US green jobs could mean more union jobs

By Rory | Published: 15 September, 2009

For Mario Ciardelli, a member of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 683 in Columbus, Ohio, the issue of green jobs is important because it could mean new jobs for workers with skills in electrical work.

Ciardelli was one of the 80 people who attended a breakout forum on “Building a Green Jobs Economy from The Ground Up” at the AFL-CIO’s 26th Constitutional Convention this week. 

A report on the AFL-CIO Now blog says IBEW recently launched Working Green, a new section on its website featuring the latest news about the union’s role in the green revolution for members, contractors and others looking to break into the new energy economy.

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Global: Firm kicks staff with a carbon footprint

By Rory | Published: 14 September, 2009

A multinational firm has docked the pay of workers it considered to have too large a carbon footprint outside of work. The trial by global engineering consultancy WSP involved 80 UK based employees. Threequarters were rewarded but a quarter, including managing director Stuart McLachlan, were fined. WSP now intends to expand the “successful” scheme.

The Times (London) reports: “Unlike the energy-saving schemes adopted by thousands of companies, the rationing scheme monitors employees’ personal emissions, including home energy bills, petrol purchases and holiday flights.”

The article does not discuss possible complicating factors, for example the impact on lower paid workers or those with caring responsibilities or workers who might not be able to turn down the heating or up the cycling because of health or other considerations.

Nor does it address the privacy implications. If the company has a hand in everything from your holiday plans to your fuel use, many might consider that oversteps any notion of a reasonable degree of intrusion, in fact they’d have good reason to believe it was none of the employer’s damn business.

‘Lifestyle discrimination’ has been identified as an increasing concern by the US National Workrights Institute. Read More »

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Britain: Unions ‘working on change’

By Rory | Published: 14 September, 2009

A new publication on unions and climate change will be launched this week at the national congress of UK national trade union confederation TUC.

The discussion document, produced by the environmental thinktank Green Alliance, includes contributions from union leaders including Jack Dromey of Unite, Sally Hunt of UCU, Paul Noon of Prospect, Keith Sonnet of UNISON and Dan Shears of GMB.

Writing in TUC’s public policy Touchstone blog,  Green Alliance director Stephen Hale points to the example of the now well-established and respected US Blue Green Alliance – a coalition of environmental and union groups.
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Global: Unions call for a ‘decent’ green economy

By Rory | Published: 9 September, 2009

With only three months left to achieve a deal to fight climate change at the Copenhagen climate summit, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has launched a new website on climate change and set out its key policy demands.

The global union body wants to ensure that an “ambitious” climate change agreement is strengthened by “Just Transition” policies, moving workers from polluting jobs to decent jobs in a green economy. This will involve “greening” existing industries and creating news “green jobs” in clean energy, “cleantech” and recycling and related industries.

ITUC general secretary Guy Ryder said: “The ITUC and its members believe that addressing global climate change is critical to the economic, social and environmental interest of all peoples of the world, and that mitigation actions must be fairly shared and distributed between and within countries”. 
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USA: Economic justice is a green issue

By Rory | Published: 8 September, 2009

Efforts to create a greener world require measures to make that world more just. And that’s not something that looks like happening any time soon.

Michael Renner of the US-based Worldwatch Institute, commenting in his ‘green economy’ blog, notes: “In the United States, and maybe elsewhere as well, full-cost pricing and current socio-economic trends seem to be on a collision course.”

Renner points out that while blatant wealth inequalities exist, making our purchases kinder to the environment will not provide the road map to a greener world. He adds that in recent decades the gap between rich and poor has widened dramatically. “From a perspective of simple economic justice, wages should be on a par with productivity gains — something that has not been the case in the United States for at least 20 years now.”

The is a theme taken up by Les Leopold, author of The Looting of America and a founder of the New York-based Labor Institute. In the 2009 book he notes starting in the mid-1970s: “Productivity and wages, American workers discovered, weren’t inextricably linked after all.”

