primary industry partner in the solar ene r g y H R T P, is already committed to hiring low-income Pomona residents, including those with life experiences that have traditionally been barriers to employment. CHERP welcomes the opportunity to participate in a partnership with LRT/EcoCiv and the worker representatives that LRT will organize because it understands the importance of tailoring its training
22 E.g., through a Partnership charter, MOUs, and/or other instruments. 23 E.g., through identifying and supporting champions for the Partnership, and instilling a belief in and experience with the Partnership’s collective power to meet challenges and take advantage of opportunities. 24 HRTP Essential Element 3: Worker Voice - UC Berkeley Labor Center, p. 2.
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programs and work culture to provide the necessary skills and support for the PJP’s beneficiaries. To do this, CHERP will need to listen carefully to, at first, the potential workers, and later to its employees who are in the thick of work on the factory floor. The Backbone Lead and the Community Organizer will ensure that the Partnership actively seeks worker input in various formats, and that worker leaders are identified and trained from the start to participate in Partnership governance. Constant attention to worker voice will ensure that training and education, on-the-job supports, pay levels, safety considerations, and career advancement opportunities prepare and motivate workers to stick with their training and, once hired, perform consistently at a high level.
This worker-centric orientation will guide all HRTPs created by the PJP. Note that the local workers who will be the beneficiaries of PJP are also constituents, patrons, patients, and stakeholders of the anchor institutions that will be collaborating in the partnerships.
Involving the workers in all aspects of the partnerships will empower them, their families, and their communities (i.e., low-income Pomona communities) to hold the anchor institutions accountable to their public missions, and to insist that they act concretely to improve the work lives and wellbeing of the most vulnerable residents in the region they serve.
The PJP is also committed to promoting wherever possible what amounts to the highest elevation of worker voice—the development of worker cooperatives. The anchor institution collaborative movement, which includes LRT and EcoCiv , has a longstanding commitment to the creation, whenever feasible, of worker cooperatives. W orkers own worker cooperatives.
They have democratic control over workplace conditions, distribution of profit, assignment of duties, hiring of managers and consultants, onboarding of new worker-owners, and all other aspects of their work lives and their enterprises’ strategies. In a worker cooperative, the distinction between workers and employers breaks down. The employers who worry about retaining workers and incentivizing them to perform to high standards are the same people as the workers who worry about family-sustaining pay, whole-person supports on the job, and opportunities for growth and advancement. W orker cooperatives often proved especially resilient during the pandemic because they were able to draw on worker wisdom and make collective decisions to equally distribute the sacrifices necessary to weather the downturn. 25 2.2.4 Industry-Driven Education and Training Solutions HRTPs take advantage of the abundant “good work and guidance already out there about how to develop and run effective workforce education and training programs, ” but they “fundamentally re-think these programs” in the context of specific needs identified up front by the partnership. “The order of this is important. Note that the development of education and training programs result from the industry partners determining the needs, and then
25 See, for example: Worker cooperatives can make the U.S. economy more resilient | Fortune Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 13 of 21
problem solving together with strong worker voice to design, deliver, and support programs that optimally meet [worker] demand for the industry. … [T]he HRTP can choose to utilize training programs that already are out there, develop and deliver their own programs, or use a hybrid specific to their particular workforce need s .” 26 With respect to education and training, the PJP’s initial HRTP in the solar energy industry will greatly benefit from CHERP’s expertise and the research it has already done into existing community education and training partners that can help meet its needs for worker training, and into career pathways in the solar industry for which its entry-level manufacturing jobs will prepare workers.27 CHERP needs the HRTP that the PJP will develop to ensure that worker voice is central to: refining and improving training for the manufacturing jobs; developing a supportive culture in the workplace; and developing additional jobs (in, for example, installation and maintenance) and the career pathways and standards that will set our region’s solar energy industry on the “high road. ” Barriers to training are bound to arise as the PJP works with beneficiaries at varying levels of readiness and at various points in their lives to complete training and transition into the available jobs.
The HRTP will be critical for developing creative and innovative solutions to overcome those barriers. For example, HRTPs that serve workers similar to the PJP’s beneficiaries have addressed barriers related to transportation and work schedule, costs of equipment and training, relevant language acquisition, developing flexibility in the process of achieving industry credentials, and similar needs.
