MAWE

The Metropolitan Alliance for Workforce Equity (“MAWE”) has its roots in early efforts to increase workforce diversity in the City of Portland. These efforts include the negotiations surrounding the Clean Energy Works Oregon Community Workforce Agreement and the Project Labor Agreements on the South Waterfront and Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt projects. Those early efforts highlighted the need for broad-based community support for any such workforce efforts, and the negotiations on the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt project in particular provided a solid foundation from which historically opposed interest groups could move forward as allies. Out of those efforts, MAWE developed a template in the form of an MOU that became the basis for today’s MAWE Community Benefits Agreement (“CBA”). In order to accomplish the goal of applying the CBA to public construction projects, MAWE evolved from being a largely labor driven organization to its current form, which includes community based organizations, pre-apprenticeship programs, and progressive labor organizations. In the process, MAWE has forged alliances between historically disparate interests around the shared goal of diversifying the construction trades and now stands as a “major political force supported broadly by both Portland communities and elected officials.”