Green Jobs Must Remain in This Country

We need to develop strong policies promoting clean energy, train workers in green technologies and ensure that the green jobs of the future are good jobs that remain in this country, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Friday.

Trumka told the crowd at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR):

We need the same strategic planning as our economic competitors to make sure that technologies invented here in America are commercialized here in America by companies here in America with plants here in America with workers trained here in America. When we plan for green jobs, we should remember three other colors—red, white and blue.

Americans created a prosperous economy after the Great Depression by building a strong manufacturing industry that, in turn, built a strong middle class, Trumka said. (Click here to read the entire speech.) Our challenge now is to use a new generation of breakthrough technologies to revive our economy and clean up the environment.

We can’t have secure jobs without stable and sustainable sources of energy. And we’ll never have responsible energy and environmental policies without a strong and growing economy. Secure jobs, stable benefits, and rising wages give working Americans the confidence to believe that the changes we need will work for them and not against them.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that total global investment in wind and solar energy alone could total $3.6 trillion by 2030, Trumka told the students and faculty. Even though the United States pioneered many of these technologies, many of them have moved overseas to countries like Germany, Japan and China.

When we even begin to imagine what it will take to produce and use clean energy, it is clear that America has a huge job to do. And the nation needs the know-how, the dedication and determination of skilled workers and their unions to get the job done.

Working Americans need to know that green jobs really will be good American jobs, he said.

This means that public policies must do more than merely require the use of clean and renewable energy—as important as that is. American policies must also promote the growth of American companies employing American workers to produce, provide and make use of this clean and renewable energy.

We also should make sure that green jobs come with American rights at work, including the freedom to form unions, to bargain with the employer and to be free from discrimination based on race, religion, gender, national origin and immigration status and sexual orientation as well.

Trumka, who once worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, led the audience in a prayer for the families of those who lost their lives over the past week in the mining disaster in West Virginia and the refinery fire in Seattle. Those deaths remind us, Trumka said, that energy sustainability must begin with safety at work.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future