The US experience echoes that in Australia, where a government energy efficiency home insulation programme saw a spate of injuries and deaths in workers employed by get rich quick non-union contractors. In the UK, concerns have been raised about fatalities in wind farm construction and the notoriously deadly recycling industry.

In the US, online news agency FairWarning reported in October 2010 that authorities in California alone investigated three workplace deaths in the solar panel industry in slightly over two years. Installing solar panels combines three of the most hazardous jobs — roofing, carpentry and electrical work — with work at height, making it particularly risky.

Wind power, too, has its risks. ‘The dark side of solar and wind power projects’, a 3 August 2011 report in the Los Angeles Times, points out that many technicians on wind power projects work in bathroom-size spaces, high above the ground, surrounded by high-voltage electrical equipment. Workers also sometimes inspect turbine blades while suspended alongside them, on sites whipped by strong winds. The result: technicians have fallen hundreds of feet, and others have been crushed by, or trapped in, moving machinery.

The Times adds that the risks go beyond the manufacture and installation phase. It reports the complicated wiring under solar panels has left some firefighters so bewildered they have allowed residential rooftops to burn. Some panels contain materials such as cadmium and selenium, which could be explosive or carcinogenic, according to the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

While watchdog groups say the existing state and federal regulations are inadequate to protect workers, wind and solar energy industry trade associations say they are offering, or developing, safety recommendations.

The US federal health and safety regulator, OSHA, remains concerned. But OSHA is facing its own battle for survival. As budget cuts to federal agencies appear inevitable as a consequence of the debt deal agreed by Congress, safety enforcement in any workplace, green or otherwise, could itself be in danger.

According to a report in the online magazine In These Times, OSHA has no fat to trim, with a current budget of only $558.6 million. “Many public health and safety advocates say that that figure doesn’t leave OSHA with the resources needed to adequately inspect workplaces. There are only 2,218 inspectors at both the federal and state level who inspect 7.3 million workplaces employing more than 135 million workers (that’s one inspector for every 57,984 workers.)”

The article concludes: “At this rate, OSHA can inspect a workplace on average once every 129 years and state OSHA inspectors could inspect one every 67 years. For a country the size of the United States, health and safety experts say you need at least 12,000 inspectors, six times more inspectors than OSHA currently has, in order to properly inspect America’s workplaces.”

While traditional workplaces fall off the enforcement radar, green jobs may never even make a blip.

SAFE ASSUMPTION Workers rate workplace safety their top concern. If employers and regulators showed the same concern, we'd have fewer environmental catastrophes too.

More than eight in 10 US workers — 85 per cent — rank workplace safety their top labour standards concern, ahead of family and maternity leave, minimum wage, paid sick days, overtime pay and the right to join a union, according to a new study from the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.

But despite this top rated concern about workplace safety, the study found the media and the public tend to pay closest attention to safety issues when disastrous workplace incidents occur. Even during those tragedies, the fate of workers is often overlooked – something starkly apparent in the recent oil well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The study, ‘Public attitudes towards and experiences with workplace safety,’ draws on dozens of surveys and polls conducted by NORC and was prepared for the Public Welfare Foundation, a Washington DC-based organisation that supports efforts to improve workers’ rights.

“Workplace safety is too often ignored or accidents taken for granted,” said Tom W Smith, director of NORC’s General Social Survey (GSS). “It is striking that coverage in the media and public opinion polls has virtually ignored the 11 workers killed by the blowout and destruction of the drilling platform.”

Instead, Smith pointed out, the media coverage and the polls focused on the environmental impact of the disaster, overlooking the worker safety aspects. But he noted that “if optimal safety had been maintained, not only would the lives of the 11 workers been saved, but the whole environmental disaster would have been averted.”

Robert Shull, the workers’ rights programme officer at the Public Welfare Foundation, commented: “Workplace safety should be a constant concern. Given the importance that workers themselves place on this issue, we should not have to mourn the loss of people on the job before government and employers take more effective measures to ensure that employees can go home safely after work.”

