Job Quality in New Green Economy
 |
|
As the nation increasingly focuses on the need to create green jobs, a new report reminds us that such jobs do not always measure up in terms of wages and working conditions.
High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy, released earlier this month by the grassroots community organization Good Jobs First, outlines strategies to ensure that green jobs are good jobs.
The report found that many wind and solar manufacturing plants are receiving large economic-development subsidies from state and local governments.
Says Greg LeRoy, Good Jobs First executive director:
This use of taxpayer money provides an opportunity to raise wages and other working conditions. Many states and localities already apply job quality standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts. In the report, we urge wider and more aggressive use of such standards by federal as well as state and local agencies.
Double Standard: Critics of Big Three Loan Subsidize Foreign Competitors
 |
|
When Senate Republicans blocked the $14 billion emergency bridge loan needed to keep the nation’s auto industry operating, they knew it could cost between 3 million and 5 million jobs. But some of the most vociferous critics of the auto industry and the UAW reside in states that have given huge no-strings-attached subsidies to foreign auto plants. Some of those states even owe their very survival in part to the Big Three auto companies.
Good Jobs First reports that foreign-owned auto companies operating in the United States have received $3.6 billion in subsidies, mostly from southern “right to work” for less states. That amount doesn’t even count joint ventures with U.S. companies or include inflation, which would make the figures even higher in today’s dollars.
