Leading Practices

In 2021, Harris County established an Essential Workers Board to advise the county on programs and policies that support essential workers. All members must be “low-income essential workers,” with at least one worker representative from the airport or transportation, construction, domestic work or home care, education or child care, grocery, convenience or drug store, health care or public health, janitorial, food services, hospitality or leisure services, and retail industries. In addition to advising the county on its overall approach to protecting essential workers’ rights and providing a public forum, the board is also tasked with providing feedback on the county’s purchasing and contracting policies; workforce development programs; tax abatement and incentive policies; community benefits agreements; distribution of federal COVID-19 relief and recovery funds; disaster preparedness and recovery programs; OSHA trainings; independent monitoring of local, state, and federal public health and labor laws and inclusive economic development planning.

In 2020, the San Diego Workforce Partnership, the local workforce board, set aside $10,000,000 of funding over four years through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Title I youth funds to serve youth with the highest rates of youth disconnection, including Black youth, based on the results of local research and public input.

The Texas Workforce Commission’s FY2022 operating budget projected revenues of $7,200,000,000 from administering the state’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, childcare, unemployment compensation, apprenticeship and state general funds, among other programs. These integrated funding streams, in addition to $183,000,000 in general fund investments, provide opportunities to launch job quality initiatives across multiple funding streams for Texas residents at different points in their employment and career paths.

In 2016, Travis County purchasing offices adopted the Better Builder Certification that defines job quality standards for public construction projects. These standards were defined by workers themselves through grassroots organizing with low-income construction workers of color, many of whom spoke limited English.

TriHealth, a $2,000,000,000 hospital system in Ohio, was experiencing continued pressure on reimbursements, requiring it to drive down cost, which was impacting its suppliers’ workers. To combat this, TriHealth began collecting job quality and equity data as part of their procurements. The company used the bidders’ scores and results as part of its selection process, adding to its evaluation of long-term supplier reliability and worker equity. Going forward Tri-Health is asking suppliers to continue to use the working metrics tool as a key performance indicator in its quarterly business reviews.

The US Department of Energy incorporated requirements into the Battery Materials Processing Grants program to create good-paying clean energy jobs such as those at or above prevailing wage, recruiting and hiring "local workers especially from underserved communities, properly classifying workers as employees, providing permanent jobs and predictable schedules, and delivering skilled workforce training.”

In 2022, in partnership with the Families and Workers Fund, the US Department of Labor launched the Job Quality Measurement Initiative as part of the Good Jobs Initiative to begin measuring not just how many jobs are created in the US economy, but also how many of those jobs have stable schedules, pay a living wage and offer benefits, as well as how they measure against other key indicators. Several research efforts are currently underway, including defining job quality standards for public sector procurement, exploring options for an employer job quality index and developing survey questions to capture workers' voices.

The US Department of Transportation incorporated job quality and equity requirements into the RAISE (Rebuilding America's Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity) discretionary grant program. This program includes language urging applicants to (1) support the creation of good-paying jobs with the free and fair choice to join a union; (2) provide opportunities for all workers including workers underrepresented in construction jobs to be trained and placed in good-paying jobs directly related to the project; (3) use project labor agreements and/or local hire provisions, training and placement programs for underrepresented workers and (4) adopt an "equity and inclusion program/plan" focused on "procurement, material sourcing, construction, inspection and hiring.”

In 2022, the U.S. Departments of Labor and Commerce published eight “Good Jobs Principles” as a shared vision of job quality for workers, businesses, labor unions, advocates, researchers, state and local governments and federal agencies.