The primary goal of the WED program is to promote the creation and retention of high skill, high wage jobs in California. One way we do that is to help union training programs - the gold standard in job training - find the funding they need to keep their members' skills and their employers' industries competitive.

California's Employment Training Panel (ETP) funds nearly $85 million in incumbent worker training every year. It has just been refunded at a 40 percent increase, the largest amount appropriated to ETP in five years.

The Employment Training Panel is actively seeking to increase the number of proposals from labor-management partnerships, and is working with the Workforce and Economic Development Program (WED) of the California Labor Federation to outreach to prospective unions and union employers.

The labor movement was a key partner in drafting the original ETP legislation in 1982 and, by statute, holds three of the seven panel seats. This strategic position provides opportunities for local unions and their partner employers to successfully apply for training resources to upgrade the skills and pay for union members, offer new career paths and opportunities, retain good union jobs, create new ones and build stronger labor/management partnerships.

Need money for training? We can help.

If your local is looking for a way to fund incumbent worker training, we can help. WED works with unions to develop training projects and proposals; provides technical assistance and information about ETP; and assists unions and their employers through the application, development, and hearing processes.

In the current funding cycle, the Federation's WED Staff has facilitated the application of almost $4 million in training funds.

Click here to see a partial list of training projects we helped fund through ETP.

For more information about ETP or to learn about how to apply for ETP funds, email Jan Borunda at jborunda@calaborfed.org or call 213-219-2388.

Other sources of funding

The WED team can also assist with securing funding from other regional, state, and federal sources such as WIA 25% discetionary funding, layoff aversion funding, and funding for green workforce training.

For questions not answered on this website, please call Ellen at 510-663-4087 or email at ebaughman@calaborfed.org.