Message from Chairman

Dear Workforce Partners:

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the Association’s web site. We hope you have had the opportunity to utilize the web site and that it provides you with useful links to support your workforce efforts throughout Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Workforce Board Association is a private sector led organization with representatives of business, industry, are facing significant challenges as a result of a lack of skilled workers currently available to meet current and projected workforce needs according to the Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development Job Vacancy Survey. (Job Vacancy Survey) The Association is working to assist our members, employers and our workforce partners to more effectively respond to health care industry labor market gaps. We convened a Health Care Workforce Strategy Roundtable to bring together health care employers, labor and workforce leaders with key education and Legislative leaders to serve as a catalyst to develop a strategic value driven approach to meeting the needs of the health care industry, the largest employer in the state with more that 465,000 jobs—currently with more than 15,774 vacancies, a small decrease from the previous quarter.The Association developed The Health Care Workforce Development Imperative, A Strategy for Change—White Paper and is working to develop legislation to respond to this crisis. Read more...

In addition our members are bringing together regional partnerships to address skill gaps and labor shortages and will be proposing projects in each region as part of the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund, expected to be released January 16, 2007.

Our key objective is to develop a constituency for change and ultimately improve education and training practices regarding health care workforce development throughout the Commonwealth.

The Association members have been focusing on several key initiatives:

• The implementation of the historic Workforce Solutions Act provisions of the Economic Stimulus bill, AN ACT Relative to Economic Investments in the Commonwealth to Promote Job Creation, Economic Stability, and Competitiveness in the Massachusetts Economy. Final text
• Workforce Investment Act reauthorization and increasing the funding for workforce programs in the federal FY 2007 budget (see Senate action on WIA Senate Bill Text);
• Planning and developing recommendations in expectation of the appointment of the Workforce Accountability Task Force to develop an effective workforce system for the Commonwealth based upon a strategic value driven approach including the development of an Association White Paper: KEEPING OUR COMMONWEALTH COMPETITIVE: A WORKFORCE PRESCRIPTION FOR THE NEW GOVERNOR PDF.

Thank you in advance for your assistance with this effort to support both workers and employers.

Yours truly,

John Lipa, Chairman