The Anchor Institution Collaborative involvement in the HRTPs will improve the PJP’s ability to tailor training solutions to specific industries because among the anchor institutions are the school districts, Mt. Sac Community College, and the Fairplex—all of which have extensive experience and expertise in worker training and education, and the direct ability to adapt and improve those programs based on HRTP needs and inputs. By involving anchor institutions directly and integrally in planning at the outset of each HRTP , the PJP will develop the influence required to achieve the flexibility that the industry partnerships will need to meet their goals. In this way the PJP will be able to remove roadblocks that HRTPs have typically faced when trying to push traditional, large-scale institutions to improve and refine their curricula, teacher qualifications, accessibility to workers with barriers to entry, or other aspects of existing programs. 28 The PJP will also, from the outset and at every opportunity, involve unions in the HRTPs to develop career pathways, apprenticeships, and industry-specific training and education. The Latina/o Roundtable from its founding nearly two decades ago has been a staunch and active supporter of labor. The relationships and reputation that it has developed will allow the PJP
26 HRTP Essential Element 4: Industry Drives Training Solutions - UC Berkeley Labor Center, pp. 1-2. 27 CHERP Locally Grown Power | Job Creation
28 HRTP Essential Element 4: Industry Drives Training Solutions - UC Berkeley Labor Center, pp. 5-6.
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to take immediate advantage of the strength and expertise that unions can provide for the beneficiaries.
Section 3
Staff
The PJP requires the employment of a Backbone Lead and a Community Organizer at a nonprofit organization that is trusted in the community . The Latino-Latina Roundtable (LRT) is an ideal organization to head this project and house the new hires. Some of the funding will be used for these two initial full-time hires within LRT .
3.1 Backbone Lead
The first hire will be a Backbone Lead, or project manager, who will (a) establish the Anchor Collaborative to begin implementing the model we are proposing for job creation, (b) establish the solar energy sector HRTP, (c) direct the investigation and establishment of additional HRTPs as identified by the Anchor Collaborative, and (d) oversee the training, job placement, and on-the-job support of beneficiaries.
Tasks and responsibilities of the Backbone Lead will include:
• Coordinating the assessment of worker demand and directing problem solving through the HRTPs
• Ensuring deep commitment to long-term collaboration in the Anchor Collaborative and HRTPs
• Establishing PJP timelines, goals, work plans and deadlines • Being familiar with and incorporating insights from developing research about anchor collaboratives and HRTPs into PJP operations
• Interfacing with anchor collaboratives and HRTPs around the state and the country to ensure best practices and develop a support network • Being responsible for reporting requirements of the ARPA grant • Creating and overseeing a strategy for outreach to potential beneficiaries of the PJP
• Assisting the LRT Executive Director and EcoCiv Managing Director with fundraising efforts and outreach to foundations for additional support Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 15 of 21
• Establishing communication and operational procedures to ensure fluid communication and decision-making within and among the PJP partners—the Anchor Collaborative, the HRTPs, and the workers and their organizations • Accessing needed assistance to help the Anchor Collaborative and HRTPs develop legal instruments like purchasing agreements or employment contracts • W orking with the Community Organizer (see Section 3.2) to understand potential beneficiaries’ and hired beneficiaries’ needs so that job opportunities training, and supports are aligned to those needs
• Developing relationships with, evaluating the relevance to the PJP of, and when appropriate, engaging the services of job training programs available at public and private institutions in the community
• Developing relationships with and integrating into the PJP and HRTPs the participation and wisdom of labor unions
• Maintaining the values of the PJP and its focus on the wellbeing of beneficiaries by insisting and ensuring that the jobs to which beneficiaries are directed are family-supporting, include whole-person supports to reinforce success on the job, and offer meaningful, accessible advancement pathways
• Refine PJP goals and develop comprehensive output and outcome measures; work with the research consultant to develop and implement the Program Evaluation
3.2 Community Organizer
The second hire will be a Community Organizer capable of reaching out directly to the eligible beneficiaries of this public jobs program.
Tasks and responsibilities of the Community Organizer:
• Conduct outreach in neighborhoods identified as low-income by federal standards
• Holding outreach events to educate the community about the PJP and to identify and secure the participation of potential employees/beneficiaries • Assisting workers interested in participating the PJP to determine their eligibility, make necessary arrangements, and connect with necessary support services to enable their participation
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• Documenting and tracking the eligibility and progress of beneficiaries (potential employees) throughout the process
• Assisting workers and worker organizations to ensure that workers’ voices contribute to the development of job opportunities and job training that meet beneficiaries’ needs
• Develop a leadership development program to locate and support worker-leaders who can commit to formally represent workers in the HRTPs • Work wi t h beneficiaries to locate services or supports necessary to eliminate any barriers to participation in training programs, and any barriers that might prevent their access to jobs developed by the PJP
• Coordinate and develop the PJP’s relationship to and interaction with other nonprofit organizations and community partners to ensure that their constituencies are able to participate in the PJP
3.3 Additional Staff Resources, Experience, and Qualifications Funds will also be used for the necessary staff support at the Latina/o Roundtable, including 15 hours/week for the Executive Director and 10 hours/week for support staff. Sub- contractors that are integral for success in the project and that will receive funding include the Institute for Ecological Civilization (EcoCiv), the Human Values Center, and consultants who will assist with financial models, business plans, and legal documentation for new enterprises or worker-owned cooperatives.
