A few days ago, I wrote about how green jobs are not automatically good jobs:
The old thinking was that it was impossible to grow the economy and clean the environment at the same time. The green jobs movement has done important work in freeing the world from the tyranny of that particular dead idea; thanks to their efforts, there’s a lot of people thinking hard about how to apply the stimulus in ways that grow green jobs.
But green jobs are not, in and of themselves, good jobs. They can be good jobs - jobs that provide workers with decent wages, economic security and a shot at the American Dream - but they can just as easily go the other way. It all depends on the choices we make.
Today, in conjunction with Good Jobs First and the Sierra Club, we’re rolling out a new report that demonstrates in detail just how true that is.
“High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy” (PDF) looks at a range of existing green jobs in sectors across the economy, including manufacturing, construction, and waste management, and finds that while policy choices have made some of these green jobs good jobs, the connection is by no means automatic:
Low pay is not uncommon in the workplaces we profile: the lowest wage we found was $8.25 an hour at a recycling processing plant, but we also discovered jobs in manufacturing facilities serving the renewable energy sector paying as little as $11 an hour.
Wage rates at many wind and solar manufacturing facilities are below the national average for workers employed in the manufacture of durable goods. In some locations, average pay rates fall short of income levels needed to support a single adult with one child.
Some U.S. wind and solar manufacturers have already begun to offshore production of components destined for U.S. markets to low-wage havens such as China and Mexico. Examples of offshoring include the manufacture of blades for wind turbines, defying the common assumption that such blades are too large to ship overseas.
Very few workers at wind and solar manufacturing workplaces identified in the course of our research are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In at least two instances, this appears to be a direct result of aggressive anti-union campaigns run by employers with the help of union-busting consultants. On the construction side, we found that a leading contractor engaged in energy efficiency work has a similarly hostile approach to unions.
We could not find specific wages for nonunion construction workers employed in green building, but publicly available data on overall construction wages suggest that they are far lower than those of the union members profiled in the report. Analysis provided by the Economic Policy Institute indicates that among nonunion laborers, carpenters, painters, and roofers, a majority make less than $12.50 an hour and a third make less than the federal poverty wage for a family of four ($10.19 an hour).
This is not to say that green jobs cannot be good jobs — merely that they do not become good jobs simply because they are green. Decisions must be made and policies put in place if we wish for this sector to become the vehicle that enables a new generation of workers to achieve the American Dream. (In its conclusion, the report identifies a range of policy options available to make this a reality.)
Given the economic and environmental challenges facing America and the world, the need for a green economy becomes clearer every day. In the push to get there, though, we must make sure that the workers whose labor powers that green economy aren’t left behind by it while its benefits flow to a few plutocrats at the top. If we do not, we risk repeating the mistakes that led us into the current economic crisis in the first place.
UPDATE (Feb. 4): Great pic from the press conference where the report was rolled out, with two of the folks who spoke on the importance of good green jobs — Laborers’ International Union of North America General President Terry O’Sullivan (on the right), and residential construction worker (and LIUNA member) Pierriette Hopkins:
