Capital Region Skilled Trades Workforce Initiative

The Capital Region Skilled Trades Workforce Initiative is focused on preparing and connecting people, especially from disinvested communities, to career-track, family-wage sustaining skilled trades jobs in utilities and adjacent industries. 

Currently, the initiative is focused on planning for an eventual regional workforce program that will expand access for economically marginalized populations to good jobs in the utilities field, while ensuring that the industry has a robust, regional workforce program to support its skilled trades labor needs. 

This initiative is funded by the CA Jobs First Initiative and administered through Valley Vision, reflecting our region’s shared commitment to workforce innovation and economic opportunity. 

Approach 

This initiative convenes a regional collaborative of stakeholders, including utilities (electric, gas, water, wastewater and telecommunications) and other skilled trades employers in the utilities industry, labor unions, community based organizations, and education providers. Together, these organizations are assessing the existing pathways into career-track utilities jobs, co-creating employer-validated curriculum that will help people become competitive for entry-level jobs and apprenticeships, and building a program to effectively support in-roads to highly-sought skilled trades apprenticeship positions.

Partnering organizations provide guidance for this initiative by joining the Technical Advisory Committee, which acts as consultative body to inform the development and generate collective buy-in for the regional workforce program. 

Currently, the Technical Advisory Committee includes representatives from: 

  • SMUD
  • Center for Energy Workforce Development
  • PG&E 
  • IBEW 1245
  • Liberty Utilities
  • JATC Cal-NEV 
  • People Working Together
  • GRID Alternatives 
  • Los Rios Community College District 
  • Building Careers Foundation
  • Juma Ventures  
  • Northern California Construction Training  

Outcomes & Impact 

The goals of this effort are to produce: 

  • A strategy for how the regional workforce training program will address a shared workforce need among utilities and related skilled trades employers in the region. 
  • A strategy for how that program will create on-ramps to quality skilled trade jobs for disinvested community members in the region.
  • A curriculum to be used in such a training program, focused on shared foundational skills for high-demand skilled trades roles, with employer specific training modules.  
  • A plan for implementing a regional skilled trades training, leveraging the participation of the Technical Advisory Committee to design a program for future shared effort. 

Acknowledgments 

This project is made possible thanks to funding from the CA Jobs First Initiative and administration by Valley Vision, with project facilitation and analysis provided by The Center for Energy Workforce Development, Goodwin Strategy & Economics, the Burning Glass Institute, and support from a diverse coalition of local community based partners.