Vets: Employee Free Choice Affirms Freedoms We Fought For
 |
||||
|
||||
This Fourth of July, there will parades, picnics, family gatherings and speeches about what it means to be an American and a patriot.
For the men and women who have served in the military, being a patriot means fighting at home to protect the freedoms they defended in conflicts abroad. And for millions of them, that means belonging to a union.
Take Brett McElfresh, a member of Plumbers and Pipefitters (UA) Local 94 in Canton, Ohio. McElfresh served four years in the U.S. Army, including a tour in Iraq. He is the first member of his local to join the Helmets to Hardhats program sponsored by by the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD). The program has helped more than 5,000 military vets find new careers as electricians, plumbers, roofers and in other skilled trades.
Ayers on Green Jobs: An Opportunity to Restore American Dream
Investing in our national physical infrastructure and moving to a greener economy present tremendous opportunities for the government and business, union and community groups to develop a new economic strategy that could restore the American Dream to millions of workers, the president of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) said.
With as many as 100 million people living in families that earn less in real terms than their parents did at the same age, the American Dream is in trouble, BCTD President Mark Ayers told the America’s Future Now conference earlier this week.
If the situation persists where the vast majority of economic gains go to those at the very top and where most people are removed from upward mobility, then we are at risk of destabilizing our economic and social structures.
So, it is clear that this is a watershed moment in American history.
Union Members Already Seeing Green
 |
||||
|
||||
Good manufacturing jobs helped create the middle class in the 20th century. Good green jobs could play the same role in the 21st century. And the union movement is poised to lead the charge to clean up our environment and create good jobs.
Speaking before the Leadership Council of the new AFL-CIO Center for Green Jobs last week, Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka summed up the importance of green jobs, telling the union leaders:
The future is in front of us. Never in our lifetimes have we had such an opportunity to change this economy and rebuild the trade union movement.
But all the green jobs of the future will not necessarily be new jobs. Many already exist and are performed by union members. Long before the 2008 presidential election and President Obama’s economic recovery package brought climate change and green jobs to the forefront of public policy, union workers were making energy-efficient products and teaching others how to conserve energy.
Biden’s Middle Class Task Force Hears Need for Good Green Jobs
 |
|
Green jobs can be a pathway to middle class for millions of Americans, but only if we ensure they come with good wages and benefits, union and environmental leaders told a White House panel.
Speaking to the first meeting of Vice President Biden’s Middle Class Task Force in Philadelphia today, United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard said any new green jobs also must be good jobs.
To rebuild our middle class, we must also be sure that the jobs created in this new, green economy are good jobs with family-supporting wages and benefits, that we maximize the number of jobs created in this economy, and that these jobs truly contribute to the protection of our environment for future generations of Americans.
Clean Energy, Good Jobs Should Go Hand in Hand
 |
|
Twenty-five major leaders from government, business, labor and activist organizations—including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore—met on Monday to discuss strategies for boosting the nation’s renewable energy production, reducing dependence on foreign oil and ensuring that “green jobs” are quality jobs.
The forum, titled “National Clean Energy Project: Building the New Economy,” was sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Participants focused on modernizing and expanding the electricity grid, rapidly increasing transmission capacity for renewable energy and reducing dependence on foreign oil by examining short- and long-term solutions to replace foreign oil with domestic resources. Click here for a video of the discussions.
As Sweeney told the participants:
The challenge of clean energy and climate change creates a rare opportunity to do two things at once—meet the challenge of a cleaner planet and at the same time use it to create the good jobs of a new economy. A new U.S. energy strategy can be the foundation of rebuilding the middle class if we ensure that the jobs we create are good, innovative jobs here in our country—and that can then become the foundation of a strong new economy.
No Solar Sweatshops or Wal-Mart Windmills
When it comes to making the connection between how union membership can benefit low-wage workers, create green jobs and, ultimately, bolster the nation’s sinking economy, Ian Kim gets it.
Kim is director of the Green-Collar Jobs Campaign at the Los Angeles-Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. He says President Obama’s economic recovery package offers the opportunity to connect low-wage workers with quality union jobs—quality “green jobs.” In Kim’s words:
We’re not talking about solar sweatshops or Wal-Mart windmills.
Green Jobs Must Also Be Good Jobs
 |
||||
|
||||
Creating green jobs must be a key part of our economic future, and it holds the key to solving the dual issues of global warming and economic growth. But the jobs will only boost the economy if there are guarantees to prevent employers from seeking to make profits on the backs of workers.
For three days last week, more than 2,600 union and environmental activists and lawmakers gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss how to create a new wave of green jobs that will both stimulate the economy and provide a clean future. Participants at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference focused on transforming the struggling economy through a range of environmental investments in green technology, energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Conference organizers said the goal was 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 highlighted 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.
AFL-CIO Announces Center for Green Jobs
|
|
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.”