A 2006 survey by the management-side US Employment Law Alliance found that “a union’s ability to address safety concerns” was the leading factor in a worker’s decision whether or not to join a union, eclipsing concerns over getter higher wages, better benefits or increased job security.

Legislation that would create and save millions of jobs across the US by building a  clean energy economy has stalled, while nations like China are forging ahead, the BlueGreen Alliance has reminded legislators.

The US alliance, a coalition of union and environmental groups, kicked off a ‘Job’s Not Done Tour’ this week. The 30-city bus tour will run until 3 September.

Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a member of the alliance, said: “By failing to take action on these important clean energy policies, we are missing a huge opportunity to create good jobs now. Currently we are 16th in the world in the percentage of citizens with access to broadband. Expansion will not only create jobs, save Americans money and make our country more efficient, it will lead to the sustainable communities that are such an important part of our future.”

JOBS DRIVE The US is not in the fast lane when it comes to green job creation.

The initiative aims to demonstrate nationwide support for creating clean energy jobs, including manufacturing clean energy technologies, building the 21^st century broadband network, building a smart grid transmission system and making our homes and commercial buildings more efficient.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said earlier this month that the US needs a comprehensive approach to energy and climate issues, “one that will invest in our future and create good jobs. It is vital to the national security, economic, and environmental interest of the nation.”

Michael Langford, president of the Utility Workers said: “Building a smart grid that transmits cleaner, renewable energy will create good jobs, and we need to take action to make those jobs a reality now.

The clarification came when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to take steps to institutionalise worker and union involvement in workplace inspections conducted in workplaces using extremely hazardous substances. The move was prompted by a letter to EPA initiated by the New Jersey Work Environment Council.

“The old procedure was a remnant of the last Administration’s policy,” said Terence M O’Sullivan, president of the laborers’ union LIUNA. O’Sullivan co-signed the letter, along with a host of labour, environmental, health, occupational safety and health and advocacy organisations. 

“It is a positive sign that the EPA acted immediately to correct the problem after we pointed it out,” said O’Sullivan. “Now, in chemical facilities where Laborers work, we expect the agency to make sure our members and business agents have the same opportunity to offer safety and health suggestions and help evaluate corrective measures as does management. Not only will this enhance our members’ safety, it will help protect people who live or work near these facilities.”

The block on the shipment from Massachusetts firm CRT Recycling Inc. was made possible due to a tip off to the Indonesian environment ministry from the Basel Action Network (BAN). BAN volunteers had staked out CRT Recycling, a company that takes thousands of monitors every year from local US schools and governments. They photographed a container in the company’s yard being loaded with cathode ray tube (CRT) computer monitors. Using container numbers and online shipping company databases, they were able to track the container and its ship to the port of Semarang, Indonesia.

BAN says it contacted the Indonesian Ministry of Environment in November 2009, warning officials of the ship’s imminent arrival.

Indonesian authorities then seized the container and found it to be part of a consignment of nine from CRT Recycling. The containers were returned to the US, arriving in Boston port in February.  The shipment was returned to CRT Recycling by the authorities on 1 March.

CRT Recycling had employed a waste broker, Advanced Global Technologies Inc., which is listed on an official website of the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a registered e-waste exporter. In 2008, official oversight body the Government Accountability Office slammed the EPA for doing far too little to control exports of electronic waste from the United States.

“Indonesia is just one of many countries now being flooded by a tsunami of toxic electronic waste from the United States,” said BAN executive director Jim Puckett. “Even though our own government knows that the importation of toxic waste from the US is a violation of the laws of most countries of the world, our own EPA shamefully allows the global dumping to continue.”

BAN, together with the Electronic TakeBack Coalition, has been campaigning for a new law prohibiting hazardous e-waste exports from the United States, to bring it up to legal standards already in place in 32 other developed countries.

According to BAN, about 80 per cent of the e-waste consumers deliver to recyclers is not recycled by these companies at all but is simply shipped to countries in Asia and Africa to some of the world’s most impoverished communities where the waste is smashed, burned, melted or chemically treated in extremely dangerous backyard operations.

BAN warns businesses and consumers to hand over their old electronic equipment only to designated e-Stewards Recyclers that have been carefully screened and audited to ensure they do not export, use prison labour, or dump toxics in municipal landfills and incinerators.

