Learning Guide: Hiring Pathways into Clean Energy Jobs for People with Disabilities

This guide offers information about good jobs and inclusive apprenticeships in the clean energy industry for people with disabilities. It also includes policy-to-practice tips for employers. This resource accompanies EARN’s July 24, 2024 webinar, “Pathways for Hiring People with Disabilities into Clean Energy Jobs.”

Recent landmark legislation, such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, sparked renewed investment in America’s workforce. These investments will help ensure America’s workforce can meet the employment and training needs of emerging and high-demand industries. To address skills gaps for businesses to retain the talent they need for high-demand jobs, the Federal Government has committed billions of dollars to workforce development initiatives. Many of these initiatives align with growing industries such as building and construction, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy. In accordance with the U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Good Jobs Principles, this investment will result in many skilled trade job opportunities, opportunities that often start with Registered Apprenticeship programs and lead to work with union representation. For workers with disabilities, these jobs can provide access to safe, stable, and rewarding employment opportunities.

Led by DOL, the Good Jobs Initiative empowers workers in three important ways: 

• Ensuring access to information about worker rights to minimum and prevailing wages, overtime, safe and healthy workplaces, and the right to form a union and bargain collectively with their employers.
• Engaging employers as partners in improving job quality and creating workforce pathways to good jobs.
• Supporting partnerships across federal agencies and providing technical assistance on grants, contracts, and other investments designed to improve job quality.

As part of this initiative, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, through its Good Jobs Challenge (PDF), awarded grants to workforce partnerships across 31 states and Puerto Rico. These awardees will develop and grow industry-led workforce training systems that break down historical silos that have prevented equitable economic growth. The initiative is projected to place over 50,000 U.S. workers into quality jobs, providing regional economies with the skilled, diverse workforce needed to meet their long-term and urgent labor supply needs.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s Roadmap to Good Jobs is a commitment to provide equitable opportunities for good-paying, family-sustaining jobs across the country by expanding free and affordable job training opportunities such as Registered Apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship. The Roadmap encourages employers to hire workers based on the talent and skills they possess and not on their degrees. Additionally, it lays out key goals for federal funds to provide important support services, such as Child Care Stabilization funding, to help America’s workers, including people with disabilities, enter and remain in the workforce.

Good Jobs and Inclusive Apprenticeships in Clean Energy

The Investing in America Agenda supports U.S.-based development in critical sectors like the clean energy field, including wind and solar energy. As a result, the clean energy sector is expanding rapidly. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the energy workforce grew by 3.8% in 2022 and added almost 300,000 jobs. However, people with disabilities are underrepresented in the energy workforce (PDF). In addition, many clean energy businesses have trouble finding and keeping skilled workers. Inclusive apprenticeship opportunities can help alleviate the staff shortages that are prevalent in this growing industry by linking skilled disabled workers to businesses. These programs also ensure disabled people can benefit from national investments in this industry and the well-paid, secure employment that results.

According to DOL, inclusive apprenticeships are designed to support full access and inclusion for all apprentices, including people with disabilities. Pre-apprenticeships and Registered Apprenticeship programs offer paths to in-demand occupations such as the clean energy industry. The National Apprenticeship Act regulations include affirmative action requirements for Registered Apprenticeship program sponsors and encourage sponsors with five or more apprentices to employ qualified people with disabilities. For disabled workers, equitable access to good jobs must include opportunities to participate in job training programs.

In addition, DOE states that employers with unionized workforces reported substantially less difficulty finding skilled workers. According to the Climate Jobs Institute (CJI) (PDF), increasing unionization rates is an important component of creating high-quality jobs in the green energy sector. CJI believes that stronger unionization must be “coupled with expanded job access to bring promising opportunities to people from frontline, marginalized, and underserved communities.” This includes people with disabilities.

