Channel: Economy
New Guide Offers Advice for Women Seeking Green Jobs
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If you’re a woman considering a career in the growing clean energy economy, check out this new online guide from the U.S. Department of Labor. “Why Green Is Your Color: A Woman’s Guide to a Sustainable Career” is designed to help women find and keep higher-paying jobs in the clean energy economy.
The online publication (click here) will help workers learn about a range of in-demand and emerging jobs, as well as job training opportunities and career development tools, in the clean energy economy. The guide also serves as a resource for workforce development professionals, training providers, educators, career counselors and women’s advocacy organizations.
Sara Manzano-Díaz, director of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau, says many occupations in the clean energy economy remain virtually untapped by women.
This guide is an invaluable resource that workforce professionals can use to help women transition into higher paying jobs that serve as a pathway into the middle class. It is also a tool to help fight job segregation.
Additional resources to help women succeed in nontraditional and emerging job sectors are available by contacting the Women’s Bureau at 202-693-6710 or click here to visit its website.
Dean Baker: Auto Manufacturing Gives Big Boost to Jobs Growth
We asked economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), to expand upon recent reports that show a marked improvement in the nation’s jobs picture. In January, 243,000 jobs were created and unemployment dropped significantly for some of the hardest-hit workers. Baker’s intepretation of the data presents a still-mixed economic picture, but one bright point stands out clearly: President Obama’s support of the U.S. auto industry has been key to improving job creation for America’s workers. Be sure to pick up a copy of Baker’s latest book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive.
Q.: As you’ve noted, the January drop in unemployment was especially sharp for African American and Latino workers. The jobless rate for black workers fell by 2.2 percentage points to 13.6 percent, the lowest level since March 2009. For Latino workers, the jobless rate dropped by 0.5 to 10.5 percent, the lowest since January 2009. What’s behind this good news?
A.: My best guess is that much of this is a statistical quirk. These numbers are always erratic and can and do jump around month to month. However, part of the drop is probably real. I suspect that with the African American population much of the story is related to the increase in manufacturing and construction employment, which is likely clustered in the Midwest. These are sectors that disproportionately employ African American workers.
The improvement for Latinos is less easily explained. Of course, many Latinos are employed in construction, but more in the West and South than Midwest, which has seen the biggest gains.
Anyhow, I suspect that part of the improvement in the employment picture is weather related. We had unusually warm weather across the Northeast/Midwest in December and January, which means that construction and manufacturing were not disrupted as much as usual. That would make it appear that we are adding jobs.
Q.: Employment in manufacturing and construction also showed strong growth in January. You attribute the construction job hike to unseasonably warm weather. But what about manufacturing? It’s been one area of job growth for several months now. What’s behind its resurgence and can it continue? Read the rest of this entry »
Live Tweeting from Occupy CPAC
UPDATE: Metro DC Communications Director Chris Garlock send us this more detailed report from this afternoon’s actions.
Chanting “Whose America? Our America!” as many as 700 labor and community activists turned out in force earlier this afternoon outside the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), shutting down Woodley Rd. with an impromptu sit in and brief takeover take-over of the Mariott Wardman Park Hotel driveway.
Well-heeled CPAC attendees gawked as the huge crowd turned Woodley Road into a multi-hued street festival of “the 99%” The spirited demonstration (click here for a slideshow) lasted over two hours, with many planning to stay on through the afternoon for the second round, dubbed Occupy CPAC: Scott Walker and the Union Busters, planned to start at 5 p.m. focusing on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who’s scheduled to address CPAC tonight.
Union and progressive activists are staging some unique events today at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting in Washington, D.C., the annual gathering of the Who’s Who of the 1 percent, including Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, Ann Coulter and Grover Norquist.
You can keep up with today’s Occupy CPAC actions with this live Twitter feed from the Metropolitan Washington [D.C.] Council AFL-CIO and with the hashtag #OccupyCPAC.