The Latino-Latina Roundtable has worked in the Pomona community for many years.
Because our community is almost three-quarters self-identified as Latino/Latina, the existence of a community roundtable dedicated to dialogue with and among Latino/Latina residents is extremely important.
The Latino-Latina Roundtable also has the necessary capacity to administer the PJP. Its board includes city leaders, leaders of community-based organizations, and diverse representatives of Pomona’s residents. It is chaired by a well-known Latino professor at Pitzer College, who worked with Cesar Chavez and has devoted his life to understanding and supporting the needs of Latino/Latina communities. LRT has carried out numerous projects in Pomona; has convened dozens and dozens of community meetings, actions, and celebrations; has supported community initiatives; and has led or co-led multiple community projects. LRT is especially famous for its listening sessions, in which Latino/Latina residents speak out their needs and share their insights.
Finally , the Latino-Latina Roundtable is defined by the values behind this project, and it is experienced with the methods being used. The crisis of unemployment, and the wellbeing Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 17 of 21
of Latino/Latina workers, has long been a focus of LRT. Historically, many of LRT’s actions have directly supported Latino/Latina businesses in Pomona. Mutually supportive cooperation in the Latino/Latina community is strong. Anchor institution collaboration, the establishment of high-road partnerships, and the potential development of worker-owned cooperatives in Pomona will build on this tradition.
EcoCiv will assist with overall project management and strategy . EcoCiv, which has previously done research and conducted interviews on this topic, is also responsible for connections to larger networks and locations where the anchor institution model has proven successful and impactful.
EcoCiv partners with the W ellbeing Economy Alliance, a UK-based charity, to facilitate on-the-ground work in California. The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) launched in 2018 to rethink economic policy in support of the wellbeing of people and the planet. WEAll works on economic systems change at the global level and supports placed-based work, such as our project in Pomona, by lending skills and resources to its partners. The network and connections WEAll provides will be indispensable to this project. To date, WEAll staff have introduced us to leaders at Democracy Collaborative and Lift Economy who have more than 10 years of experience in establishing and growing worker-owned cooperatives and other types of anchor cooperative models. WEAll is committed to continuing its supporting role with EcoCiv and LRT at no cost to the partner organizations.
The Human Values Center will assist the Community Organizer with facilitation of community meetings to describe the PJP and will help the various components of the PJP— anchor institutions, community members, beneficiaries, employers, labor partners, industry experts, etc.—work to align around common values and expectations to create deeper commitment to the Collaborative, the HRTPs, and the workforce development process.
W e anticipate needing several consultants to work with the Backbone Lead, Community Organizer and LRT and EcoCiv staff. One consultant with experience in anchor collaboration will help examine anchor institution data and financial information to recommend the most impactful ways to identify jobs, strengthen local enterprises, and/or build one or more worker-owned cooperatives. A second consultant will assist with legal needs, including the development of documents and procedures to establish the initial start-up structure of the Anchor Collaborative and HRTPs. To the extent the PJP establishes new enterprises and worker cooperatives, the legal consultant will also help with business design and establishment and with worker-owner agreements and procedures. A third consultant or consultants may be employed to work with the HRTPs, if they decide it is necessary, to develop industry/job-specific training and education curricula and methodologies. The PJP will also engage a consultant to help the Backbone Lead develop, gather and analyze data for, and write a report to complete the program evaluation (see Section 4.3 below).
Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 18 of 21
Section 4
Goals and Performance Reporting
4.1 Goals of the Pomona Jobs Program during the ARPA Term
1. As soon as possible, and no later than the ARPA funding deadline, 30-50 beneficiaries will be employed in good-paying, “high-road, ” green jobs that, absent the PJP , would not have been available to the beneficiaries.
2. A high percentage of beneficiaries will remain in the jobs in which they were placed by the PJP, or will be employed in jobs considered advancements along a career pathway cultivated by a PJP HRTP for at least 2 years after initial employment.
3. Potential beneficiaries who, through the PRP , begin HRTP-developed training and education programs will complete them at high rates.
4. Anchor Collaborative members will demonstrate high levels of participation in and deep levels of commitment to the Collaborative and its ongoing work to systematically leverage the Collaborative’s collective economic power to create/incentivize demand for Pomona workers to fill good local jobs.
5. The HRTP in the solar energy industry will be well established and will have connected many PJP beneficiaries to good jobs; it will be thriving, well-resourced, and supported by partners who are committed to long-term collaboration to develop the sector in the region along the “high road.” At least one other HRTP will be established and will either have begun training, educating, and hiring beneficiaries for in-demand jobs in its industry , or will have completed industry analyses and developed solid plans to begin doing so within a short period.
