Why Manufacturing?
Union manufacturing jobs historically have provided a pathway to the middle class for millions of Americans. As the Bay Area faces extreme inequality between typically high-wage tech jobs and low-wage service jobs, the manufacturing sector offers an important opportunity to advance economic mobility and equity for underserved communities.
However, currently the region’s manufacturing industry includes a large segment of low-wage, often hazardous production jobs that are overwhelmingly worked by BIPOC and immigrant workers. The Bay Area also faces significant risks from environmental inequality, with low-income and BIPOC communities exposed to disproportionate levels of pollution throughout the region.
By drawing on the experiences of these workers and communities to develop new high-road employment models in this sector, including improving job quality, retention and advancement for existing production workers from under-represented communities, this project seeks to reduce inequities in manufacturing jobs.
In addition, reaching California’s goal of “a 100% clean energy future for all” will require a massive economic shift. As California transitions from an extractive fossil fuel-based economy to a renewable, regenerative energy future, the manufacturing sector plays a critical role in producing the materials needed to power that transition. To both meet community health and California’s clean energy needs, we need to urgently develop strategies to decarbonize and reduce pollution from existing manufacturing.
What are “High-Road” Approaches?
In a nutshell, “high-road” means a model of economic growth that is based on investing in diverse workforces to create high-quality, family-sustaining jobs that serve community needs locally and globally. The High Road model focuses on creating a sustainable and fair economy by emphasizing quality jobs, worker empowerment, racial equity, environmental sustainability, and community resilience. Achieving these goals requires a systemic approach bringing together all stakeholders as equal partners to address critical issues of equity, job quality, worker voice, industry efficiency, and sustainability.
High-road employers: Firms that compete based on quality of product or service providedthrough innovation and investment in human capital, thus generating family-sustaining jobs where workers have agency and a collective voice.
High-road economic and workforce development: A systemic approach bringing together high-road employers, unions, workers, grassroots community organizations, and public workforce systems to address critical issues of equity, job quality, worker voices, industry efficiency, and sustainability.
What is BAHRMI?
The Bay Area High Road Manufacturing Initiative (BAHRMI) is a newly formed partnership that seeks to intentionally advance a high-road manufacturing ecosystem in the Bay Area by improving outcomes in existing industries, and by supporting the growth of new employers in strategic clean manufacturing sectors. Working Partnerships serves as a co-lead of BAHRMI, alongside the Bluegreen Alliance, UC Berkeley Labor Center, new Energy Nexus, and the California Labor Federation.
Labor and community advocates will drive the development of high-road strategies, in close partnership and collaboration with employers, workforce development, and educational stakeholders who share this vision. Our initiative brings together partnerships that can successfully leverage this historic investment opportunity, and do so in alignment with our values: job quality, equity, sustainability and environmental justice.
In its initial phase, BAHRMI will combine research and landscape analysis with a stakeholder-developed Code of Conduct guiding three high-impact pilot projects:
- Technical assistance to employers to support high-road implementation of public funds.
- Cultivating high-road battery manufacturing in Contra Costa and Alameda.
- Improving high-road outcomes in South Bay & Peninsula manufacturing.
Designing Collaborative Pilot Projects
The UC Berkeley Labor Center will lead the first pilot project, in which it will coordinate and provide technical assistance to manufacturing employers, and other stakeholders applying for public funding, with approaches and strategies for incorporating high-road partnerships and agreements.
The BlueGreen Alliance Foundation and New Energy Nexus will co-lead the second pilot project to cultivate high-road battery manufacturing in Contra Costa County. This will include identifying key assets and business needs to locate advanced battery manufacturing, and employers’ needs related to land, facilities, infrastructure, workforce, regulatory processes, financial resources, and community engagement. Simultaneously, it will engage with community and labor stakeholders to address concerns through strategies to ensure high-road outcomes.
Finally, in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, Working Partnerships will lead the Manufacturing Futures pilot, bringing together employers, unions, community-based organizations and other stakeholders to advance outreach, recruitment, and training to meet workforce development needs. This initiative will foster broad, multi-stakeholder partnership to expand equitable career paths, onramps, and support for incumbent manufacturing workers looking to advance to higher-level, in-demand positions.
Vision and Partners
Through convening a multi-sectoral partnership to shape how public manufacturing investments and workforce development resources are deployed, thereby building capacity to attract, retain, and grow high-road companies, BAHRMI will place workers and under-represented communities at the heart of a vigorous regional manufacturing sector.
A full list of the organizations and institutions involved in this effort is available here:
Project Coordination Partners:
- BlueGreen Alliance
- UC Berkeley Labor Center
- New Energy Nexus
- California Federation of Labor Unions
Committed Partners:
Employers & Business:
- SEMI Foundation
- Applied Materials
- Coreshell Technologies
- GILLIG
- Sylvatex
Unions & Workers:
- International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 190
- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1245
- Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 104
- United Auto Workers (UAW) Region 6
- United Steel Workers (USW) District 12
Impacted Communities:
- Services, Immigrants Rights, and Education Network (SIREN)
- Pilipino Association of Workers and Immigrants (FAWIS)
- Step Forward Foundation
- East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
- CHIPS Communities United
Economic Development:
- East Bay Economic Development Alliance
- Silicon Valley Economic Development Alliance
Workforce Development & Education:
- Work2future
- Bay Area Community College Consortium (BACCC)
- Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy
- Machinists Institute
- NOVAWorks
- JobTrain
- Rising Sun Center for Opportunity
- West Oakland Jobs Resource Center
- Workforce Development Board of Contra Costa
The initial phase of the Bay Area High Road Manufacturing Initiative is funded in part by California Jobs First through the Bay Area Jobs First Collaborative. We are grateful to the Bay Area Jobs First Collaborative for its support.
To get involved with this exciting initiative, please contact highroad@wpusa.org
