labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Does your region have an innovative plan to answer the challenge of training its workforce for the highly competitive, evolving global economy? Does that plan offer a way to bring employment to a region that has traditionally suffered from high jobless rates?

If so, it may have a chance at qualifying for a WIRED grant.

A Rhode Island unemployment grant would offer job opportunities for workers, particularly those in regions where high unemployment is the norm. If the grant became a reality, a Rhode Island region might join others in the nation that have garnered WIRED grants – regions like the Delaware Valley, northern California, northern Alabama, the Mississippi/Arkansas Delta region, and northern Indiana.

The U.S. Labor Department distributes the grants. It has announced the third “generation,” or round, of the grants. In the past, it has pumped $260 million into regions throughout the US. So far, 26 such regions of high unemployment have received grant money through WIRED.

WIRED is short for the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development Initiative. As the name suggests, it supports non-traditional methods of tackling high unemployment and bring regional labor pools “up to speed” with the skills needed to compete in the fast-growing global marketplace.

How does a region qualify for a grant? It’s not easy. First, however, U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao sends letters out to each governor in the U.S., announcing the latest generation of grants. The governors in turn pick just 2 proposals out of those submitted by the regions of their states. Each region’s proposal must show other sources of funding, so the Labor Department can complement those funds.

Secretary Chao said, when announcing the earlier, second round of grants, that “Investing in area workforces through this collaborative approach will boost entire regions’ economic vitality.”

According to Emily Stover DeRocco, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training, the third generation of the grants is designed to insure that local Workforce Investment Boards become “leaders of a strategic regional partnership.” That, in turn, “can drive economic transformations in regions across the country and improve employment and advancement opportunities for workers.”

When it comes to having access to resources, Rhode Island workers with disabilities are about to get a boost. A new collaboration between a large human resource association and a federal agency should give workers greater access to jobs and information.

The alliance is between a federal agency, the US Office of Disability Employment Policy, known as ODEP, and a human resources association, the Society of Human Resource Managers, known as SHRM. These two organizations will be working together, conducting research, making it possible for disabled workers to have greater access to resources, and improving communications between federal agencies and industries.

As Rhode Island workers with disabilities probably know, some disabled workers may have problems finding jobs. The collaboration between ODEP and SHRM should help with recruiting and hiring of workers with disabilities by proving education, research, and access. The alliance will raise national awareness of the situation.

According to Roy Grizzard, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy,

“This alliance formalizes the relationship we have had with SHRM, benefiting SHRM as it serves its membership with the resources ODEP brings to the table and offering ODEP the opportunity for broader contact with human resource professionals.”

The Society for Human Resource Managers brings a lot of resources to partnership. With over 205,000 members and 550 chapters in 100 countries, this organization was formed in 1948. SHRM supplies professionals in the human resources field with necessary resources.

The US Office of Disability Employment Policy was formed in 2001 and works to help the disabled by identifying resources and setting policy. This alliance between ODEP and SHRM is a first and should help disabled workers in many ways by targeting areas such as training and education.

Of course, Rhode Island workers with disabilities will retain access to all the services they currently receive through the Rhode Island Department of Labor. This alliance will provide disabled workers with access to additional resources and opportunities. 

In recent years, Rhode Island workers with disabilities and disabled workers nationwide have seen job opportunities improve in recent years. But they still remain an untapped source of valuable talent.

A new alliance has been formed to tackle that problem. It’s an alliance of the largest affiliation of human resource managers worldwide and a government agency created in the 21^st century to provide new opportunities for the new millennium. Together, the two groups should reach out to this untapped talent pool with technical help, education, outreach, and training.

The public agency is the Office of Disability Employment policy, otherwise known as ODEP. The association is the Society of Human Resource Managers, or SHRM.

“This alliance formalizes the relationship we have had with SHRM,” says Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy Roy Grizzard, “benefiting SHRM as it serves its membership with the resources ODEP brings to the table and offering ODEP the opportunity for broader contact with human resource professionals.”

The federal Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) is a Labor Department policy agency. It was formed with the purpose of making certain that people with disabilities are fully involved in the 21^st century workforce. It was formed in 2001 when Elaine L. Chao, U.S. Secretary of Labor, gave the authority and responsibility for the mission to the assistant secretary for disability employment policy.

The partnership should also begin a new national conversation about hiring persons with disabilities.

The Society of Human Resource Managers, or SHRM, dates back to 1948. With its 550 affiliated chapters and more than 205,000 members, it is considered the largest organization in the world dedicated to serving the needs of professionals in the human resource field. It carries out its mission by offering crucial and wide-ranging resources.

The Office of Disability Employment Policy, or ODEP, was formed in 2001 under Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. The plan was to guarantee that the talents of disabled persons would be fully used by the workforce of the new century.

Many of these grants in Rhode Island are going to what the state considers high wage industries. These are companies where employees tend to make the highest wages and have the highest technical or professional expertise, and so training could either make more of these types of professionals, or hone the skills of those who already are out there. In fact, of those 69 grants I mentioned earlier, 49 of them are in these types of industries. These companies could be in insurance or some other form of financial services. They could include companies involved in trading wholesale, or in construction or manufacturing. These employers could also be in some sort of professional, business, or scientific industry.

The grant program has been around since September of 2005, and in that time, it has given employers about $11 million in investments to help them train and prepare their employees for the 21st century economy. The workforce board that gives out the grants through the governor’s office and the Department of Labor and Training, have a staff of 17 employees, so they are always out there looking for new employers to give grants to. Hint hint.

To be eligible to get one of these training grants, as I said before, one of the requisites is that employers have to match whatever money they get from the state of Rhode Island, and put it all to the training program that they have in mind. Plus, to be able to get these grants, the employer must be paying their employees at least in average an hourly wage of $11.10 per hour, which equals about roughly one and a half time the current Rhode Island minimum wage, which currently is set at $7.40 per hour.

The state gets the money on its end by putting an assessment on your payroll taxes, of about .21 percent.

The state of Rhode Island is not only changing the way that it does health care insurance for its employers. It is also changing the way that it allows employers to do training of their employees. In fact, it is making the training easier—by helping to pay for it for many of the state’s employers. To be exact, as many as 69 companies in the state of Rhode Island, involving more than 4000 employees in the state, are now looking at more than $1.3 million to share in order to train their employees. The program is meant to give Rhode Island employers grants to support development of training programs through employer sponsorship.

The program is organized by the Governor’s Workforce Board. It includes some of the states biggest employers, such as Citizens Bank, Cox Communications, and General Dynamics, but it also surely includes all sizes of employers as well. The grants typically come in sizes up to $50000, from the Department of Labor and Training overall. And these funds do not come for free. As I said, Rhode Island employers, these grants are meant to stimulate employer-sponsored training program, so you must sponsor the training program and put up matching money in order to get the grants in the first place.

The reason for these grants, says the governor of Rhode Island, Gov. Carcieri, is to encourage employers to develop the work force of tomorrow today. All employers are aware of the stiff competition out there for the top employees, and the competition to retain these employees once you get them on your books. In this way, the grant program tackles two issues. It provides an incentive that employers can offer, training, that could attract top talent to a company, as well as provides incentive for employees stay once they are there. Plus, these workers who get trained can then turn around and become even better employees down the road.