Actions are set for noon and 5 p.m. (EST). If you are in the D.C. area and want to jin, head over to the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel (2600 Woodley Rd. at Connecticut Ave. N.W.). The nearest Metro stop is the Woodley Park station.
Trumka: Foreclosure Settlement ‘First Step’ to Housing Crisis Solution
The $25 billion foreclosure settlement with five of the nation’s biggest banks, announced this morning by federal and state officials, is a “step in addressing the housing and foreclosure crisis that plagues our country,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
The banks broke the law by railroading homeowners through the foreclosure process. Today’s settlement provides compensation for foreclosure victims without requiring individuals to waive their legal claims. While banks must be made to pay more to help homeowners, the settlement includes needed principal write-downs so homeowners can stay in their homes.
The deal with the five banks settles potential charges against the banks for fraudulent practices, including improper foreclosures by “robo-signing” foreclosure documents. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the settlement moves toward “righting the wrongs that led to our nation’s housing-market collapse and economic crisis.” Read the rest of this entry »
Pledge Your Support for Workers at American Airlines
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Last week, American Airlines announced plans to eliminate the jobs of 13,000 workers and dump pension plans for nearly 90,000 workers pensions as part of its bankruptcy plan.
You can show you support for American Airlines employees by going to www.isupportamericanjobs.com and pledging to support the workers by telling public officials, the news media and community leaders that employees at American Airlines and regional carrier American Eagle and all workers dependent on these airlines must be treated fairly.
In the day since the pledge has been posted more than 10,000 people have signed. Click here add your name.
Transport Workers (TWU) President James Little—about 9,000 TWU members work at American—says the “plan is wrong for American and wrong for America.”
The same management team that took hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses while the airline was losing money now wants workers to pay a high price for their mistakes.
Read more from Little here.
A Thousand Letters to Tom Corbett
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This is a cross-post from Working America’s Main Street blog.
Working America members, teachers and unemployed Pennsylvanians on both sides of the state delivered more than 1,000 handwritten postcards to Gov. Tom Corbett’s regional offices in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. We wanted Corbett to know the drastic, widespread and ultimately disastrous results of the budget cuts he enacted last year. We wanted him to make good on the rhetoric used in his first year, which called for “shared sacrifice.”
There has been a great deal of sacrifice. But it has not been shared. It has been targeted, acute and painful. And while the brunt has fallen on students, low-income families and public workers, 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s businesses pay nothing in income taxes.
“The budget cuts have added to the pool of unemployed workers by contributing to the elimination of 14,000 jobs in education alone,” says Mary Karscig, an unemployed nurse and Working America member who wrote to Corbett. Some 21,000 Pennsylvanians lost their jobs due to budget cuts alone, many of them due to nearly $900 million slashed from public education. We’ve written about the many school districts in Pennsylvania now facing the fiscal brink, with the bankrupt Chester Upland School District as a sign of things to come. The New York Times reported yesterday that 75 percent of Pennsylvania classrooms now have more kids than they did in 2010.
“I feel worried about the impacts of these cuts on my job search, and I am even more worried about their impacts on my son’s job search,” says Mary.
She adds: “My son will go wherever there is a job, and there is a pretty high chance he’ll have to move out of state.”
Unemployment Insurance on the Chopping Block
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Unemployment insurance as we know it is on the chopping block.
So-called tea party legislators are trying to punish and humiliate people who are out of work—they’re even threatening to take away unemployment insurance from some people completely.
If you believe Congress should be focusing on jobs instead of punishing and even humiliating people who are out of work through no fault of their own, take action now.
These “tea party” politicians are pushing plans to:
- Slash federal unemployment funding by more than half in the states with the highest unemployment.
- Let states whose governments have been taken over by the tea party divert premium money away from unemployment as we know it—and use it to experiment with right-wing social engineering programs (like “workfare,” where people are forced to work for free to get unemployment benefits).
- Mandate drug testing requirements. Politicians are ready to humiliate people who are out of work—by making them urinate in a cup to get benefits they paid for and are entitled to.
