[Platform] ballot question? Fwd: How green is your collar?

[Merelice]

Maybe Gary has already sent this to those working on Green jobs for a
ballot question....
Merelice

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: gary hicks <big_g19462002 at yahoo.com>
Date: Mar 28, 2008 1:52 AM
Subject: Fwd: How green is your collar?
To: gary hicks <big_g19462002 at yahoo.com>

How Green Is Your Collar?
by JEREMY BRECHER, TIM COSTELLO & BRENDAN SMITH
[posted online on March 26, 2008]
 As cities and states from New York to California to Minnesota race to
invent policies to address global warming, new mandates for investment
in green energy will produce many billions of investment dollars. In
the short run, the Bush Administration stands in the way, but major
federal legislation this year or next is almost a foregone
conclusion--and the carbon market it will establish will generate
hundreds of billions of dollars a year and create thousands, even
millions, of new jobs. But the realities of how Americans will work
and what jobs they will have in a green future are only beginning to
be addressed.

 Nearly 1,000 trade unionists, environmentalists, green
businesspeople, political leaders and allies came together recently in
Pittsburgh to explore these issues at the first annual conference on "
Good Jobs, Green Jobs," sponsored by the Blue-Green Alliance of the
United Steelworkers Union and the Sierra Club.

 It has taken labor a long time to address the threat of global
warming--the AFL-CIO even lobbied against the Kyoto Protocol. It
doesn't help when environmentalists don't stand up to insist on
protecting workers from the pain that may accompany environmental
protections. But all that may be changing. For example, the AFL-CIO
Executive Council issued a statement March 4 on "greening the economy"
that said, "It is time for our nation to take bold steps to meet the
21st century challenges related to climate change."

 There are both risks and opportunities for labor in the shift to a
green economy. For coal miners, for example, restrictions on
greenhouse gas emissions might mean real job losses, and many
environmentalists are deeply concerned by the insistence by some union
leaders on continuing a coal-based economy. But for Midwestern
steelworkers, the building of parts for wind turbines is already a
source of thousands of jobs.

 There is a growing consensus that greening will on aggregate produce
more jobs, but they are likely to be spread across a wide range of
occupations and industries. The Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) and the Teamsters sent significant delegations to the
conference but didn't call attention to jobs that are threatened or
those likely to expand as a result of new climate change policies.
Indeed, the conference focused more on the overall implications of
those policies than on their consequences for particular unions.
Marianne McMullen, SEIU communications director, told the conference
that in years to come, "The environmental movement may be the only
movement" as different groups come together to build a new economy.

 But session after session at this conference produced pointed
questions, the answers to which could help define meaningful
strategies for labor unions and environmentalists to tackle the
climate change crisis. Here's a sample:

 What Are Green Jobs?
 As Blue-Green Alliance executive director David Foster noted in his
opening remarks, green jobs are about "both product and process." They
include jobs that produce low-carbon energy, such as solar and wind
power. But they are also jobs that perform any kind of work in a way
that reduces greenhouse gas emissions: a job on a farm that uses less
fertilizer or in a steel plant that uses less electricity would also
be green. And most green jobs will look a lot like the old jobs,
because that's what they are: welders fabricating windmill parts, HVAC
mechanics retrofitting heating systems, construction workers building
energy-efficient buildings. Each is using old skills in green ways.

 Public or Private?
 Many speakers cited New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's call
for a "Green New Deal." But Friedman hastens to say that it should be
one in which the government's role is "not funding projects, as in the
original New Deal, but seeding basic research, providing loan
guarantees where needed and setting standards, taxes and incentives"
that will stimulate the private sector to produce "clean power." Many
businesspeople at the conference echoed this view. But other
participants saw the global warming catastrophe as a sign of the
failure of markets. They argued that it required not just market
solutions but large public investments and mandatory plans to reduce
greenhouse gases.

 Will the Poor Be Left Behind?
 Van Jones of Green for All noted that the "old" industrial economy
and its decline stranded a large underclass of poor people. He called
for a "green wave" that can "lift all boats." He described programs
like the Oakland Green Jobs Corps and Solar Richmond, which are
involving the most underprivileged urban youth in weatherization and
solar panel installation, thereby creating a "green pathway out of
poverty." But he raised the concern that the new green economy might,
like the old industrial economy, exclude the poor unless measures are
taken to ensure that green jobs go to those who need them most.

