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Workers, Environmentalists Unite Around Good Jobs, Green Jobs |
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With a new president and Congress focusing on rebuilding our economy, more than 2,000 union, environmental, business and government activists and leaders visited Capitol Hill to tell lawmakers that creating green jobs must be a key part of our economic future and that it holds the key to solving the dual issues of global warming and economic growth.
The Green Jobs Advocacy Day yesterday kicked off the three-day Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference in Washington, D.C., where participants are mapping out strategies to create good jobs and clean up our environment.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka told conference participants today that he was sure some members of Congress were “disconcerted” to see union members and environmentalists lobbying side by side.
Congress saw a multicultural, multiracial, labor and environmental army that was a voice for workers, a voice for good jobs and a voice for a cleaner planet.
The American labor movement believes that we must have a strategic approach to greening the economy centered on domestic investment in new technologies, the creation of good jobs and in leading a shared international response to both these issues.
In the opening session of the conference, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard, a leading advocate of green jobs, said:
We need to send the economy in the direction where the primary emphasis is on good jobs and green jobs. Don’t let anybody tell us that can’t be done.
Gerard pointed out that green jobs aren’t always new jobs that require new training—there are already plenty of people in industries out there that make the necessary parts for turbines and other clean energy materials.
We reject the notion that we have to choose between good jobs and a clean environment. It’s not one or the other. It’s both or neither.
Conference participants are focusing on transforming the struggling economy through a range of environmental investments in green technology, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Conference organizers say the goal is to develop a “New Green Deal” that would create jobs, increase energy independence, reduce global warming and expand the clean energy and green technology markets.
In addition, the conference will highlight the potential of a green economy to build a new social agenda that lifts Americans out of poverty, improves public health and strengthens the middle class.
Trumka called on the Obama administration and Congress to be “unambiguous” in establishing an environmental economic development policy that seeks to increase incomes and protects the interests of working families. Trunka said:
Workers exercising their free choice to form unions and respect for legal standards protecting workers’ wages and benefits are fundamental to this goal.
Congress and the administration can make green jobs good jobs by ensuring that they pay family-supporting wages and benefits, offer a real career path and reduce waste and benefit the environment. Job and contractor standards are a prerequisite to good jobs.
The U.S. economy was built by the middle class and can rebound by investing in working people by creating good jobs, Trumka said.
We are a big society and a big economy. Investing in economic security for working people—helping families make it into the middle class and stay there—that’s never been an obstacle to economic recovery; it’s a precondition for it.
Click here to read Trumka’s entire speech.
The Feb. 4-6 conference in Washington, D.C., is coordinated by the Blue Green Alliance, the partnership of the USW, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
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We need to do everything in our power to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.We have so much available to use such as wind and solar as well as technologies to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. There could be no better investment in than to invest in energy independence. Create clean cheap energy,create millions of BADLY needed new green jobs, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.The high cost of fuel this past year did serious damage to our society and economy. Record numbers of jobs and homes have been lost due to the direct impact on our economy.Oil is finite.We are using it globally at the rate of 2 X faster than new oil is being discovered. Added to the strain on our supplies foreign countries are bursting in populations and becoming modern.China and India alone are expected to add another 3 million vehicles to their highways in the next 2 decades. I just read a fantastic book called The Manhattan Project of 2009 Energy Independence Now by Jeff Wilson.Great Book!
http://www.themanhattanprojectof2009.com