| Principal Investigator: | Heath J. Prince PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Decision Information Resources, Inc via BakerRipley |
| Project Duration: | January 2019 – December 2019 |
| Description: | BakerRipley (formerly Neighborhood Centers, Inc.) launched ASPIRE in early 2016 as a workforce development program designed to support underemployed workers in the Houston, Texas area to successfully move from low-wage jobs to living-wage, middle-skill jobs that provide financial stability and contribute to the region’s economic growth. Decision Information Resources, Inc. (DIR) is a Houston-based minority-owned research and evaluation firm that has been involved in evaluating workforce development programs over the full course of its 34-year history.
An impact evaluation of ASPIRE will focus on comparing outcomes for program participants with program non-participants in order to measure the effectiveness of program participation. BakerRipley indicates that the impact evaluation seeks to answer the broad research question: Are ASPIRE candidates’ lives better off? And if so, by how much? The specific questions to be addressed by this impact evaluation per the ASPIRE Evaluation Plan are:
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| Reports Available: |
Building a Workforce Data Blueprint
| Principal Investigator: | Heath J. Prince PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Michael and Susan Dell Foundation |
| Project Duration: | January 2019 – September 2019 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center will provide research support to the WinDDOWS project, funded by the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and implemented by the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. The goal of the WinDDOWS project is to develop a workforce data infrastructure implementation blueprint. |
| Reports Available: |
Ray Marshall interviewed for The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers’ Video History Project
In 1999, The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers embarked on a video history project to develop a video library dedicated to creating a repository of oral histories of distinguished individuals who played a significant role or who had an opportunity to observe milestone events relating to labor and employment law. All of the full-length video interviews and transcripts are archived at Cornell University’s Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library.
On November 29, 2018, the College’s producer (Carol Rosenbaum) and crew videotaped an interview with Former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall at the Center. Ana Avendano, Vice President of Labor Engagement for United Way Worldwide, interviewed Secretary Marshall, who spoke animatedly for 4 hours, and never seemed to tire! An excerpt from the interview can be seen below.
Interview topics included:
- His childhood in the orphanage
- The role of the Labor Secretary
- His role in President Carter’s policy-setting
- Ensuring OSHA worked as it should
- Management attitudes towards safety and health regulations
- Programs he developed to assist women and minorities entering the workforce in large numbers for the first time – especially those who wanted to work in male-dominated industries (like coal mining)
- Outreach apprenticeships and affirmative action
- His efforts to bring African-Americans into construction apprenticeship programs
- International matters under Carter
- His involvement in international work, including pulling the United States out of the International Labour Organization (because of a disagreement with the Russians)
- His work on immigration, including during the Carter administration and with the AFL – CIO 30 years later
- The role independent trade unions play in a democracy – and how authoritarian governments are the enemy of labor movements
- Strikes during his tenure
- Labor unions today
- President Trump’s policies
You can view the transcript of the full interview here , and a summary of the transcript can be viewed here. Credit for the video excerpt, transcript, and transcript summary go to The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers.
Central Texas Talent HUB
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce and Lumina Foundation |
| Project Duration: | January 2018 – December 2018 |
| Description: | Many former college entrants interrupt their education prior to completing their degree, either dropping out completely or later returning to college. These non-completing individuals have college experience, familiarity with the application process, college credits, and knowledge of course enrollment procedures. These individuals represent a source of ready and readily accessible potential workers to whom the region could support to re-enter and complete college, increasing the labor pool of those possessing critical skills and knowledge needed in the local labor market. With direct contact information collected while in college and a repository of information about them, the Austin community intends to target this population for re-enrollment through advertising and other outreach efforts.
Researchers seek to examine stop-out patterns, barriers leading to stop-out behaviors, and assess potential solutions to re-enroll students, eventually measuring the extent to which these efforts increased the number and share of individuals returning to and completing college. |
| Reports Available: |
RMC joins Workers Defense Project for Future of Work in Texas symposium
On October 23-24, 2018, the Ray Marshall Center joined the Workers Defense Project (WDP) and the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard University to bring together scholars, funders, policymakers, community organizations, labor unions, and workers to discuss the challenges facing working people in Texas and analyze potential solutions to these challenges. The first day of the symposium on Oct. 23rd was held at the Bass Lecture Hall at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Among others, panel speakers for the first session titled “Future Trends in Texas Labor” included RMC’s Dr. Ray Marshall and Dr. Heath Prince, and the LBJ School’s Peniel Joseph provided the keynote address “Martin Luther King Jr., the Dignity of Labor, and the Future of American Democracy” during the second session. The event continued on Oct. 24th at the WDP offices for the final session “Emerging Solutions Across the South.” Funding for the event was generously provided by the Ford Foundation.
