I’m writing on behalf of the Opportunity America Jobs and Careers Coalition to express our support for Congress’s efforts to advance reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). We’re encouraged to see the legislation come to the floor and find things to admire in both Democratic and Republican versions – the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2022 (H.R. 7309) and the Republican substitute amendment. We hope that when a law is finally passed, it will be bipartisan and borrow from both proposals.

The Partnership to Protect Workplace Opportunity (PPWO or Partnership) and the 93 undersigned organizations urge the Department of Labor’s (DOL or Department) Wage and Hour Division to abandon or at least postpone issuance of its announced proposed rulemaking altering the overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Due to significant concerns with supply chain disruptions, workforce shortages, inflationary pressures, and the shifting dynamics of the American workforce following the COVID-19 pandemic, any rule change now would be ill-advised.

I’m writing on behalf of the Opportunity America Jobs and Careers Coalition to express our support for the committee’s efforts to advance reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). The Opportunity America Jobs and Careers Coalition is a Washington-based business group focused on job training and workforce development. Members include employers and employer associations from a broad range of industries experiencing skills mismatches and worker shortages – IT, manufacturing, construction, retail and hospitality, among others.

The diverse group of construction and business associations undersigned below writes in strong support of the Fair and Open Competition Act (S. 403/H.R. 1284), sponsored by Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind. and Rep. Ted Budd, R-N.C. The Fair and Open Competition Act would prevent federal agencies and recipients of federal assistance from requiring or encouraging contractors to sign a controversial project labor agreement as a condition of winning a federal or federally assisted, taxpayer-funded construction contract.

The diverse coalition of undersigned associations and organizations representing the interests of tens of thousands of companies and millions of skilled employees in the U.S. construction industry—building the foundation of America’s economy—strongly opposes your administration’s efforts to encourage and require controversial government-mandated project labor agreements on federal and federally assisted construction contracts funded by taxpayers.

The Opportunity America Jobs and Careers Coalition is a Washington-based business group focused on job training and workforce development. Members include employers and employer associations from a broad range of industries experiencing skills mismatches and worker shortages – IT, manufacturing, construction, retail and hospitality, among others. As representatives of business and industry, we see first-hand how the economy is changing in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of Americans are still out of work. Many will need to reskill for a new job or a new industry.

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), a broad-based coalition of hundreds of organizations representing hundreds of thousands of employers and millions of employees in various industries across the country, and the 280 undersigned organizations write in opposition to the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, S. 420. This radical legislation would violate workers’ free choice and privacy rights, jeopardize industrial stability, cost millions of American jobs, threaten vital supply chains, and greatly hinder our economic recovery from COVID-19.

However, legislative proposals like the misleadingly named “Protecting the Right to Organize” (PRO) Act is an unprecedented attempt to fundamentally change dozens of well-established labor laws at a time of tenuous economic recovery. While there have been no reported barriers with workers seeking to consider unionizing in our industry, this legislation would disrupt the rights of workers and employers and add unworkable mandates that would severely impact the ability to efficiently produce and deliver construction materials. It is a solution in search of a problem.

As the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure begin their work on a major infrastructure legislative package and/or surface transportation reauthorization bill, the more than 100 undersigned organizations write to express strong support for the DRIVE-Safe Act (S.659, H.R.1745), and to urge its inclusion in the forthcoming legislation.

NSSGA, as part of the Opportunity America Jobs and Careers Coalition, sent a letter to express support for apprenticeship but also concern about the draft of the National Apprenticeship Act that is currently moving through the House. Specifically, the group shared concerns about the scope of training the legislation authorizes and what it sees as onerous reporting requirements, among other issues.