The Workforce (Dis)Investment Act
Interim Report

April 2000
By National People's Action and the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support

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Summary

In an attempt to overhaul federal job training programs, Congress passed the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in August 1998. WIA replaced the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), and made significant changes to the way that federally funded job training services are delivered. States were given until April 1, 2000 to submit five-year plans to the federal Department of Labor, and have until July 1, 2000 to transition to the new WIA system.

National People's Action, our community-based affiliates, members of the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, and state-based advocates reviewed state plans and surveyed state and local workforce investment boards in 15 states regarding a number of key implementation issues, such as how funds will be divided between different types of services, who will be given priority for services, and how the new training voucher systems will be administered. (See survey questions in Appendix A.)

Our findings point to serious flaws in both the federal law and the states' implementation of it:

· Many states still have no idea how they are going to implement key aspects of the new law, such as training vouchers.
· States have no clear plans to provide low income job seekers with education and real skills training.
· There is an alarming lack of coordination between the welfare and workforce investment systems at the state and local levels.
· Corporations are poised to profit from the federal WIA funding without any standards in place to require them to provide full-time jobs with good wages and benefits.

Despite the length of time states were afforded to set up new systems, our survey of 15 states found an alarming lack of detailed information about how the implementation will occur. Only one of the 15 states surveyed, Pennsylvania, already began WIA implementation, in January 2000. Three additional states submitted transitional plans to DOL in advance, that were approved for July 2000 implementation. The remaining 12 surveyed states, as of mid-March, were scrambling to put together plans, revise drafts, and seek gubernatorial approval. Under federal law, all of this was supposed to occur by April 1, including a thirty-day comment period for public input.

In fact, as of April 4, at least five states had not yet submitted their plans to DOL (DOL refused to provide information on which states). According to advocates in Massachusetts, that state promised to submit its plan by April 7. When questioned about this failure to meet the deadline, the National Governors Association response was that the lateness is not of critical concern, because states can continue to operate under JTPA. Needless to say, this creates tremendous confusion for job seekers and community job training programs.

Given that many state plans are only just arriving at DOL, and have yet to be approved, this report must be viewed as a preliminary set of findings on states' WIA implementation.

This report:

1. Outlines some disturbing trends in WIA implementation across states;
2. Highlights positive implementation trends, and models from a few states and cities;
3. Makes recommendations to the federal government, that can help set workforce development policies and programs in the direction of preparing low income individuals for living wage jobs;
4. Provides an overview of the Workforce Investment Act and key implementation concerns; and
5. Provides summary narratives for each state surveyed, with recommendations to states and localities from community advocates.

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