Resources to Support Disability Inclusion in Good Jobs

Resources from EARN and DOL's Office of Disability Employment Policy’s (ODEP) Policy Development and Technical Assistance Centers 

• Roadmap to Inclusive Career Pathways: This interactive online tool provides workforce professionals with resources to help people with disabilities achieve employment and economic self-sufficiency.
• Resources for Finding Candidates with Disabilities: This guide lists outlets your organization can use to source candidates with disabilities.
• Inclusive Apprenticeships: This short online training introduces disability-inclusive apprenticeships and offers strategies for recruiting and training apprentices with disabilities.
• Employer Case Study: FALA Technologies: This case study describes how one family-operated manufacturing and engineering company designed a disability-inclusive, innovative pre-apprenticeship program.
• Building Infrastructure for Good Jobs: Creating Opportunities for People with Disabilities in the Construction Industry: This National Center on Leadership for the Employment and Economic Advancement of People with Disabilities (LEAD) archived webinar highlights inclusive hiring practices that benefit employees with disabilities and their employers in the construction industry.
• Apprenticeships and Employing People with Disabilities: The Partnership on Employment and Accessible Technology's (PEAT) “Future of Work Podcast” series features Apprenti's executive director who discusses how the organization leverages inclusive apprenticeships to fill science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) positions with diverse talent.
• Building an Inclusive Registered Apprenticeship Program: Best Practices from Adaptive Construction Solutions: This brief describes a clean energy and steel construction company’s disability-inclusive Registered Apprenticeship and the experiences of one apprentice’s journey to full-time employment.
• Job Accommodation Network (JAN) Construction Accommodations: JAN provides recommendations for accommodations in the construction industry.

Resources from DOL

• Helping Workers with Disabilities Get Ahead Through Good Jobs: A Toolkit of Practical Strategies: This toolkit provides a menu of practical strategies for employers in the construction, manufacturing, and clean energy industries to hire and support disabled workers.
• The Good Jobs Initiative: This initiative, led by DOL, provides information to workers, employers, and the government to improve job quality and create access to good jobs free from discrimination and harassment for all working people.
• Disability Data Blogs: These ODEP resources detail the employment experiences of disabled workers in an easy-to-understand format.
• Enhancing Participation of Individuals with Disabilities in Apprenticeship Programs: Understanding the 7% Disability Utilization Goal (PDF): DOL’s Office of Apprenticeship developed a fact sheet for apprenticeship sponsors on its aspirational goal of qualified disabled apprentices representing 7% of the sponsor’s workforce.
• Good Jobs for Employers: Tools, Resources, and Technical Assistance for Making Good Jobs: This collection of resources describes essential elements of a good job, strategies for making good jobs through federal investments, and powerful examples of employers who are engaging as partners to improve job quality, work collaboratively with unions, and establish workforce pathways to good jobs.

Related Research Articles

• Building an Equitable, Diverse, & Unionized Clean Energy Economy: What We Can Learn from Apprenticeship Readiness (PDF): The Climate Jobs Institute at Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) School presents examples of pathways into apprenticeship readiness programs, union apprenticeship programs, and good union careers for underserved communities.
• Combating Inequality: The Between- and Within-Group Effects of Unionization on Earnings for People with Different Disabilities: Researchers found that union membership increases workplace wage equality among workers with different disabilities and between disabled and non-disabled coworkers. This is due to the increased weekly earnings that can be associated with unionized work. Access to unionized occupations is a key strategy to reduce economic disparities among people with and without disabilities.
• Untapped Potential: How New Apprenticeship Approaches Will Increase Access to Economic Opportunity: The Burning Glass Institute, in conjunction with Multiverse, considers how expanding traditional apprenticeship programs for 21st-century jobs would benefit employers looking to fill critical workforce needs and workers in search of better pathways to good jobs.
• Equitable Access to Quality Climate Infrastructure Jobs: A Framework for Collaborative Action: The Urban Institute offers promising practices to support local and regional workforce development efforts in response to climate and infrastructure investments.