CAPTIVE VICTIMS Firefighters respond to a fire at the e-waste recycling facility at Atwater Prison, California - one of the for-profit prisons whose e-waste recycling programmes were found to have exposed inmates and workers to illegally high levels of toxins.

US prisoners and staff supervisors were exposed for years to excessive levels of toxic heavy metals during computer recycling operations, a government workplace health research agency has confirmed.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) report, however, says the absence of recordkeeping inside the prisons, made it impossible to confirm any health problems from these illegal levels of exposure.

The December 2009 NIOSH report was submitted to the Justice Department Office of Inspector General as part of its system-wide review of all the federal prison e-waste recycling centers. This NIOSH report covered conditions at federal prisons at Elkton in Ohio, Texarkana in Texas, Marianna in Florida and Atwater in California and must be publicly displayed at each institution. Campaign organisation PEER – Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility – obtained a copy of the report and in January 2010 published it on its website.

The NIOSH report says recycling operations at the for-profit prisons involves inmates breaking up computer components, often with hammers. NIOSH concluded that, for years, these recycling operations lacked adequate containment to prevent workers from being coated with dangerous amounts of lead, cadmium and other heavy metals inside the hardware.

NIOSH says prison industry managers failed to assess risks adequately prior to work starting, failed to identify potential hazards with the result that “adequate hazard controls were not established for several years at some BOP [Bureau of Prison] institutions”; and failed to provide any “training, guidance or oversight needed to address health hazards associated with electronics recycling” to staff and inmate workers.

NIOSH found that prison staff and inmates had been exposed to illegally high levels of toxins for years at all of the facilities it inspected except the one at Marianna, Florida. This report is part of the Justice Department Inspector General (IG) investigation, begun in 2006, into occupational and environmental compliance of prison computer recycling operations and the accountability of managers who ignored previous reports of problems.

PEER executive director Jeff Ruch commented: “It is outrageous that federal prisons have been illegally undercutting legitimate recyclers to the potential detriment of their own staff and the inmates in their custody.”

The National Labor College (NLC) and the AFL-CIO’s Center for Green Jobs have launched a monthly online Green Labor Journal to outline issues of sustainability, energy use and climate change from a union perspective.

It says the journal will showcase union green initiatives and provide up-to-date information on new developments in green policy, technology and work processes.

A report in the AFL-CIO’s blog says the journal will emphasise that green jobs must pay decent wages and benefits so workers can sustain themselves and their families. All green policy initiatives also must include fair labour standards.

The online journal also will highlight the important role of unions in environmental debates.

Issue 1 includes details of NLC’s Green Workplace Representative Certificate Program. It says: “Based upon the model of the British Trade Union Congress’s (TUC) Union Green Representative program, the NLC curriculum will provide working people with a practical guide for conducting a workplace audit, organizing a ‘greening committee’ in every workplace, and working with management to make the positive changes necessary to achieve sustainability.”

TUC publishes a regular online Green Workplaces News.

Writing in the first issue of the Green Labor Journal, NLC’s Tom Kriger notes: “Research shows that sustainable workplaces are more productive workplaces.  Thus a further goal of this program is to build cooperative labor-management partnerships so workplaces become safer and more productive, enhance the competitiveness of American firms in the global economy, and contribute to the health of the planet. 

“Based in part upon the role of the health and safety committees that the labor movement pioneered in many workplaces, a workplace “greening committee” would provide the appropriate forum for discussing the results of workplace audits and negotiating steps to address issues identified in the audits.”

WORKPLACE REVOLUTION David Michaels says the assumption that green jobs are necessarily good jobs is an unsafe one.

The newly installed leader of the US government’s workplace safety watchdog has made his first public act a call for green jobs to be good, safe jobs.

On 9 December 2009 David Michaels was  confirmed as the Obama administration’s Assistant Secretary of Labor for occupational safety and health.

The head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) told a ‘Going green’ workshop, run by the US government’s workplace health research arm NIOSH on 16 December 2009, it was “very fitting and proper that my first speech as Assistant Secretary should address the issue of green jobs – what green jobs mean for the earth, for our economy and for American workers.”

