The Thorny Green Jobs Issue

I truly recommend this David Leonhardt interview with President Obama. Regardless of where you stand on his policies, you can agree that he understands the issues and can articulate a sharp vision. Here he talks about the need for a more balanced economy.

That’s why I don’t just want to see more college graduates; I also want to specifically see more math and science graduates, I specifically want to see more folks in engineering. I think part of the postbubble economy that I’m describing is one in which we are restoring a balance between making things and providing services, whether it’s marketing or catering to people or servicing folks in some way. Those are all good jobs, and we’re not going to return to an economy in which manufacturing is as large a percentage as it was back in the 1940s just because of automation and technological advance [...]

But the broader point is that if you look at who our long-term competition will be in the global economy — China, India, the E.U., Brazil, Korea — the countries that are producing the best-educated work force, whose education system emphasizes the sciences and mathematics, who can translate those technology backgrounds or those science backgrounds into technological applications, they are going to have a significant advantage in the economy. And I think that we’ve got to have enough of that in order to maintain our economic strength.

I think a healthy economy is going to have a broad mix of jobs, and there has to be a place for somebody with terrific mechanical aptitude who can perform highly skilled tasks with his hands, whether it’s in construction or manufacturing. And I don’t think that those jobs should vanish. I do think that they will constitute a smaller percentage of the overall economy. And so what we’re going to have to do is, with a younger generation, find new places for that kind of work.

The possibilities are there, though. I spoke during the campaign of this company that I visited, McKinstry, in Seattle, where you’ve got a bunch of welders and tradesmen who are now retrofitting buildings. They’re not performing the same kind of manufacturing that their fathers might have, but with similar skill sets they are now making hospitals and schools and office buildings much more energy efficient, and then that’s providing enormous value to the economy as a whole.

Interestingly enough, the current issue we're having with green jobs is that we're retaining the construction and labor sector but losing the knowledge sector, precisely the opposite of the President's proposed vision.

As the Obama government gets ready to raise a protectionist wall against offshoring, the US firms seem to be shipping more jobs to India.

The US firms have offshored 22,000 green technology jobs to India since January 1, 2009, Doug Brown, co-author of the influential 2009 Green Outsourcing Report, informed TNIE [...]

Noting an interesting irony the authors of the report say, “In the US, green stimulus plan is creating low-wage installation and construction jobs.” But, in India, which is usually associated with cheap and low-skill work, “…New green jobs include higher dollar engineers, strategic business management and support technicians charged with designing innovative environmental friendly solutions,” they add.

A country that can employ all these laborers to retrofit homes and build out the smart grid has some chance of stability, but only at the low-wage end. But the design and engineering sector has floated away to India.

And while providing green jobs in low-income communities may breathe economic life into those areas, the people living there may not be able to, well, breathe.

A read of the "Justice in the Air" report would maybe change that perspective. Using data from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory and Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators reports, researchers were able to locate where toxic air pollution from industrial facilities is strongest. They also determined the percentage of racial minorities and low-income families who live in those heavily impacted areas. To no surprise, they found that African-, Latino- and Asian-Americans suffer the worst health risks. For example, 69 percent of those whose health is impacted by ExxonMobil's pollution are minorities [...]

So, how exactly can a green-jobs movement alleviate poverty without equal concern for pollution exposure and health consequences? What good is giving a person a job if their frail health from toxic pollution will affect their productivity? Most of the jobs that have been tagged for the poor -- you know, the ones that "can't be exported" and "don't require a diploma" -- are outdoor jobs. So if you're installing a solar panel on a roof, weatherizing a building, cleaning up waste, or doing urban garden work, chances are in America (if you're poor and/or black/Latino) you'll be doing this in an area prone to air pollution.

We need to address these issues of environmental justice. At-risk communities bear the brunt of toxic pollution. Heck, even James Inhofe sponsored a black carbon bill, so it's not like we need to drop these concerns for political expediency.

The green jobs movement makes some intuitive sense, but there are larger questions that need to be addressed, through regulating the air we breathe, through improving our educational competitiveness so all of the green economy can stay in America.

