The Missing Link in Clean-Energy Policy
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Andrea Buffa is a senior writer and policy associate at the Apollo Alliance.
What would it look like if the United States had a long-term national economic development policy—including an industrial policy—to grow the clean energy economy?
Unions, Allies: Once in a Lifetime Opportunity to Create Jobs of the Future
California Labor Federation communications organizer Rebecca Greenberg reports on the organization’s Building Workforce Partnerships conference.
Economic stimulus, green jobs, energy efficiency…these are terms workers have been hearing quite a bit about lately. This week in San Jose, Calif., unions, government, business and environmentalists joined leading economists at the California Labor Federation’s annual Building Workforce Partnerships conference to address the potential of jointly addressing economic security, energy independence and government stimulus to build a fundamentally stronger economy for America’s workers.
Good Jobs First Keeps Eye on Economic Recovery Spending
Good Jobs First today launched a new website, www.AccountableRecovery.org, as part of its new States for a Transparent and Accountable Recovery (STAR) Coalition. STAR is a network, which promotes state and local activism to ensure the $787 billion in spending under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is transparent, accountable, fair and effective.
The new site breaks down economic recovery information for each state and the District of Columbia:
- An evaluation of each state’s Recovery Act website, especially with regard to disclosure of contractor information.
- Details on Recovery Act oversight policies and structures.
- A synopsis of policy debates on the issues of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act occurring in the state.
- Key data such as total funding the state is expected to receive.
- Listings of watchdog organizations, their Recovery Act publications and other resources.
Earth Day 2009: Green Jobs Can Be Good Jobs
On Earth Day 2009, there is a growing recognition that green jobs will play a key role in fighting global warming, creating energy self-sufficiency, helping the nation recover from the current recession and moving workers into stable middle-class jobs.
During a House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing this morning, David Foster, executive director of the Blue Green Alliance, a partnership of four unions and two environmental organizations, said in this economic crisis, creating jobs is a priority, and by passing climate change legislation this year, we can start putting America’s workers back to work building the clean energy economy.
To protect the environment and increase our energy independence, climate change legislation must focus on creating and retaining good, family-sustaining green jobs across the United States.
On Earth Day, AFL-CIO Launches Green Initiative
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To celebrate Earth Day, the AFL-CIO, together with the leadership of its new Center for Green Jobs, announced a plan to reduce energy consumption, cut down waste and reduce the carbon footprint of its national headquarters.
With green jobs emerging as a top public policy priority, the AFL-CIO is pushing to ensure that the new green jobs created are also good jobs that provide a decent wage and benefits.
Says Jeff Rickert, director of the Working for America Institute’s Center for Green Jobs:
It’s like the old saying goes, the AFL-CIO is thinking globally and acting locally, but doing so in a way that demonstrates how to use strategic investments that help the environment while relying on high-skilled work.
House Hearings: Green Jobs Offer Opportunity to Rebuild Middle Class
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President Obama’s economic recovery plan sets aside $50 billion in grants and tax incentives to promote efficient and renewable energy. But the nation also must focus on training workers and rebuilding our manufacturing industries to take advantage of the growth in green jobs, experts told a congressional panel today.
Jerome Ringo, president of the Apollo Alliance, told the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee’s Subcommittee on Workforce Protections that potential for a clean energy economy offers huge opportunities to revive American manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s economy. But “what’s not evident is whether we have the human capital or the political will to ensure the jobs are American.”
We don’t make most of the systems involved in producing clean energy. Fully half of America’s existing wind turbines were manufactured overseas. And we rank fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell was born in America.
How to Create American-Made Clean Energy
Rapid growth in green jobs, especially those that create clean and efficient energy, offers huge opportunities to revive American manufacturing and rebuild the nation’s economy. But there’s a hitch: Most of the components for clean energy are manufactured overseas. The United States ranks fifth among countries that manufacture solar components, even though the solar cell originated in America. The fact that other countries are prepared to deliver these products means that new legislation creating demand for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency services actually could create new jobs overseas, even though we have a robust manufacturing infrastructure.
The Apollo Alliance, a coalition of business, labor, environmental and community leaders working to create a clean energy revolution in America, has developed Make It In America: the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a series of policy recommendations aimed at revitalizing America’s manufacturing sector by investing significant federal funding in the domestic manufacture of clean energy components.
AFL-CIO Announces Center for Green Jobs
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As part of the AFL-CIO union movement’s commitment to fighting for green jobs, President John Sweeney and other union leaders today announced a major program to help working Americans prepare for the next generation of jobs by creating a Center for Green Jobs.
Starting with $1 million from the Working for America Institute, the AFL-CIO’s workforce and economic development arm, the center will partner with affiliated unions to help pave the way to good union jobs in a variety of the country’s unionized and greening industries. The center also will spread the lessons of AFL-CIO affiliates who have successfully joined the green economy, especially in manufacturing.
At a packed press conference this morning in Washington, D.C., Sweeney said the center is part of the AFL-CIO’s effort to “make progressive energy and climate change a first order priority.”
Reflections on U.N. Climate Change Conference in Poznan
Jon Forster, first vice president of AFSCME Local 375/DC37 in New York, was in Poznan, Poland, for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which concluded Dec. 12. Forster, who was among 100 union delegates, offers his observations on the 12-day event held to build upon the framework negotiated last year in Bali, Indonesia.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) in Poznan, Poland, provided an important opportunity for trade unions to be present and weigh in on critical climate change issues. As a public service union, AFSCME was able to bring some different perspectives, and a different set of experiences to the table. Working within the meetings convened by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the AFL-CIO, it was exciting to hear the different viewpoints brought by other trade unions from around the world, including Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, Japan, Australia, Poland, India, Egypt, Russia, Kenya, Germany, France, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Canada, among others.
