The National ASTD public policy blog reports that the bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) was recently moved off the legislative calendar of the Senate Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, effectively stalling the legislation for the time being.  This follows earlier deferrals of the bill's consideration in recent months.

Reauthorizing and modernizing WIA to make it more efficient and effective is crucial because ...

• WIA is the main federal job-training funding source, which has pumped billions into Washington State over the years
• The need for WIA funding to train and retrain workers grows ever more urgent as the impacts of the Great Recession linger, including high and long-term unemployment and discouraged workers drop out of the labor force, and prospects grow for a double-dip recession
• This legislation is crucial to addressing the skills gap, the great long-term threat to American competitiveness and prosperity, which continues to fester and grow

It should also be noted that WIA directly and indirectly enables an undetermined but undoubtedly substantial number of WLP practitioners in Washington State to be employed providing WIA-funded training.

The ASTDps Board will be considering its public resources strategy in the near future and actions to help move WIA and other important training-related legislation forward.  ASTDps and its members are in a good position to help make a difference with WIA, because Senator Patty Murray of Washington State is a member of the HELP committee and head of its influential subcommittee, Employment and Workplace Safety.

Be looking of future posts on this topic and calls for action in this space.