Building Green Cars Could Create 150,000 Jobs
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Congress has the power to put thousands of Americans in some of the hardest-hit industries back to work and help protect the environment at the same time, according to a new report. New vehicle technology and the right policy choices, including incentives for higher fuel efficiency vehicles, could create up to 150,000 jobs for U.S. workers. But it will take strong, visionary action by our elected leaders to ensure those jobs are created here, the report says.
In “Driving Growth: How Clean Cars and Climate Policy Can Create Jobs,” the UAW, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for American Progress demonstrate how a new fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles would allow drivers to enhance energy security, reduce carbon emissions and put autoworkers and many others back to work.
The economic and environmental benefits underscore the need for Congress to pass strong clean energy and climate legislation that would promote good-paying domestic jobs and encourage investments in efficient, oil-saving technologies, the report says.
Workplaces Must Adapt to Greater Role of Women In Workforce
A new Center for American Progress (CAP) report released in time for International Women’s Day today offers practical solutions to help America’s workers and families meet the dual demands of work and family. (Read the full report here.)
The report, “Our Working Nation: How Working Women Are Reshaping America’s Families and Economy and What It Means for Policymakers,” calls for:
- Updating basic labor standards to recognize that most workers also have family responsibilities and need predictable and flexible workplace schedules,access to paid family and medical leave the right to paid sick days.* Improving basic fairness in our workplace by ending discrimination against all workers, including pregnant women and caregivers.
- Providing direct support to working families with child care and elder care needs.
- Improving knowledge about family-responsive workplace policies by collecting national data on work-life policies offered by employers and analyzing the effectiveness of existing state and local policies.
Report: Immigration Reform Would Boost Economy
A new report shows that comprehensive immigration reform would help American workers and the U.S. economy. Reform that offers a path to citizenship for currently unauthorized workers and enforces workers’ rights would raise the “wage floor” for the entire U.S. economy and increase the total gross domestic product (GDP) by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade, the report says.
“Raising the Floor for American Workers,” by the Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center, says finding a pathway to citizenship for the millions of undocumented workers is a much better alternative in this economic crisis than expanding guest worker programs or mass deportation.
Study: Extending Benefits for Jobless Helps Us All
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With 26 million people either unemployed or without fulltime work, labor commissioners and officials from eight states joined with workers and union and civil rights leaders in calling for Congress to extend unemployment insurance and health care assistance for jobless workers, benefits that will expire for many in a few weeks.
A new study, “Keeping a First Line of Defense for the Jobless,” released today, predicts that 1 million workers will become ineligible for unemployment benefits in January 2010 unless Congress reauthorizes key provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The report also shows that by March that number will swell to more than 3.2 million workers. Click here to read the study.
Texans Rally for Reform—and Other Health Care News
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More than 3,000 union members and allies crowded the streets of Austin, Texas, on Saturday to show their support for health care reform.
The demonstrators gathered at the State Capitol to hear from workers, community leaders and lawmakers. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Emerita Linda Chavez-Thompson got the crowd fired up, and leaders and activists from across the union movement encouraged the crowd to stay mobilized.
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who voted for the House’s historic health care reform bill a week ago, thanked those present for their activism and said we need to keep fighting to pass real reform legislation. Said Doggett:
We need an engaged citizenry to say we won’t stand for anything less than genuine reform.
Biden: Strong Unions Needed to Build Middle Class
The nation cannot rebuild its middle class without strong unions, Vice President Joe Biden said today. Biden said he and President Obama believe it is impossible to grow the middle class without growing unions.
Biden, who chairs the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, met with a panel of scholars assembled by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to discuss the challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
At the live webcast event, EPI President Lawrence Mishel said unions set standards in the workplace. Decent standards help ensure “employers are not competing to see who can make the jobs worst, but who can make the products better,” Mishel said.
Join Biden in Live Webcast on the Economy and the Middle Class Today
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Click here at 10:30 a.m. EST to join Vice President Joe Biden as he hosts a live webcast with a panel of leading scholars to discuss the unique challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.
This special Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) event will cover economic developments and trends affecting middle-class families, including changes to the overall labor market in recent decades, shifting gender roles, the need for a work-and-life balance in today’s economy, economic inequality and mobility, and the increased gap between productivity and wages.
Biden is chairman of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families that President Barack Obama established in January to ensure the administration’s economic recovery effectively raises the living standards of middle-class families and those aspiring to be in the middle class.
Click here to watch.
Workplaces, Laws Fail to Keep up with Growing Role of Women Workers
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For the first time in our nation’s history, working women make up nearly half of all U.S. workers, and mothers are the primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners in nearly two-thirds of American families.
This dramatic shift from just a generation ago marks a permanent cultural change, yet most institutions, including the workplace and government have not caught up with this new reality.
“The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” released earlier this month by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Maria Shriver, looks at the changing face and attitudes of the American worker. The multi-faceted report includes a national poll on attitudes about the rising role of women.
Made in America Jobs Tour: Investing in Green Economy Creates Jobs
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Workers, union leaders and business executives joined Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson today to deliver the message that investing in clean energy not only is good for our environment but also would create millions of good green jobs to rejuvenate the economy and rebuild the nation’s middle class.
Jackson spoke at a rally in Gary, Ind., as part of the nationwide Made in America Jobs Tour sponsored by the Blue Green Alliance and the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America campaign. The tour kicked off Aug. 20 in Cleveland and will involve more than 50 events in 22 states, including rallies in St. Louis, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Gary.
Millions Lose Health Coverage Since Recession and Job-Based Health Care Declines
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The decline in the share of workers with employer-provided health care, the dramatic increase in the number of workers losing their health insurance along with their jobs, plus reports that employers are planning to shift even more health costs to workers, highlights the desperate need for comprehensive health care reform for all.
(Tell us what you think should be included in comprehensive health care reform. Take the 2009 Health Care for America Survey. The survey gives you the opportunity to make your voice heard and help shape health care reform to meet the needs of working families. Take the survey here.)
According to a new report by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the percentage of workers with employer-provided health care dropped from more than 64 percent in 1999 to just over 59 percent in 2007.
Forty-six million Americans lacked health care coverage in 2007, when the national employment level peaked and before the current economic recession officially began. Today, that number is markedly higher as many workers who have lost their jobs have also lost their employer-provided health insurance.