 The money didn’t disappear. When the ‘iron law’ linking productivity and wages broke down the wealth generated by spiralling productivity went to different hands – and not the ones making the products and generating the profits. Read More »

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Global: Red alert on the perils of green jobs

By admin | Published: 3 September, 2009

Photo: Jawad Qasrawi
Recycling, clean energy, energy conservation – we’ve been told to expect a “green jobs” bonanza. But a spate of fatalities and poisonings in the sector show more work needs to be done to make the jobs as good for workers as they are for the environment, according to a new report from Hazards magazine.

It says depending who you believe, the green industries gold rush could result in anything from 400,000 to well over 1 million new “green collar” jobs in the UK. It warns, however, that far from being our economic and employment salvation, left to its own devices the green economy could deliver the same unhealthy mix of hire-and-fire, poison-and-pain jobs that remain a blight on the reputational landscape of the not-so-green economy. Read More »

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Global: Long work hours threaten our future

By Rory | Published: 1 September, 2009

Long hours are bad for workers and should be curtailed for the sake of the workforce and the environment, an investigation by The Ecologist has concluded.

The environmental magazine notes: “There’s something wonky with the way we work. Those of us with jobs are stressed when we work, and fatigued when we’re not.”

The feature in the 1 September issue continues: “Many of us don’t feel we have time to interact with our communities. Forty-six per cent of Brits have described themselves as being ‘exhausted’ at the end of a day’s work. A similar survey by the Families and Work Institute found one third of Americans were ‘chronically overworked’.

“Less than a quarter of Brits are ‘satisfied’ with their work hours. But while some of us are shackled to a long-hours culture, unemployment has been rising.”

This reflects the findings of the UK’s national trade union federation TUC. The union body’s research found the UK workforce has too many over-worked at the same time it has lots of people struggling to survive because they are unemployed or under-employed.
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USA: Greening America with good jobs

By Rory | Published: 30 August, 2009

Alliance for Climate Protection, Blue Green Alliance Hit Road for Made in America TourUnions and environmental groups launched a campaign on August 19, highlighting the benefits to American workers and businesses of transitioning to a clean energy economy that will create millions of jobs.

The ‘Made in America’ Jobs Tour started in Ohio on August 20, the first of 50 stops across 22 states organised by the Alliance for Climate Protection’s Repower America campaign, in partnership with the Blue Green Alliance and its labour and environmental partners.

“Building a clean energy economy can revitalise American manufacturing, but only if we commit to using domestically produced components,” said United Steelworkers International President Leo W Gerard.

“In confronting the challenges of recession, global warming and energy independence, we have an opportunity to transform our economy and create good jobs that truly are ‘made in America.’”
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Global: Will workers pay for clean energy?

By Rory | Published: 28 August, 2009

The potential occupational health and safety benefits of clean and green energy are seen as a slam dunk, a clear improvement on the dirty, heavy, hazardous polluting world of oil and coal. And for generations those jobs were certainly killers, occupationally and environmentally.

But that doesn’t mean clean energy jobs are risk free jobs. Michael Renner of the US-based Worldwatch Institute, writing this week in the organisation’s ‘Green economy’ blog, noted: “Some weeks ago, my former Worldwatch colleague Zoë Chafe—now a PhD student with the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California at Berkeley—queried me whether I was aware of any major occupational health and safety issues in the renewable energy industry.

“What quickly came to mind was a March 2008 newspaper story about polysilicon, a material critical to the solar photovoltaics (PV) industry. The article reported that a number of Chinese companies were cutting corners in the rush to fill booming demand and keep costs low. Instead of recycling a highly toxic byproduct, silicon tetrachloride, the companies were stockpiling the substance in drums or simply dumping it, rendering land infertile and exposing both workers and surrounding citizens to dangerous concentrations of chlorine and hydrochloric acid.”
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Britain: New programme on green energy risks

By Rory | Published: 26 August, 2009

The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has launched a new initiative in “response to government plans to introduce alternative (non-nuclear) energy technologies to combat climate change.”

It says its Emerging Energy Technologies (EET) Programme, which includes new online resources, is HSE’s attempt to address the health and safety implications of the government’s drive “to tackle climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions” and to “ensure secure, clean and affordable energy in the face of increasingly uncertain supply”.  
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