Green Collar Jobs Can Fight Poverty

By Paul Burton

“Green Collar Jobs” were the subject of a presentation at the University of California Berkeley November 29. sponsored by UCB’s College of Natural Resources, the UCB Institute for Social Change and the UC Labor Center. San Francisco State University Professor of Urban Studies Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes discussed her research report, entitled “Green Collar Jobs: An Analysis of the Capacity of Green Businesses to Provide High Quality Jobs for Men and Women with Barriers to Employment,” on green collar jobs and employers in the Bay Area, along with Ian Kim, the Green Collar Jobs campaign Policy Director for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. They sought to answer the question, “Can the green economy reduce global warming AND fight poverty?”

Professor Pinderhughes, a leading national expert on the burgeoning green-collar economy, said that “Over the next decade the green economy will expand and there will be huge opportunities in the fields of green building, public transit, alternative energy, energy efficiency.” She said her research broke down green collar jobs into 22 categories, from bicycle repair and organic food production to recycling, green construction and solar panel installation. Her research also looked at the barriers to employment in emerging green industries and how to shape and direct the development of green jobs so that it benefits low-income people. “Effective social justice and planning is linked to economic development shaped by government,” she said. “Efforts to improve the environment should be looked at as economic development and job opportunities.”

She pointed to the work of the Apollo Alliance—a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups led by the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club—and said their study showed that 3.5 million new jobs could be created in a green economy. The study found that $1 million invested in weatherization creates 52 jobs, and that with many cities moving towards goals of creating zero waste, recycling is becoming a major sector of the economy—creating more jobs than other forms of waste management.

Pinderhughes said that manual labor jobs in the green economy should provide low-income youth with opportunities for training, decent pay, and advancement. “We don’t want to lock poor people into just doing manual labor,” she said. She explained that the term ‘green collar jobs’ was first used to describe jobs in the timber industry as a way to find common ground among environmentalists and loggers, but that she had redefined the term to mean any manual labor jobs that directly improve environmental quality.

“The central question is whether green collar jobs can provide low-income people with good jobs,” Pinderhughes said. Her study looked at existing green collar jobs, surveyed low-income youth about their interest in green jobs and checked whether businesses are willing to hire low-income youth. Her study found that existing green jobs provide meaningful work, living wages, good benefits and opportunities for advancement and mobility. She found that green collar jobs pay an average of $15.80 hourly—about $4 more than Berkeley’s living wage.

Her study also found that barriers to entry-level jobs in the green economy were low as businesses were willing to provide training and that “people with barriers to employment are very interested in green collar jobs and improving the environment,” she said. Communities impacted by environmental racism, toxic waste dumping, siting of polluting power plants understand the need for environmental restoration and are attracted to the concept, she explained.

Much of the growth in the green economy is directly tied to small businesses being supported by public funding. The City of Berkeley recently adopted a plan to subsidize solar panel installations for homeowners in the city. New solar companies are starting up to take advantage of the growing public interest in solar. Pinderhughes pointed out that “a majority of the green businesses are located in industrial zoned areas so we must preserve industrial land and keep it affordable,” even as cities promote new housing and mixed-use developments. “Providing space for these new businesses and jobs is a critical role for city government to play,” she added. She also called for coordination between businesses and government to provide training and opportunities for internships for workers.

A key component of ensuring that green collar jobs do lift people out of poverty is the participation of labor unions. Pinderhughes said that a pilot project was under way in Oakland with the Apollo Alliance where the Electrical Workers union provided training. She cited the Joint Apprenticeship Training Programs of the Building Trades as good examples of the kinds of training that would be effective for green collar jobs.

The Ella Baker Center’s Ian Kim said that, “It means a lot that we work with the IBEW. Victor Uno is a well-respected and progressive leader in the East Bay and he helps link us to other people in the social justice and labor movements. Green collar jobs can be a big win for labor.”

Kim said that, “Raquel’s new report is a major leap forward in our understanding of how to harness green business growth to build pathways out of poverty. These findings have provided us with critical guidance as we develop the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, the nation’s first attempt to carry out the model that the professor describes in her report.”

“The green wave is here,” Kim said. “The $40 billion in clean energy is set to be $200 billion in five years. Venture capital is going into clean energy technologies, which is now the third largest category for venture capital behind telecom and bio-tech.” But Kim warned that questions of where the money goes and who benefits still need to be asked. “The ‘dot-com’ boom led to high rents and displacement of working class people in San Francisco,” he said. “So we need to ask how we can direct investment in green jobs in a way that is healthy for all people.”

Kim pointed out that people starting green business want to make a profit but also want to make a difference. That desire for social benefits should also include “taking the work that is most needed and linking it with those who need jobs,” Kim said. He noted that the Oakland City Council had allocated funds for green collar job training to start next year. The trainings would include the kinds of curriculum used by City Build in San Francisco and Building Futures at the San Mateo Adult School, that include basic literacy and math, life skills, job readiness, financial management skills as well as the basic skills required for the different types of green collar jobs. Tens of thousands of jobs would be created through good public policy supporting green businesses and worker training, Kim said.

Kim also said that the Ella Baker Center would continue to build strong relationships with labor, which he said was a central stronghold for progressive politics. “Unions are key to keep jobs from eroding into bad or low paying jobs,” Kim said. “If labor can see this as a top priority then there’s an opportunity to organize.”

Pinderhughes pointed out that some sectors of the green economy are already highly unionized, including recycling, construction using green building techniques and materials, and public transit. “We’re already working in sectors that are poised to produce green collar jobs,” she said. “We are at the table with large firms and agencies. Labor hasn’t typically been at the table so labor’s involvement has been very fruitful.”

UC Berkeley Labor Center researcher Stephen Pitts offered Worker Centers as models for how workers in the green economy could be organized for self-empowerment, much as immigrant workers are through projects like the Centro de La Raza in San Francisco. Pinderhughes said the kinds of leadership training provided at Worker Centers could be integrated into the life skills training component for green collar jobs.

Concurrent with Pinderhughes’ report is the release of the California Green Innovation Index by the nonprofit Next 10. The Index tracks the state’s innovations in green technologies and its economic and environmental performance within the context of AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions.

The Index shows how green innovation plays a role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming, and increasing the state’s gross domestic product. It found that as a result of the first wave of green innovation begun in the 1970s, California has become a world leader in energy efficiency, the state’s economy has grown as a result of the first wave of green innovation, and that California’s rate of population growth requires that the next wave of innovation be larger, faster and more powerful than the last to meet the mandates of AB 32.

Kim said that the crisis of global warming has become a concern for everyday people throughout the country. “The devastation of Hurricane Katrina and high-profile media efforts like Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth have put global warming in the national spotlight,” he said. “We have an opportunity to take a hot moment and win.”

Also last month the mayors of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and Richmond announced that they would work together to create a “green corridor” in the East Bay to do what high tech has done for Silicon Valley: create jobs and revenue—but with the added bonus of being good for the environment. The group announced the plan in Richmond’s historic Ford Building, where solar power systems designer and manufacturer SunPower Corp. will begin operations. The cities will seek out state and federal funding for research, job training and job placement targeting high school and community college students and implement policies and programs to promote energy conservation, green construction, and green industries.

For more information or to download the report, check: www.greenforall.org, http://bss.sfsu.edu/raquelrp/, www.cityofberkeley.info/sustainable/Government/actionplans.html.