Environmental advocates rally for family-supporting, green-collar jobs

The Minneapolis rally, organized by the Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota, coincided with similar events across the U.S.

Although coincidental, the rally\’s timing – it was held as lawmakers in Washington scrambled to negotiate a bailout of failing Wall Street firms – was fitting.

Rep. Keith Ellison, in Washington for negotiations on the bailout, said in a letter read at the rally that the failures on Wall Street only strengthen the case that the U.S. economy is broken and, he said, ready to be replaced with a new, green economy.

"It will result in the creation of jobs here, at home, that can\’t be sent overseas," Ellison said of the new economy. "It means living wages, access to health care and access to education and a clean environment in which to live and raise our families."

Ellison pointedly put a share of the burden for building the green economy on the shoulders of the labor movement.

"We need to have the training opportunities to create a pathway for people in poverty to take advantage of these jobs," Ellison said.

"This will require the strong participation of unions to focus their apprenticeship programs on training for these jobs, to commit to increased organizing focus on green collar jobs, and to (move) people in poverty into their apprenticeship programs, because a union job is going to be a job with a decent wage and health benefits and a safe workplace."

Union members who attended the rally agreed that the labor movement is playing catch-up when it comes to the green economy.

"We need to take a look at how we get a piece of that pie," Sheet Metal Workers Local 10 member Dustin Denison said. "We need to look at how we can provide to our members the technological expertise, how we can provide new opportunites and expand our marketplace in this expanding environment."

But Lynn Hinkle, an activist with United Auto Workers Local 879, said that as more and more green jobs sprout up around the country, unions\’ interest in the new economy will grow. In the last six months alone, Hinkle said, the American economy has added 10,000 jobs in solar PV manufacturing.
"This isn\’t just one of those, ‘Wouldn\’t it be nice?\’ situations," Hinkle said. "We need to catch up. We need to get on the train because it\’s already pulling out of the station.

"Union labor has to not just be at the table, it needs to be convening people. Once the union movement becomes aware of the importance of this new economy for our jobs, the environmental movement is going to have trouble even being part of the discussion. We\’re going to take that mic and hold it."

State Sen. Ellen Anderson of St. Paul, a leading environmental advocate in the Legislature, pointed to the standards for renewable energy production – considered the most aggressive in the nation – passed by the Legislature last session, and called for a parallel strategy to attract green employers to the state.

"What we\’ve found is that in some places, they\’ve been doing a lot better than we are," Anderson said. "While we were passing these strong laws to promote wind power in Minnesota, Iowa was recruiting big wind turbine manufactures from Europe and bringing them to their state. So they\’ve got green jobs in Iowa and not in Minnesota."

Michael Moore edits The Union Advocate, the official publication of the St. Paul Regional Labor Federation. Visit the federation\’s website, http://mn.aflcio.org/stpaulunions/

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