He said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis “has provided the Department of Labor with her vision, which is simply and profoundly: ‘Good jobs for everyone.’ And everyone at this conference understands all too well that green jobs cannot be good jobs unless they are safe jobs.”

Michaels acknowledged the many voices supporting a “green revolution” to reform the economy, but warned: “Employers who race into this green economy without paying attention to worker safety will blunder into many preventable injuries and deaths. We can’t afford this. We can’t allow this to happen.”

Instead, he outlined his plan to ensure workplace safety is an integral part of the new greener economy. “It is vital, now, that we integrate worker safety and health concerns into green manufacturing, green construction and green energy,” he told the NIOSH workshop.

“Most importantly: We must push worker health and safety as a critical, necessary, and recognized element of green design, green lifecycle analysis and green contracts.

“It’s not a matter of choosing either a green future or safe jobs. It’s both. It’s all or nothing, and NIOSH, OSHA and everyone else needs to play a role in building this sustainable economy – an economy that will provide sufficient jobs, green jobs, and jobs that are safe for all workers.”

Workers should not be overlooked when planning safer, green ways of working, he added, saying this was OSHA’s ‘Green Reform Principle Number One.’
“Clearly one of the best ways to move forward on worker safety at the same time that we move forward on green jobs is to ensure that workers are more engaged in the work process and in the development of green jobs,” he told workshop delegates.

“It’s clear that we must move toward a permanent system where employers and workers come together, on a basis of mutual respect, to assess and abate hazards.”

His action list of five ‘green reform principles’ also included ditching the assumption that chemicals are “considered innocent until proven guilty – and all too often proven guilty by the sick and dead bodies of American workers.”

Third on the reform principles list comes ‘prevention through design’, an approach that “is about fundamental change that integrates safety efficiently and thoroughly.”

Listed at four is decent standards – something that had been neglected under the Bush administration, when rule making ground to a dangerous halt.

And green reform principle number five comes full circulate to the workers’ facing the risks: Enhancing workers’ voice in the workplace.

“To get us up to date and move into a safer, healthier future, it’s also clear that workers must have a stronger voice in workplace safety than they have now,” said Michaels. “Giving that voice impact and value means that workers must have much better information about their rights, the hazards they face and controls for those hazards.”

He concluded: “The challenge now is to get everyone else on board across the nation. We need to make the expression ‘green jobs’ synonymous with ‘safe jobs’ – because green jobs are good jobs only when they are safe jobs.”

“One of our biggest opportunities lies in the creation of green jobs, and a new vision of America that our labor movement is helping make happen.”

She credited many unions for undertaking green initiatives, including the United Steelworkers (USW), the UAW, AFT, AFSCME and the building trades. She also pointed to the institute’s Center for Green Jobs and APRI’s new computer learning lab in Pittsburgh as examples of the ways in which unions are preparing workers for a green economy.

She said she “was never so excited” than she was when she visited the Pittsburgh Public Housing Authority and saw the public housing residents in the APRI Computer Learning Lab learning computer skills and other young people going through basic OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] training taught by Steelworkers health and safety instructors.

They are being prepared for a green future and we all can agree that, at the end of the day, the only color that matters is green. We’re especially proud that APRI is working with the Center for Green Jobs to get additional federal support for creating pathways out of poverty for low-income and under-served communities.

The Obama administration has estimated 5 million jobs (direct and indirect) can be created by a $150 billion, 10-year investment. Green Jobs for America reports that hybrid and other clean cars, public transportation, efficient heating and lighting systems and clean renewable power plants can create more than 1.4 million new jobs.

In addition, the administration has made $150 million available to help create green jobs in areas of high poverty. National, state and local partnerships that include non-profits, labor organizations, employers, education and training facilities and public workforce groups are eligible for the grants. Says Holt Baker:

That is real money, to help solve problems, and help put real people to work.

You can read excerpts from Holt Baker’s speech on the AFL-CIO Working For America Institute website here.

AFL-CIO Now blog.