BlueGreen Alliance, Apollo Alliance Merge To Strengthen Push for Green Jobs
The BlueGreen Alliance and Apollo Alliance today announced a merger to strengthen and unify the movement to build a clean energy, good jobs economy to fuel U.S. job creation. The newly unified organization will call on Washington to focus anew on creating good jobs, securing America’s energy future and preserving the environment for future generations.
Beginning July 1, the two organizations will combine to become the BlueGreen Alliance, which will be home to the Apollo Alliance project. United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard and Sierra Club Chair Carl Pope will continue as co-chairs, and David Foster will continue as executive director.
Earlier this year, the BlueGreen Alliance launched Jobs21!, a nine-state grassroots campaign calling for a national jobs plan to put America back to work building the industries of the 21st century here in the United States. This initiative will be strengthened through coordination with the Apollo Alliance’s strong network of state and local affiliates–now dubbed BlueGreen Apollo Alliances. It will also be enhanced by Apollo’s recently-launched Clean Transportation Manufacturing Action Plan (TMAP) project that calls for federal investment in clean transportation that will create 3.7 million direct and indirect jobs over six years and will save Americans up to $5,000 per family each year in commuting costs.
BlueGreen Alliance Calls for Green Jobs Agenda Now
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Congress has an opportunity to put in place essential policies to create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and make America more energy independent. In its clean energy agenda for the remaining weeks of the 111th Congress, released yesterday, the BlueGreen Alliance outlines seven key policies it says could jump-start the clean energy economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.
During a telephone press conference yesterday to release the agenda, UAW President Bob King said:
In the remaining weeks of 2010, creating jobs must be our top priority. Congress should move forward with policies that will create jobs for the millions of Americans who are still out of work. Critical to this job-creating effort is investments in green technologies because these are the jobs of the future—the jobs that will maintain our great American middle class.
USW Signs Wind Farm Deals with China Power Companies
The United Steelworkers (USW) is partnering with two leading Chinese power generation companies to work together on all aspects of the companies’ U.S. market strategies—including manufacturing, assembly, component sourcing, distribution and wind energy project development.
The agreements with A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd. and Shenyang Power Group (SPG) provide a strong foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship between China’s renewable energy equipment manufacturers and U.S. workers, the union said in a press release.
“We will work with A-Power and SPG to create long-term, good-paying, green American jobs,” says USW President Leo W. Gerard.
USW Members Urge Action on Clean Energy Jobs Bills
As the U.S. Senate prepares to consider clean energy legislation, a dozen United Steelworkers (USW) members are visiting Capitol Hill today to deliver letters urging senators from certain key states to vote for strong legislation that includes the investments needed to create and maintain good, middle-class manufacturing jobs in this country.
At a Capitol Hill press conference this morning, USW members announced that union members sent more than 100,000 letters to the Senate calling for comprehensive manufacturing policies that promote clean energy innovation and development. Dennis Barker, a USW member from Granite City, Ill., said:
Now is the time for the Senate to get moving on clean energy jobs legislation.
Report: New Communications Technology = Good, Green Jobs
New communication technologies can be a key part of making our economy more energy-efficient and help create good jobs in the future, according to a new report.
“Networking the Green Economy: How Broadband and Related Technologies Can Build a Green Economic Future,” illustrates how a highly-networked economy with smart buildings, smart grids, teleconferencing and digital education will reduce carbon dioxide emissions and retain good, green jobs. The report was released yesterday at a Capitol Hill press conference by the Progressive States Network, Communications Workers of America (CWA), Sierra Club and the Blue Green Alliance. You can read the report here.
Speaking at the press conference, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming said the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) much anticipated National Broadband Plan could be a key part of an economic recovery.
Clean Energy Could Create 850,000 New Jobs
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With more than 2 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost since the beginning of this recession in December 2007, a new report says developing a clean energy economy in the United States could create some 850,000 new manufacturing jobs.
The report, “Building the Clean Energy Assembly Line: How Renewable Energy Can Revitalize U.S. Manufacturing and the American Middle Class,” by the Blue Green Alliance, recommends major policy changes to build markets for clean energy and provide the financing and capacity building to create clean energy jobs.
Speaking at a telephone press conference today, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said federal policies gave a boost to the auto, medical and other industries, and they can do the same for clean energy.
Clean energy can revitalize U.S. manufacturing. Clean energy technology utilizes many of the same components manufactured for the auto industry. Done right, clean energy policy will create new demand for…manufacturing.
The Lesson of Pittsburgh for G-20: Manufacturing Matters
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The revival of Pittsburgh, site of the G-20 summit this week, can provide valuable lessons for the world’s leaders. Among them: Manufacturing matters and poor trade policies hurt everyone.
“Pittsburgh, G-20 and the New Economy: Lessons to Learn, Choices to Make,” a report released today by the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF), makes clear that the renaissance of Pittsburgh after the collapse of the steel industry was cut short because of the lack of a national industrial policy and the nation’s trade policies.
During a telephone news conference, CAF Co-Director Robert Borosage said some manufacturing jobs in Pittsburgh were replaced by high-end jobs in education or medicine.
But many were replaced by jobs in hotels and food services—jobs that never paid as well and proved even more vulnerable in the recent downturn. Some manufacturing jobs were never replaced at all. That helps explain why the city’s population is declining, especially among youth, who seek opportunity elsewhere.
Cap and Trade Bill: Good First Step
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The U.S. Congress took a step forward toward a national policy that helps clean up the environment and create good green jobs, but there is still work to do, union leaders say today.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee yesterday, would set a national ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions and let polluting industries buy and sell credits to meet it. This “cap-and-trade” system would limit harmful human-generated emissions and, hopefully, speed up development of renewable energy sources, create green jobs and help reduce our dependence on oil.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney says the bill, as currently marked up, “makes significant, job-creating investments, while attempting to minimize impacts on existing workers.”
The AFL-CIO supports cap-and-trade legislation that takes a balanced approach towards an economy wide-program and prevents foreign competitors from getting advantages over American companies.
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.