The Shining Solis In The Distance

Just because I don't want to give the impression that I'm unhappy about the Solis pick, though I think her skills would've been put to great use in the California governor's race and maybe saved the state, here's a great appreciation by Harold Meyerson, who has followed Solis' career for some time.

In 1996, when she was a back-bencher (and the first Latina) in the California State Senate, Hilda Solis did something that no other political figure I known of had done before, or has done since: She took money out of her own political account to fund a social justice campaign. Under California law, the state minimum wage is set by the gubernatorially-appointed Industrial Welfare Commission, and California’s governors for the preceding 14 years, Republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, hadn’t exactly appointed members inclined to raise that wage. So Solis dipped into her own campaign treasury and came up with the money to fund the signature-gatherers to put a minimum wage hike initiative on the California ballot. The signature gatherers gathered the signatures, the measure was placed on the ballot, it passed handily in the next election, and California’s low-wage janitors and gardeners and fry and taco cooks, and millions like them, got a significant raise.

While in the legislature, Solis also became the chief proponent in state government for the environmental justice movement that was bubbling up in various working-class communities around the state, steering to passage bills that reduced airborne carcinogens in industrial areas and that created parkland alongside the rivers that run through some of Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods. She took a leading role in promoting domestic violence awareness in the state’s communities of color.

And in 2000, she did something liberals always talk about doing and almost never do: she challenged an incumbent Democratic congressman with a piss-poor record in that Spring’s Democratic primary, and defeated him soundly. Marty Martinez, a 9-term incumbent seeking his 10th, had voted for NAFTA, opposed gun controls and abortion rights, and backed the extension of a freeway into a residential area -- managing to estrange labor, enviros, feminists and liberals of all descriptions. Still, Democrats virtually never run against incumbents, from the left or from anyplace. But Solis, with the encouragement of L.A. County AFL-CIO chieftain Miguel Contreras, did just that. She not only won, but defeated Matinez by a whopping 69 percent to 31 percent margin.

These are all the reasons I've found her California's most compelling politician. And there's also her unyielding advocacy for green jobs, a bill which she authored and passed (though it still hasn't been funded). She understands that the new economy will include the participation of a broad working class in good union jobs working for a new energy economy. What's not to like?

An Evening With Some Community Organizers

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the 15th Anniversary Awards Dinner for LAANE (The Los Angeles Alliance For A New Economy), which brought 1,000 people to the Beverly Hilton (including Mayor Villaraigosa, Sean Penn, and more) and raised $500,000 for their cause. I know I get depressed reading about endless budget fights and cutbacks to schools and health care, so it's important to take comfort (and some valuable lessons) in those doing important work - and fighting some of the most powerful and entrenched interests in the city and the country - and winning.

LAANE is a group dedicated to fighting for economic and environmental justice by building coalitions and waging campaigns to improve the lives of people in underserved and at-risk communities. Their success stories include some of the most astonishing victories of the last decade - the living-wage campaign in Los Angeles, the (eventually) successful grocery worker's strike, the campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of Inglewood in 2004, the fight for justice for hotel workers near LAX. More recently, they achieved success with a landmark blue-green alliance of nearly 40 environmental groups, community organizers and labor organizations like the Teamsters, to clean up the Port of Los Angeles, which resulted in a huge victory for clean air and clean water which will also provide good-paying sustainable jobs for truck drivers. The Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports is a model for the nation, to combine economic security and respect for the environment at the ports, and Chuck Mack & Jim Santangelo from the Teamsters were honored last night (sporting leis flown in by a Teamster rep from Hawaii).

Another of their campaigns is the "Construction Career Policy," dedicated to providing local residents in low-income communities the opportunity to get middle-class, union construction jobs on projects happening in their area. This has resulted in thousands of jobs for at-risk and underserved communities of color, and the goal is for 15,000 jobs over the next 5 years. Mayor Villaraigosa presented Cora Davis, a construction business owner and leading advocate for the program, with an award.

