JAMESTOWN, NY – September 28, 2023 – Last week, Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist attended the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration’s (ETA) ETA Vision 2030 – Expanding Access to Quality Jobs and Ensuring Job Equity summit held in Philadelphia, PA. ETA Vision 2030 — which is part of three regional workforce summits focusing on creating partnerships, a national dialogue and scaling successful practices — is meant to bring together stakeholders from various sectors to foster collaboration across the entire American workforce ecosystem.
Mayor Sundquist highlighted how he approaches opportunities to build the workforce in Jamestown, NY through participation in the Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy during the breakout session “Using Investing in America Resources to Build Your City’s Infrastructure,” alongside Rob Cherry (Pittsburgh Partner4Work), Brent Parton (U.S. Department of Labor), Mayor Michael O’Connor (Frederick, MD), Ashley Putnam (Philadelphia Federal Reserve) and Kimberly Vitelli (U.S. Department of Labor).
During the session, Mayor Sundquist said “We are really excited about our partnerships in Jamestown and one of the things we did is we started bringing people together. We started to bring all of our stakeholders and shareholders together and we started looking at various programs. We looked at our schools, our employee assistance programs, but one of the most impactful relationships we created was funded using the city’s rescue plan funds, the Southern Tier Builders Exchange.”
“Because there is a huge need for construction and there’s a huge need for these building trades, we worked with our local builders’ unions and within a span of couple months we funded them half a million dollars and the went to the process of getting national accreditation,” Sundquist continued. “The more we can amplify our partners and find the people who can help us solve challenges together, the sooner we can get down to the real work and actually start to solve issues.”
Earlier this year, the city of Jamestown joined the Good Jobs, Great Cities Academy as its smallest city. GJGC is a new peer-learning cohort led by the National League of Cities and the United States Department of Labor to accelerate city efforts to design, develop, and launch a workforce initiative to build pathways into good jobs.
The ETA Vision 2030 summit was attended by key federal, regional, state and local workforce ecosystem professionals who provided innovative frameworks that participants can implement, as well as practices of using data to support equity and job quality.
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