 Will Green Jobs Be Good Jobs?
 The number of green jobs might radically increase, but the result
might be little more than a green-collar sweatshop. As Michael Peck of
the wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa USA, put it, "Green must mean job
quality and wages." He proposed including the Apollo Alliance's green
economy principles as job standards for public investments and
subsidies, in the same way that public support now often requires
meeting LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and other
environmental standards for new buildings.

 Will Green Jobs Be Union Jobs?
 To win labor support, the push for green jobs will have to provide,
if not guaranteed unionization, at least a guarantee of labor rights.
Writer and former National Writers Union president Jonathan Tasini,
blogging about the conference, complained, "Environmentalists and
other policy folks have gotten the lingo down about 'high-wage,
good-paying' jobs, but they still don't seem to be able to use the
word 'union' consistently." He praised as an exception one speaker who
said that green jobs generated with public monies have to include
commitments of neutrality in union recognition campaigns.

 Who Will Bear the Burden of Climate Change Policies?
 Organized labor worldwide has called for a "just transition" to a
low- carbon economy that will not place the burden of change on those
who have the misfortune of working in industries that must undergo
"green downsizing." So far little has been done, or even planned, to
take care of those like coal miners and power plant workers, who may
lose their jobs as a direct effect of efforts to reduce greenhouse
gases. Not surprisingly, some of these constituencies and their unions
have been among the most outspoken opponents of policies to address
global warming.

 If carbon trading and/or carbon taxes raise the cost of energy, how
will it affect those who already cannot afford to heat their houses or
get to work? SEIU's Marianne McMullen expressed a "visceral reaction
to lifestyle environmentalism" that demands consumers pay more for
green products--such as energy-efficient light bulbs--when many
low-income workers are barely able to make ends meet. And she pointed
out that managers are likely to take advantage of environmental
pressures to cut or speed up jobs: when recycling receptacles were
introduced in offices, janitors often had to empty twice as many bins
in the same time for the same pay.

 How Will the Emerging Economic Crisis Affect Green Jobs?
 The emerging recession will generate pressure for public jobs
programs, and jobs fighting global warming could be a high priority.
But the recession will also throw governments at every level into
fiscal crisis. There was a move in Congress to add investment in green
jobs to the recent economic stimulus package; it was defeated, but it
could rise again as part of additional stimulus measures that are
already being proposed. At the conference, Sierra Club executive
director Carl Pope argued that any federal intervention into the
mortgage crisis should require and provide capital for retrofitting
the affected homes. "We need to make sure that as we clean up the
mortgage mess, we also clean up the energy mess," because both will
drive people out of their homes.

 Will Carbon Reduction Drive Jobs Abroad?
 Labor's concern that climate change policy might accelerate
corporate- led globalization was evident throughout the conference.
According to Marco Trbovich, assistant to Steelworkers president Leo
Girard, the Lieberman-Warner bill would "encourage energy-intensive
industries in the US to move production to those locations where the
environmental rules are lax--wiping out thousands more US jobs in the
process" and "paving the road to an economic hell for millions of
working Americans."

 Economic Nationalism or Global Cooperation?
 Many speakers paraphrased in one way or another Friedman's statement
that green is the "new red, white, and blue." Yet despite considerable
rhetorical flag-waving, many of the same speakers also called for
global solidarity and cooperation in the face of a planetary crisis.
There was a similar tension between the desire that new jobs be
located in the United States (or even in one state rather than
another) and condemnation of a competitiveness in which smokestack
chasing, even green smokestack chasing, leads to a "race to the
bottom."

 Will Climate Change Policies Cause a Political Backlash?
 The nightmare scenario that keeps Jim Barrett, executive director of
Redefining Progress, awake at night is that poorly designed measures
to cut greenhouse gas emissions might lead to an anti-environmentalist
political revolt.

 What If Higher Energy Costs Put the Squeeze on the Middle Class?
 The result, according to Barrett, could be "scorched political earth
followed shortly by a scorched actual earth." Climate policy is likely
to fail in a global economy unless it takes into account the needs of
working families.

 Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback noted that when he speaks to young
audiences, they don't see us facing distinct energy, security and
environmental issues. Rather, they see shortage of fossil fuels, war
for oil and global warming as part of the same dynamic. The Green Jobs
conference made clear that global warming should not be seen primarily
as an environmental issue but rather as a seismic shift with an impact
similar to but even greater than the Industrial Revolution or
globalization. The response to global warming will require big
changes. Thank goodness some people are trying to figure out how these
changes can benefit people as well as the planet.