DLCer, CEO of Boston Non-Profit to Address Challenge of Outsourcing

[Dover]

BOSTON, July 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As part of a Democratic Leadership Council forum, Hilary Pennington, CEO of Jobs for the Future, will propose responses to the challenge of job outsourcing and its impact on the jobs in the 21st century. Her recommendations will address the role of government and the private sector in creating opportunity for American workers by boosting skills and building career ladders to family-sustaining jobs.

The DLC forum, "How a 21st Century Party Can Create 21st Century Jobs," will focus on what the economy of the future will look like, where new jobs will be created, and what policymakers should do to help foster the development of good jobs and prepare Americans for success in these opportunities.

The forum will take place on Wednesday, July 28, 2004, 8:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m., at the Westin Copley Place Hotel, 10 Huntington Avenue, Boston. The event is open to the press.

Pennington will propose actions in four major areas:

-- Ease the pain for workers who lose their jobs due to outsourcing. These changes require an adaptive response. Two important ways to do that are to provide wage insurance and portable health insurance coverage.

-- Provide incentives for dislocated workers to learn skills that prepare them for 21st century jobs. More financial aid in needed that fits the needs of working adults with limited incomes, skills, and time for skill development. More needs to be done to provide incentives for skill development to workers, and expansion of services such as Pell grants.

-- Create public/private partnerships to support the development of career ladders and build them into the infrastructure of the nation's workforce education and training system.

-- Improve the workforce development system. In particular, provide federal funding to support "workforce intermediaries" that achieve career and skill advancement of low-wage workers, meet the needs of employers and incumbent workers, and tie workforce development to economic development at a regional level.

Other forum panelists are Progressive Policy Institute vice president Rob Atkinson, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez, Rosabeth Moss Canter of Harvard Business School, AFL-CIO Working for America Institute director Nancy Mills, and Michael Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of Boston's Match Public Charter School. More than 350 people are expected to attend, including DLC elected officials from across the country, top contributors to the DLC, party activists, and members of the national media.

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