Publications and Reports

After seven years of diligent effort the transit industry’s National Committee on Transit Rail Car Training Standards has released its Findings and Recommendations for Implementing Standards-Driven, Partnership-Based Training.  This important document is the product of joint transit management and union subject matter experts working together to develop better industry training and thus a more efficient and effective frontline rail vehicle maintenance technician cadre.

This publication draws example from the Center’s national labor-management committees, which have met regularly for several years to develop consensus training guidelines. These joint committees have focused on five transit maintenance occupations: bus, rail signals, traction power, rail vehicles and transit elevator/escalator. A parallel joint effort has been crafting a national framework for transit apprenticeship.

This publication outlines the process of creating and utilizing labor-management training partnerships through such things as:
o Skill gap analyses
o Training standard creation
o Forming training networks and labor-management committees
o Developing new courseware

Training Partnerships That Work provides vivid summaries of successful labor-management training partnerships at sites across the country.  The partnerships profiled range from long-established training systems such as that between Chicago Transit Authority and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 9 to Pennsylvania’s broad, statewide Keystone Transit Career Ladder Partnership, which encompasses over 25 transit agencies and local unions. In contrast, relatively young joint efforts, such as that between Metropolitan Atlanta Regional Transportation Authority and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732 are also included. The cases included here represent a diverse set of transit systems and unique training partnerships. Most importantly, they illustrate how labor and management can work together successfully on issues of training, and provide valuable lessons for other industries facing the problem of retiring baby boomers and inadequate capacity to train replacement workers.

The Center’s partnership-based, data-driven model for developing training reaps enormous gains for transit agencies, workers and the customers of public transportation. This report highlights the abundant evidence that the most successful, cost efficient and durable training systems come from industry based labor-management partnerships.

A summary of findings from the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), a service of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Public Transportation Association.  This short piece outlines five tools for success in labor-management training partnerships:
1. Unions as Partners
2. A Joint Training Strategy
3. Empowering the Workforce
4. Cultivating a Learning Organization
5. Reaching High Performance