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OPA Press Release:
Summit on the 21st Century Workforce, June 20th, 2001
Proposals Announced at the Summit [07/10/2001]

NEW DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR AND EDUCATION AGREEMENT

• High School Diplomas for Job Corps Students
  The Department of Labor's Job Corps program currently identifies at-risk youth and offers them the opportunity to participate in a full time, residential education and training experience. Job Corps participants live in dormitories and participate in classes ranging from the culinary arts to Web site design to resume writing. Job Corps centers are administered by local organizations with support from the Department's Employment and Training Administration.

  However, fewer than 15 percent of the young adults enrolled in the Job Corps program graduate with their high school diplomas - severely limiting their earning potential. The Departments of Education and Labor are announcing a new joint proposal to help these young people with a series of approaches, including establishing a Job Corps distance-learning program through a National High School. It will work by forming partnerships between Job Corps centers and public schools, and its activities will include:

  1. Providing opportunities for students to take high school diploma courses through community colleges or through on-line high school programs;
  2. Promoting partnerships for access to acceptable facilities for accreditation purposes, such as science labs and libraries for Job Corps students;
  3. Encouraging public schools to work with Job Corps Centers to investigate alternative high school status;
  4. Establishing regional or national affiliations with charter or other high schools with strong content standards willing to have out-of-state extension programs;
  5. Developing a Job Corps distance learning/national high school system while maintaining strong content standards;
  6. Providing information, training, and resources to Job Corps instructors to facilitate intensive diagnosis and instruction in reading and mathematics; and
  7. Encouraging qualified Job Corps instructors to be certified in academic and vocational subject areas.

• Combine Efforts For Adult Worker Literacy
  One of the major problems in the nation's workforce development is that many people looking for the chance to train and learn do not have the reading skills to benefit fully from such opportunities.

  A joint project between the Labor and Education Departments will help adult workers acquire the reading and math skills they need by making adult education, reading and math resources available through the DOL-funded One-Stop Career Center System. The departments will also share resources for common activities through the One-Stops. Included in this effort would be increasing the ability of the Centers to assess the lack of literacy, and providing literacy training using methods that are known to work

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND DISTANCE LEARNING SOLUTIONS

• Comprehensive Web Site for Americans with Disabilities
  The Department of Labor, working with a host of federal and state agencies, is launching a New Freedoms Interactive Web Site as part of the President's New Freedoms Initiative to bring economic opportunities to Americans with disabilities. The Web site will have three unique interactive components, including: (1) on-line learning applications that will adapt to the special needs of persons with disabilities; (2) geographical locators enabling users to access services including assistive technologies; and (3) comprehensive information on New Freedom Initiative programs and services across the country.

• A Unique Partnership with Monster.Com
  The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration - sponsor of the largest government electronic job bank - has created a new kind of partnership with Monster.com, the largest private electronic job bank. This partnership will allow DOL and Monster.com to collaborate in a variety of areas for their mutual benefit. Examples include: Monster will use DOL's O*NET as the basis for Career Planning activities; Monster.com will adopt the government's Standard Occupational Classification taxonomy; and Monster.com and DOL will adopt, use and exchange job order information. This is an example of the government using private-sector technology to benefit America's workers.

• New Flexibility for Women
  The Department of Labor - through the Women's Bureau and the Employment Training Administration - has developed a new Women in the 21st Century Workforce Initiative that will improve distance-learning opportunities for single mothers. It will help with skills development and career advancement programs in ways that maximize freedom and flexibility for mothers.

NEW COMPLIANCE ASSISTANCE INITIATIVE

The Department of Labor is charged with enforcing over 100 major employment-related laws and regulations codified in the Code of Federal Regulations. The Secretary of Labor has pledged to significantly enhance compliance assistance efforts to prevent violations of wage, safety and employee benefits laws to minimize the need for enforcement actions.

To this end, the Secretary has already commenced partnering initiatives that are coordinated by the Office of Small Business Programs. These partnerships involve the all of the Department's enforcement agencies, Small Business Development Centers and others in selected states. The programs provide comprehensive and direct technical assistance and education to small business owners. This multi-faceted approach gets information directly to small businesses on how to comply with the Department's laws and regulations through seminars, workshops and individual counseling.

In addition, the Secretary will announce a comprehensive new effort that will use state of the art technologies to effectively reach the six and a half million companies that have employees. It is a four-point initiative that will be operational by Labor Day 2001:

• Creation of a Department of Labor-wide National Call Center, that is a multi-channel e-contact hub. It will provide a single, toll-free, enterprise-wide universal access point to all of DOL. In addition to general information, it will receive and relay any inquiry to the proper office without delay and answer questions on the spot.

• Creation of a compliance E-Mail Initiative that will ensure that the Department of Labor answers on a timely basis all e-mail inquiries from our customers.

• Construction of an enhanced, redesigned, functional Internet site, with complete catalogued information on all DOL regulatory programs. It will provide DOL customers with a citizen-driven, enterprise-wide portal that improves access to the wealth of Web-based compliance assistance information and services we offer.

• The Department of Labor will continue to develop our Elaws advisors, the interactive Web-based compliance assistance for each major regulatory program that DOL administers.

Together, these systems will be able to provide timely, accurate specific responses to requests for compliance assistance for the first time in the Department's history.

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