Check Out New ‘Green Jobs, Safe Jobs’ Blog

by Mike Hall, Sep 18, 2009

Say “green jobs” and the phrase conjures up visions of Earth friendly, energy saving, pollution-free,  high-skilled, well-paid jobs. In short, the type of green jobs for which we in the labor movement and the Obama administration are striving to create.

But as the new blog “Green Jobs, Safe Jobs” points out, if the corporate world is allowed to control and manipulate this growing sector of the global economy, workers and the environment are at risk.

Left to its own devices, the green economy could deliver the same unhealthy mix of hire-and-fire, poison-and-pain jobs that remain a blight on the reputational landscape of the not-so-green economy.

The blog is a joint venture of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the independent, but pro-union, British health and safety magazine Hazards. Says Hazards editor Rory O’Neill:

Real life health and safety issues must be an integral part of discussions on the development of a green economy. The blog aims to challenge the assumption that green jobs are automatically a good thing. If they kill workers they are not good; if they exploit workers they are not good. And there is no iron law guaranteeing that employers who are kind to the environment are kind to their workers.

One recent entry, Green Collared: Red Alert on the Perils of Green Jobs explores several worker deaths and exposures to toxic materials at several British recycling firms

The recycling industry is the waste industry in green clothing….If the safety breaches don’t get you, then the health hazards of your green job just might.

O’Neill says the blog will present evidence on potential safety and environmental pitfalls and ways to avoid them to ensure

we get jobs that are decent, safe and green…and incorporate issues like worker participation and unionization as essential components of a healthy green economy.

Click here to visit Green Jobs, Safe Jobs.

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