- Make jobless workers pay for their re-employment services. People who are out of work through no fault of their own and have paid into the system aren’t asking for a handout—but a helping hand. Now, the radical lawmakers want to make them to pay for the privilege.
- Deny benefits to people who never got their high school diploma lose their right to benefits—they’d have unemployment insurance taken out of their paycheck—but will get nothing should they lose their job. Shame!
- Cut federal employee pensions—or freezing wages for yet another year. Federal workers have already done more than their fair share to balance the budget—while the richest 1% of Americans have been asked to do absolutely nothing.
Tell Congress to focus on jobs rather than punishing jobless workers who have already suffered enough.
The Minimum Wage: Time to Start Working on the Next Increase
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This is a cross-post from Jared Bernstein’s blog, On the Economy. Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) and, from 2009 to 2011, was the chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
I’ve always thought the national minimum wage is a lot more important than most people tend to think. By definition, it sets a floor on the low end of the job market, though to their credit, many states now set their minimums above the federal level of $7.25 (Washington State clocks in at a cool $9.04). So it’s a floor, not a ceiling.
Lots of low-wage workers and their families depend on it, and its long slide, as shown in the accompanying chart, especially over the Reagan years, contributed to wage losses and working poverty for many who toil to this day in low-end services.
Of course, when someone raises the idea of a raise, you hear a huge outcry from some in the business lobby. Their generic argument is that the increase will lead to job losses among those low-wage workers affected by the higher wage level. Such workers, they say, will now be “priced out of the labor market.”
Yet, you hear the opposite from groups that represent low-wage workers’ interests, groups like the National Employment Law Project, or NELP (proud disclosure: I’m on their board). Read the rest of this entry »
Laborers Train Society’s ‘Left Behind’ for Green Jobs; Launch Green Local
With the graduation of seven newly certified weatherization technicians from its Eastern New York Laborers Training Center, the New York State Laborers’ Union (NYSLIUNA) is blowing holes in several right-wing myths all at once, proving that jobless people do want to work, government programs can spur the creation of good jobs and labor unions can lead the way to prosperity.
Working in partnership with Peter Young Housing, Industries & Treatment (PYHIT), a non-profit that provides treatment, housing and vocational training to disadvantaged people struggling with drug and alcohol addiction, the Laborers trained these first members of Green Jobs Local 58, chartered by the Laborers (LIUNA) as the first local in the Albany, N.Y., region dedicated exclusively to green jobs. Participants in the training had to be clean and sober for at least six months in order to be accepted into the program.
Thanks in part to the state’s 2009 Green Jobs/Green New York Act and a new program launched by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the demand for the retrofitting of homes to be more weather-resistant and energy-efficient is expected to climb. (Through the NYSERDA program, residents will be able to finance the weatherization of their homes via their monthly utility bills.)
The new Local 58 members will work for Eagle Street Construction, one of PYHIT’s vocational enterprises. Local 58 Business Manager Frank Marchese Jr. told the Albany Times Union that the workers would earn $14 per hour, plus a benefits package. He told the paper: Read the rest of this entry »
Economy Adds 243,000 Jobs, Unemployment Drops to 8.3 Percent
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The nation’s unemployment rate in January fell to 8.3 percent, down from December’s 8.5 percent, and the economy added 243,000 jobs, according to the latest figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The nation’s unemployment rate continues it steady decline, dropping by 0.8 percentage points since August and to the lowest point since February 2009. The number of jobless workers dropped to 12.8 million, down from December’s 13.1 million. But the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 5.5 million, about 42.9 percent of the unemployed.
The unemployment insurance program for the nation’s jobless workers expires Feb. 29. A conference is now under way between the Senate and House over two very different one-year extensions of the UI program passed late last year, and the Republican bill would slash federal benefits, impose harsh new restrictions and move to dismantle the essential lifeline of unemployment insurance. Click here for details.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says, “The seeds of sustainable job growth are clearly present—if Republicans in Congress do not succeed in weakening the recovery.” Read the rest of this entry »