Project QUEST Evaluation
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor: | Economic Mobility Corporation, Inc |
| Project Duration: | January 2018 – December 2019 |
| Description: | Project QUEST provides employment training and services aligned with the skills most in demand by San Antonio, Texas employers. The Ray Marshall Center will be working with the Economic Mobility Corporation, Inc (Mobility) and building around their recent program evaluation of Project QUEST. This innovative partnership links both QUEST participants and similar non-participants to Texas Unemployment Insurance wage records. By combining self-reported and administrative data, the research will seek to verify self-reported outcomes, enhance the longitudinal tracking of employment and earnings both prior to and after completing QUEST, and measure long-term impacts of program participation. |
| Reports Available: |
Talent Metric Evaluation (Oregon Talent Council)
| Principal Investigator: | Heath J. Prince, PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | TIP Strategies |
| Project Duration: | May 2017 – August 2017 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) will partner with TIP Strategies in the creation of an evaluation methodology for the Oregon Talent Council (OTC) that relies on new and innovative ways to measure the impact of talent investment in Oregon, and that can accurately and consistently track outcomes of interest. The project is composed of the following activities, divided into two phases: Phase 1 will develop a metrics methodology for OTC-related investments—how to measure investments in the niches that the Talent Council has identified as gaps. While the methodology will show how OTC metrics applies to an overall talent development framework, it will not develop detailed metrics for education and workforce investments controlled by other state agencies. Phase 2 will seek to develop a methodology for identifying key measures (approximately 5-7) by which aspects or desired outcomes of talent development could be benchmarked against other states. The primary purpose of the methodology for this phase is to establish a baseline to understand Oregon’s relative position in desired talent outcomes and be able to track the relative state’s progress over time. |
| Reports Available: |
Ray Marshall meets with organizers on comprehensive immigration reform
With immigration reform being front and center these days, Dr. Marshall has responded to several requests since the election from print and broadcast media to discuss immigration-related issues. In addition, he is consulting with a coalition of labor and other organizations who have reached out to him to help craft a plan for comprehensive immigration reform. Two recent meetings hosted by Dr. Marshall in Austin, TX, brought together members of the AFL-CIO, United Way Worldwide, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Economic Policy Institute to delve deeper into the issues.
The first meeting was held on Wednesday, 3/15, and included Jon Hiatt, Chief of Staff and Executive Assistant to the President of the AFL-CIO, and Ana Avendaño, Vice President of Labor Participation at United Way Worldwide.
The second meeting was held on 3/17 and included Daniel Costa, Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at EPI; Naomi Tsu, Deputy Legal Director of the Immigrant Justice Program at SPLC; Shannon Lederer, Director of Immigration Policy at the AFL-CIO; and Susan Marshall, lecturer at Concordia University.
Ray Marshall completing book on managing immigration
Professor Emeritus Dr. Ray Marshall, the founder of our Center and holder of the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs, is completing another book on immigration, which is tentatively titled Managing Immigration: Benchmarking International Best Practice. This book examines the best practices of other immigration countries—particularly Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K.—and discusses how the United States can adapt these lessons to create a more effective employment-based migration system. It is increasingly clear that the U.S. system, which relies largely on family-based immigration, will need to shift to a system that emphasizes migrants who have the skills and education to allow the U.S. to better compete in an increasingly knowledge-intensive global economy.
The book outlines the economic, political, and social impacts of immigration; describes problems with the U.S. immigration system; discusses trends in immigration; details some of the best practices of countries that focus on employment-based migration; critiques the increasingly important issue of best practices in integrating immigrants; and concludes with recommendations on how to improve the U.S. immigration system. The book will include a discussion of how the election of Donald Trump could affect American immigration, political, social, and economic policies and institutions.
Strategic Planning for San Antonio Works
| Principal Investigator: | Greg Cumpton, PhD |
| Sponsor(s): | San Antonio Works and San Antonio Economic Development Foundation |
| Project Duration: | November 2016 – August 2017 |
| Description: | The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) along with consulting partner Jobs for the Future (JFF) will work with SA Works to develop an action plan for future work. The primary steps in developing the plan include:
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| Reports Available: |
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