Finally, in the wake of the movie "Milk," many are remembering the work of Cleve Jones, an activist in San Francisco during the era and the leader of the AIDS Quilt Project. Today, Jones is a community organizer working for UNITE HERE, and he has worked with LAANE on their campaigns to create living-wage jobs and improve working conditions for the 3,500 hotel workers around LAX Airport. Sean Penn, who became friendly with Jones over the last year working on "Milk," presented him with an award for his service. In his speech, Jones talked about these noble working-class people, many of them immigrants, "the ones who are serving you dinner tonight," and he paid tribute to their struggle and dignity. He also had a few words to say about the passage of Prop. 8, which left him heartbroken and drew eerie parallels to the Prop. 6 campaign he worked on with Harvey Milk in 1978. But, Jones said, the real parallel moment is 1964, a time when civil rights for African-Americans in the Deep South appeared remote. "Now is the time for Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to sign a new Civil Rights Act restoring fundamental rights for every American in this country." It's not the tactic you hear from the leading gay rights organizations, but Cleve doesn't hold much of a brief for them either:

The new (gay rights) activists have impressed some gay rights veterans.

“They’ve shown a clear ability to turn out large numbers of people,” said Cleve Jones, a longtime gay rights advocate and labor organizer. “It’s also clear that they are skeptical of the established L.G.B.T. organizations. And I would say they have reason to be.”

Overall, it was inspiring to see a community-based organization so dedicated to restoring fairness, justice, dignity and respect to a part of a population that frequently doesn't have a voice in political affairs, and more important, to see them get results. LAANE is doing some great work.

California Matters

Just a few things to get you through the weekend:

• If you're interested in helping Barack Obama but aren't flying to Ohio or Texas like Brian and Julia, the Obama campaign is urging supporters in California to make phone calls into Texas this weekend. MoveOn is also running Yes We Can parties on Saturday and Sunday.

• Let's not give the Governor a heap of credit just yet for accepting the Legislative Analyst's suggestions to close billions of dollars in tax loopholes. According to the Sacramento Bee he ran away from this proposal within a matter of hours.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told business leaders Thursday he supports a proposal by nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill to rescind $2.7 billion in tax credits, but he later softened that stance and said he doesn't necessarily support all of her recommendations.

The Governor will be in Columbus this weekend for the Arnold Classic, an annual bodybuilding and fitness event, so if you get a minute, Juls, you can go ask him about this yourself!

• Tired of being bashed with the facts over the past several weeks, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson has come out swinging, defending his decision to deny the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions on the grounds that global warming is a global problem. Which means, of course, we need to do less to fight it. Also today the EPA turned over documents related to their decision, months after they were requested.

• On a somewhat different note, I'm interested in this protest by the environmental justice community against cap-and-trade solutions such as what is promised in California as unfair to low-income communities, which are disproportionately affected by polluting industries that would be able to buy their way into continuing to pollute those areas.

EJ groups, long overlooked in the more mainstream environmental movement, fear that climate legislation will once again disregard the concerns of the communities who are already most affected by the factories and refineries responsible for global warming. In a cap-and-trade system, poor communities, where polluting plants are most often sited, will still bear the brunt of impacts if industries are allowed to trade for rights to pollute there. Instead of this system, they're advocating a carbon tax, direct emissions reductions, and meaningful measures to move America to clean, renewable energy sources.

"[C]arbon trading is undemocratic because it allows entrenched polluters, market designers, and commodity traders to determine whether and where to reduce greenhouse gases and co-pollutant emissions without allowing impacted communities or governments to participate in those decisions," says the statement.

I think it's a powerful argument, and something the environmental movement has to seriously consider. If we're going to allow polluting industries to pollute, there will be an adverse affect. How do we deal with that?

• In yet another reason why we should not allow the continued consolidation of media, new LA Times owner Sam Zell has now taken to the airwaves, blaming the coming recession on... Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama talking about the coming recession. Yeah, shut up already! This is the owner of the largest paper in California requesting what amounts to censorship, incidentally.

• Finally, a federal judge in San Francisco today lifted the injunction on the Wikileaks website, which allowed whistleblowers to post documents and anonymous information about government and corporate malfeasance. A win for the First Amendment and the public interest.

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