National Organizing of Workforce Development Professionals in the Public Policies in the United States : The Activities of NAWDP and its Suggestions to Japan

The purpose of this paper is（1）to clarify how and why NAWDP （National Association for Workforce Development Professionals）was established in the U.S.,（2）to describe what they are doing,（3）to discuss sociologically whether the workforce professionals are professionals or not and how they will be treated in the future, and（4）to give some suggestions to Japan. NAWDP is an interesting organization because they declare that their mission exists in the public policies （not in private areas） and they are very active in advocacy to the governments at federal, state, and local levels, which are not observed in Japan. This paper is based mainly on the interview with Ms. Bridget Brown, the executive irector of NAWDP, who are open-minded, and on the homepage of this organization, which is rich in information. NAWDP is established in 1989, when the American economy was changing so radically that resulted in more people being stuck in longer unemployment and welfare aide. In reaction to this, the federal government took the policy of "welfare to work," which closed up the existence of workforce professionals in the public policies, while they themselves wanted its social identity as professional group. Now its membership is between 4,000 to 4,500.NAWDP began to issue CWD（Certified Workforce Development Professionals） in 1999, which is supposed to guarantee its minimum competencies, but it is not easy for people to get and renewed this certificate because its standard is rather high. NAWDP is very active in advocacy to the governments, especially as for the budget of WIA（Workforce Investment Act） because how much it is influences directly to the economic remuneration of workforce professionals. These are what this occupational organization is doing. But from the theoretical thinking about what profession is （Ichikawa 1975）, it is difficult for them to receive so a high social evaluation （esp. economic remuneration） as they want. In addition to this examination, this paper refers to a critical point that people are unwilling to pay for either Welfare to Work, Welfare for Work, or Activation, which brings about a prospected fatigue of "they will be soon fired once they got hired." Moreover, outsourcing of workforce development has been so accelerated recently that their economic remuneration is beat down more.The provisional suggestions to Japan are: the national government（1） should keep enough budget for workforce professionals for the public workforce development system to function, and （2） should give supports in terms of money, information, and technology in order to grow an autonomic and mutual occupational association, for ultimately, it is only such an association, not the government, that can protect their status and interests