Engage and Support a Skilled and Qualified Workforce
DOE INSTRUCTIONS
A well-qualified, skilled, trained, and stable workforce is necessary to ensure that the adopted codes are fully and successfully implemented. High-quality jobs are critical to attracting and retaining the qualified workforce required to ensure successful and durable energy savings from a newly adopted code.
The Community Benefits Plan must describe the State’s or applicant’s approach providing ongoing workforce education and training and ensuring jobs are of sufficient quality to attract and retain skilled workers. States or applicants must describe how they are supporting education and training of both new and incumbent workers.
As the 1935 National Labor Relations Act states, employees’ ability to organize, bargain collectively, and participate, through labor organizations of their choosing, in decisions that affect them contributes to the effective conduct of business and facilitates amicable settlements of any potential disputes between employees and employers, providing assurances of project efficiency, continuity, and multiple public benefits. States or applicants should provide a description of how they plan to affirmatively support worker organizing and collective bargaining. This might include investing in workforce and education through joint labor-management training programs, supports for the development of a resilient, skilled, and stable workforce including by utilizing registered apprentices on projects and paying at or above the local prevailing wages, establishing or encouraging use of project labor or community workforce agreements, and other commitments or pledges.
- A summary of the applicant’s plan to attract, train, and retain a skilled and well-qualified workforce for both construction and ongoing operations/production activities. A collective bargaining agreement, labor-management partnership, or other similar agreement would provide evidence of such a plan. Alternatively, applicants may describe: i. Wages, benefits, and other worker supports to be provided benchmarking against prevailing wages for construction and local median wages for other occupations;
- Commitments to invest in workforce education and training, including measures to reduce attrition, increase productivity from a committed and engaged workforce, and support the development of a resilient, skilled, and stable workforce for the project; and
- Efforts to engage employees in the design and execution of workplace safety and health plans.
- A description of employees’ ability to organize, bargain collectively, and participate, through labor organizations of their choosing, in decisions that affect them, contributes to the effective conduct of business, and facilitates amicable settlements of any potential disputes between employees and employers, providing assurances of project efficiency, continuity, and multiple public benefits. In the description, explain whether workers can form and join unions of their choosing, and how they will have the opportunity to organize with the purposes of exercising collective voice in the workplace.
2: Engage and Support a Skilled and Qualified Workforce
Architecture 2030 Template Language & Guidance
Topics to consider addressing when describing your jurisdiction’s plan to invest in job quality and workforce continuity:
- How many buildings or how much new and existing square footage would potentially be impacted by adopting the energy code and/or Appendix CC / Renewable Energy Standard? What could that mean in terms of potential economic activity for local clean energy developers and the local clean energy workforce?
- What programs exist in your jurisdiction to train and prepare the future local clean energy workforce and support career advancement for those already employed in the industry? How will your jurisdiction work to ensure these programs recruit, train and support local clean energy workers from underserved and Disadvantaged Communities?
- What local, state or federal policies are in place to ensure fair wages, benefits, working conditions and bargaining rights for people engaged in local clean energy work in your jurisdiction?
- What steps is your jurisdiction taking to listen to and address local clean energy workforce concerns and needs?