Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh announced a $20 million agreement between the U.S. Department of Labor and non-profit TradesFutures to advance equitable opportunities in construction through the Scaling Apprenticeship Readiness Across the Building Trades initiative.
TradesFutures plans to get more than 13,000 participants enrolled in apprenticeship readiness programs, according to a March 6 news release. The plan calls for at least 7,000 of them to get into registered apprenticeships in the construction industry. The project will explore programs in Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.
“The U.S. Department of Labor is committed to making sure the jobs that President Biden’s historic investments in infrastructure will create in construction and its related industries provide equitable and accessible opportunities for all workers,” Walsh said in the release.
TradesFutures and a coalition of community partners in partnership with the Department of Labor and the National Urban League will develop a strategy to create a gateway for women, people of color, veterans, Native Americans, justice-involved people and other people from underrepresented communities to gain access to registered apprenticeship programs and succeed, the release reported.
The cooperative agreement provides a mechanism for the partners to develop best practices to use throughout the registered apprenticeship system and to scale across other industries, according to the release.
The partnership aims to help fill jobs in critical sectors by training the future workforce through registered apprenticeship programs, according to the release. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will create thousands of new, family-sustaining jobs in the construction industry, and this partnership will help to ensure communities most in need of these infrastructure investments have equal access to those jobs.
The cooperative agreement will build on the proven success of TradesFutures in using pre-apprenticeship and registered apprenticeships to develop an open and inclusive talent pipeline for construction and construction-related industries, the release reported.
