Collaborating to Build Good Green Jobs

Check out the following article from the Partnership for Working Families (PWF) newsletter describing WPUSA's focus in the emerging new policy area of "green jobs". You can read more about green jobs campaigns around the country at the PWF website.

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Collaborating to Build Good Green Jobs
By Working Partnerships USA

Over the past year, the enormous challenge posed by climate change has been catapulted into the limelight. Prominent leaders in all sectors are now calling for serious and immediate efforts to fight global warming. As mainstream interest in the "green economy" explodes, so too has the concept of green jobs: the alluring idea that efforts to defend the environment can also create new job opportunities that will enable millions of people to climb out of poverty and restore the middle class.

Green jobs present an enormous opportunity. But we also see a growing threat: as investment capital pours into the field, the concerns of marginalized communities and even the underlying climate threat may be overridden by business concerns.

Job quality is key. Will green jobs be good jobs, accessible to all our communities? Or will the green economy be an hourglass economy, with a handful of people making huge profits at the top, propped up by a huge force of low-wage, disposable workers? (Continued...)

Unless we organize and advocate for high-quality jobs in our communities, we won't get them. We will just get more of the same -- poverty-level jobs and zero respect for workers -- while businesses brag about their freshly washed green credentials.

These aren't easy problems to solve, but communities and unions around the nation (and the world) have jumped into the fray. Many of these grassroots groups gathered at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in March; more will come together at the Dream Reborn conference in April; all are organizing and strategizing around how to bring green jobs to their communities.

WPUSA's vision for a green economy is one in which union-community coalitions don't just fight for a piece of the green pie, but take the lead in creating new green jobs. Starting from our base of knowledge and experience with our grassroots base's needs and their potential, our organizations should be designing green policies and bringing in capital to make them work. If we design the programs ourselves, we can insure that they emphasize environmental justice for all neighborhoods, high standards for jobs, and integrated training and career ladder programs to fill those jobs with a local, highly qualified and motivated workforce.

What kinds of local green jobs can we create? In our own region of Silicon Valley, WPUSA is looking for opportunities in several sectors, including:

• Energy efficiency building retrofits. Updating buildings with insulation, efficient lighting, and improved heating and cooling systems can save as much as 50-60% on energy costs. This is a golden opportunity to create new jobs for the construction trades and help families save money on their gas and electric bills.


• Green building maintenance. As companies create green buildings and green processes, they need janitors, groundskeepers and other maintenance workers who have the training and resources to make the new processes work. But too often, these needs are ignored, and building services workers are expected to do twice as much work in the same amount of time with little to no training. There is an urgent need to turn this dynamic on its head by making green-focused building owners and managers aware of the key role building services workers will have in achieving their environmental goals, and convincing them of the value-added they gain by investing in responsible building services contractors and trained workers.


• Waste management and reduction. Sanitation workers, environmental advocates, and communities impacted by landfills or waste disposal all have a common stake in reducing waste, increasing recycling or reuse, and finding safer ways to dispose of what waste remains.


• Public transit. Inadequate or unaffordable public transit hits low-income communities the hardest; at the same time, lack of good public transit drives people into their cars, spewing out ever more CO2 into the atmosphere. Building effective transit systems and transit-oriented development would create jobs in construction and operations, help meet the needs of low-income families, and contribute enormously to the fight against global warming.

To pursue these possibilities, WPUSA has entered into a collaboration with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, a San Jose-based environmental justice group. At the same time we are engaging with our region's Building Trades Council and with local service sector and public sector unions, while reaching out to community- and faith-based organizations, environmentalists, and local business associations.

Collaborating in regional, state, national and international partnerships will be critical to succeeding at this ground-breaking effort in which communities across the country are now engaged: to make green jobs good jobs.

[ Continue reading Collaborating to Build Good Green Jobs ]

Silicon Valley Jobs Report: Unemployment rises as housing crash, national slowdown hit home

Great news, folks -- our economic indicators are all headed up!

Within the last month:

• Silicon Valley's unemployment rate rose to 5.1%;


• the Labor Dept. reported U.S. inflation for the year reached a record 4.1% (highest in 17 years);


• and the San Jose region won back our #1 spot (tied with L.A.) for the most expensive rents in the state.

Doesn't sound so great? Part of the problem is that the U.S. economy appears to be headed for a recession -- if we're not already in one. However, not everything can be blamed on the national economy. Silicon Valley faces a unique set of challenges, from familiar problems like the high cost of living to emerging issues like a shortage of affordable child care.

Today's employment report from the state shows that the San Jose metro region added 1,900 nonfarm jobs last month: the weakest performance for December since 2002. While 1,800 jobs were added in retail, several other sectors lost jobs over the month, including construction (-300 jobs), information (-400 jobs), and education & health services (-400 jobs).

Employment growth remained moderately strong over the year, with 1.4% more nonfarm jobs than in Dec. 2006. However, the declines in these three critical industries may be an indicator of troubled times ahead. (Continued...)

In another troubling sign, more people were forced into bankruptcy, with personal (non-business) bankruptcy filings in Northern California up 51% in the third quarter of 2007, compared to the same period in 2006. Even with new stricter laws making it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy, we've seen 8,482 personal bankruptcies in No. Cal just during Jan-Sept 2007: another indicator that expensive debts, high cost of living, and inadequate wages are forcing families to take drastic measures.

Is there a silver lining in all this gloomy economic news for working families?

How about a green lining? The idea of investing public and private funds to create "green-collar jobs" is gaining more and more momentum in California and nationally. When the federal Energy Bill was passed late last month, it included a provision calling for $150 million to create the Green Jobs Corps, which aims to recruit and train Americans needing work for careers in the new green economy. Just this past week, state leaders from labor, business, government, environmental groups, and community-based organizations came together for "Advancing the New Energy Economy in California", a summit focused on how our state can take the lead in both fighting climate change and creating green jobs that will lift people out of poverty.

And economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research suggest that the national economic slowdown may in fact provide an opportunity for creating new green jobs and helping low-income consumers save energy, through including credits for energy conservation, support for public transit operations, and heating assistance for low-income households as part of a targeted economic stimulus package. President Bush today joined in the call for an economic stimulus, but many of his proposals would do more to reward his wealthy supporters than to help the economy; hopefully more sensible heads will prevail in developing an effective plan that stimulates economic growth and helps those who most need it.

Highlights of the local jobs report:

• The San Jose metro area added 1,900 non-farm jobs in December. Similar to November, nearly all of these jobs were added in the retail sector, likely reflecting an increase in hiring for the holiday season.



• Over the year, the San Jose metro area added 12,800 jobs, a 1.4% increase from December 2006.



• The biggest year-over-year gains were in educational & health services (+3,000 jobs), leisure & hospitality (+2,200 jobs), manufacturing (+2,300 jobs), trade, transportation & utilities, which includes retail (+1,700 jobs), government (+1,400 jobs), and professional & business services (+1,400 jobs).



• The construction and financial activities sectors – both strongly tied to the housing market – showed signs of weakness, with construction adding just 100 jobs over the year and financial activities losing 100 jobs.



• For December 2007, the region's unemployment rate stood at 5.1%, up 0.1 percentage points from last month and up 1.0 points over the year. That translates to 9,500 more unemployed residents than in December 2006.



• Seven years after the tech crash, Silicon Valley holds 158,600 fewer jobs than it did in December 2000.

[ Continue reading Silicon Valley Jobs Report: Unemployment rises as housing crash, national slowdown hit home ]