Climate Change Talks Need to Address Investing in Good Jobs
AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council Director Bob Baugh, a member of a global union delegation led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), sends us the first report on the new round of United Nations climate change negotiations taking place now in Durban, South Africa.
The 17th annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 17) opened in Durban with a speech by South African President Jacob Zuma that stressed the need for dialogue, green jobs and investment. As trade unionists, we are here in force to ensure that these goals are met and that any climate agreement includes workers’ voice.
At COP 16, unions made a breakthrough by getting language about a Just Transition, a social and economic perspective on investment in good jobs and decent work, adopted as a part of the Long Term Cooperative Agreement. Now we are here to breathe life into that language. Our primary focus will be on finance, workers’ skills and accountability for meeting Just Transition goals.
Manufacturing Decline Puts Nation’s Security at Risk
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The erosion of the nation’s manufacturing base, especially over the past decade, has not only cost millions of jobs and devastated working families across the country, it has also put the nation’s security at risk, a report released this morning reveals.
America’s Manufacturing Crisis and the Erosion of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base finds that the decline in U.S. defense related manufacturing, from heavy industries such as steel and machine tools to electronics and research and development became especially steep during the first term of the Bush administration,
even as America’s armed forces were fighting wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon embraced policies to globalize the American defense industrial base. Rather than relying on its traditional U.S. suppliers, the Pentagon increased both its openness to shopping overseas for weapons systems, and its tolerance for foreign purchases of U.S. defense businesses. Read the rest of this entry »
Restoring U.S. Manufacturing Vital to National Security
The days when the United States could mobilize hundreds of factories and trainable workers to quickly produce what the nation needs to fight a war are gone. Thousands of factories are sitting idle and the workers who make our ammunition, GPS systems and build our planes are nearly all overseas.
Testifying today before a House subcommittee, several experts called for an immediate rethinking of our national economic policies so as to regain our global lead in manufacturing before it is too late. As manufacturing goes abroad, so do the skills workers need to produce today’s computer-driven, advanced technology weapons and the research and development that support them, they warned.
It’s time to make the “Made in America” label really mean something again, Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs. We must stop importing most of what we consume and begin to manufacture more of it here, he said.
Report: Whirlpool Closing Will Cost Indiana Millions of $$$
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Whirlpool’s decision to abandon U.S. workers and send 1,100 production jobs out of Evansville, Ind., to a new plant in Mexico will create a ripple effect that will cost thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in lost income, according to a report released today.
Whirlpool already has eliminated one shift at the refrigerator plant in Evansville. The remaining jobs end in June. The study, written by Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, was released at press conferences in Evansville and Indianapolis, the state capital.
The study estimates the plant closure will throw 2,502 people out of work. That includes 966 Whirlpool workers who live in Indiana and another 1,536 who work in businesses that will lose significant clientele after the plant shuts down. That total doesn’t include job loss in the neighboring states of Illinois and Kentucky, where 20 percent of the employees live. Read the full report here.
China and Its U.S. Wind Farm Partner Promise More American Jobs
After a public outcry over China’s plan to seek $450 million in economic recovery funds to build a wind farm in Texas that would create only 30 U.S. jobs, the companies involved are now promising to put more Americans to work.
USA Today reports the companies—a U.S. private equity firm and a Chinese turbine maker—also will build a plant in the United States that will make wind turbines while employing 1,000 people. The companies did not indicate the timeframe for building the plant, which would be one of the biggest in the nation for wind turbines.
Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, says:
It’s a start, but it just shows how far we have to go [to catch up in the production of wind turbines and other clean-energy products.]
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.
Report: Clean Coal Could Create Millions of Jobs
President Obama’s economic recovery plan sets aside $50 billion in grants and tax incentives to promote efficient, clean and renewable energy. Several unions are reminding policymakers that the nation already has a huge and available supply of fuel that could be harnessed to provide green jobs and promote energy independence.
The Mine Workers (UMWA), Boilermakers (IBB), Electrical Workers (IBEW) and the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council (IUC) are aggressively promoting the use of coal-generated electricity to provide jobs and help clean up the environment.
Along with the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the unions recently released a study showing that using advanced clean coal technologies that capture and safely store carbon dioxide will create millions of high-skilled, high-wage jobs for U.S. workers. Using this “clean coal” technology will reduce carbon dioxide emissions, generate $1 trillion of economic output and create up to 7 million work-years of employment, according to the study.
