Gov. Gregoire announces Best Practice Awards

For Immediate Release: November 15, 2011

OLYMPIA � Gov. Chris Gregoire today announced the winners of the 2011 Governor�s Best Practice Awards, which recognize programs and projects that create additional jobs and economic activity throughout the state while at the same time helping Washington workers get the training they need to land a job and earn a living-wage.

This year�s recipients highlight four initiatives that demonstrate the benefit of public-private partnerships in connecting jobseekers to good paying work, and employers to a skilled workforce.

�By introducing our unemployed to our companies seeking additional talent, we�re helping our economic recovery two-fold,� Gregoire said. �We�re putting our unemployed back to work, while ensuring our companies have the workforce needed to succeed and expand.�

Two of the winning programs help assess a worker�s job readiness and, through targeted training, prepare them for aerospace and other manufacturing jobs. Two other programs are providing work experience and targeted training to low-income workers that lead to high-wage, high-demand careers.

This year�s winners are:

� A public-private pre-screening, pre-training partnership in Bellingham that helps grow aerospace exports at aerospace supplier Heath Tecna. The partnership has resulted in 400 workers hired mostly from the ranks of the unemployed;
� A training program at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake that has had a high success rate moving low-wage farm workers into commercial truck driving � an essential occupation for the success of the region�s agribusinesses;
� Seeking Opportunities Developing Occupation (SODO) in Seattle that provides manufacturing internships to help low-skilled, disadvantaged youth get valuable job experience and the chance to move ahead in the high-wage manufacturing sector; and
� A partnership in Spokane with local employers to assess the work readiness of the region�s unemployed, helping them get manufacturing jobs they wouldn�t otherwise have acquired.

To learn more about this year�s winners, visit: http://www.wtb.wa.gov/BestPracticeAwards.asp


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