6. Surveys and interviews of PJP worker/beneficiary/employee participants will show that they find PJP programs to be relevant to their employment needs, capable of addressing barriers to participation, and supportive throughout the process from initial contact through training, employment, and job orientation, and on to long- term job satisfaction and sufficient opportunity and preparation for career advancement.
4.2 Outcome and Output Measures
Key indicators will be finally developed by the Backbone Lead in collaboration with the Anchor Collaborative and the HRTPs. Outcome measures, associated with the goals stated above are likely to include:
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• The number of beneficiaries employed under the auspices of the PJP; the training and education they received; the accreditations or job certifications they received; the pay levels of the beneficiaries over time, and compared to the pay levels of their most recent jobs before the PJP; beneficiary household income and expense levels
• The number of beneficiaries who were employed under the auspices of the program who remain employed in HRTP-developed jobs or career pathways over time (e.g., at yearly intervals)
• The percentage of beneficiaries who start PJP participation who complete HRTP- developed education and training, and the percentage of beneficiaries who start education and training who finish it.
• The number of anchor institutions participating in the Collaborative over time (e.g., measured at quarterly intervals); measures of the commitment of anchor institutions to the Collaborative, such as—attendance at meetings; identification of a consistent representative with official job responsibilities that involve participation in the Anchor Collaborative and in appropriate HRTPs; official endorsement of a Collaborative charter or MOUs; adoption at the anchor institution of an official statement demonstrating commitment to anchor collaboration; demonstrated willingness to share information with the Collaborative; measurable financial/purchasing commitments to the development of demand for workers in HRTP industries.
• For each HRTP established by the PRP , the number of beneficiaries hired by way of the HRTP; job quality indicators of HRTP-developed jobs (like those in the first bullet point above); HRTP participant commitment measures, like those in the anchor institution bullet point above, separated out for worker/beneficiary/employee participation and industry/employer participation. • Survey responses, conducted various times to show changes, covering opinions like those identified in goal 5 above.
Output measures will include those that establish beneficiary eligibility , and other measures to provide information about the early stages of the PJP. They are likely to include:
the number of community members contacted through outreach efforts; the number of community members contacted who fit the description of low-income individuals affected by the pandemic who are unemployed or underemployed and looking for work; relevant household, economic, and employment data collected from potential beneficiaries; numbers of beneficiaries enrolled in an HRTP job training program; amount of time beneficiaries spend in job training programs; numbers of workers committed to leadership development programs; numbers of meetings and numbers of participants in meetings to establish the Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 20 of 21
Anchor Collaborative and HRTPs; numbers of commitments obtained to long-term participation in the Collaborative and HRTPs; etc.
4.3 Program Evaluation
The PJP will conduct a program evaluation that comports with the standards of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018 (M-20-12 (whitehouse.gov)). This evaluation will be designed, and the report will be written, under the guidance and with the assistance of the evaluation consultant.
Key research questions have yet to be developed, but they will focus on contributing to both the literature on HRTPs and the literature on anchor collaboratives—specifically the question of how they can be employed together to increase the effectiveness of HRTPs in a subregion (i.e., the Pomona Valley) of a much larger region (i.e., Los Angeles County). Mid- size municipalities like Pomona are often large enough to experience distressing concentrations in their regions of the problems associated with poverty, unemployment, low levels of education, and lack of economic opportunities, but too small to be able to scale workforce development programs to directly benefit their residents. In workforce development programs that are implemented in the larger region, the mid-size city (especially if, like Pomona, it is geographically remote from the region’s economic center) may not experience sufficient attention or investment by the larger region’s programs, nor sufficient participation by its residents in those programs, to enjoy significant local benefit. The PJP provides an opportunity to evaluate whether an approach that leverages an anchor collaborative to achieve sufficient scale in the subregion, while remaining sufficiently focused locally, can employ significant numbers of beneficiaries, create infrastructure that endures to adapt to changing workforce development opportunities, and that thereby results in significant local economic and quality of life improvements for the city’s and the region’s most vulnerable households.
Section 5
Additional Funding Beyond the ARPA
W e have good reason to believe that the PJP will obtain additional, non-city funding to assist this program during the term of this grant, which will allow us to extend and expand the program beyond this grant’s timeframe. LRT and EcoCiv have together identified five major foundations that could support the project with program costs over the next four years, including one foundation from which LRT has received funding in the past.
Moreover, EcoCiv already helped to secure a $50,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation to LRT to support this work. LRT plans to use the $50,000 to increase their own Pomona Jobs Program Proposal Page 21 of 21
organizational infrastructure in order to accommodate the increase in staff and the reporting requirements that the ARPA grant would bring.