Hell No! We Won’t Send Our Tax Dollars to China
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United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard is outraged—as we all are—over the news that a planned $1.5 billion Texas wind farm—seeking financing with U.S. stimulus money—will create only 30 permanent jobs here, but 2,000 jobs in China.
Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in west Texas using $450 million in U.S. stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs—2,000 of them in China.
The baby—Washington’s Energy Dept., specifically—doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.
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.
High Road or Low Road in Renewable Energy Manufacturing?
This is a cross-post from the Daily Kos blog.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created in renewable energy manufacturing. Will these employment opportunities be “high-road,” decent-paying union jobs, or will employers take the “low road”—tapping into the desperation of unemployed workers who have already seen too much pain?” The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) is not giving up on bringing organized labor’s opportunities to workers in the sector, despite a recent setback.
In early 2008, some workers at California-based Clipper Windpower’s two-year-old turbine assembly plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, reached out to the IBEW seeking representation. Matthew Fisher, assistant business manager, Cedar Rapids Local 204, says job safety, training, respect on the job and the lack of a seniority system topped the list of worker concerns.
Minnesota Electricians Harness Renewable Energy
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This cross-post from the April 2009 edition of the Electrical Worker newspaper demonstrates again how union workers are taking the lead in preparing for the green jobs of the future.
Darryl Thayer, a member of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 292 in Minneapolis, hardly received a visionary’s welcome when he addressed the Minnesota legislature in 1968 about the need to develop solar energy and wean the state from fossil fuel-based sources. Worse yet, says Thayer, many of my fellow workers “thought I was nuts.”
Forty-one years later, the legislature has a green energy task force. Now Thayer, a 53-year member, who teaches solar classes at Local 292’s apprenticeship training center, is a hero to folks like Ray Zeran. He’s one of 600 unemployed IBEW members who are looking to benefit from billions of dollars of state funds and federal stimulus money focused on renewable energy projects.
