We're giving up Styrofoam cups here at our building in Washington, D.C. Also doing an energy audit and taking a few other steps as a start toward making our building a green one--just some of the actions the AFL-CIO announced this week, in time for Earth Day.
Back in 1999, there was surprise over the "Teamsters and Turtles" alliance during protests against the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. For many people, that was the first sign that we are not your father's labor movement.
Since then, we've gone far further, allying with environmentalists not only against destructive trade agreements but joining forces over the need to ensure that newly created green jobs [1] are not low-paying jobs but jobs that pay well and create and strengthen the U.S. middle class.
The Apollo Alliance was the first coalition to emerge from our early alliances with the environmental movement. The Apollo Alliance was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 tragedy to catalyze a clean energy revolution in America and it includes union, environmental, business and community groups focused on building a new energy economy. Apollo just released Make It In America: the Apollo Green Manufacturing Action Plan (GreenMAP), a series of policy recommendations aimed at revitalizing America's manufacturing sector by investing significant federal funding in the domestic manufacture of clean energy components.
The Blue Green Alliance [2], a partnership of four unions and two environmental organizations, was formed in 2006, and in its most recent effort, published principles for comprehensive climate change legislation. You can read the policy statement here [3].
In February, our affiliated Working for America Institute (WAI [4]) announced $1 million in funding for a new Center for Green Jobs to ensure the green jobs created under the Obama economic recovery bill are family-supporting jobs. The Center for Green Jobs [5] has created standards to help community-level unionists assess the quality of jobs created under the recovery act. Click here [6] for more about the standards.
Unions with members in a variety of industries are helping create a greener future (h/t to James Parks at the AFL-CIO Now blog [7] for compiling this list):
As Labor Secretary Hilda Solis told a Senate committee this week, "We don't want [green] jobs that don't go anywhere. We want jobs with a career path."
These are jobs that will provide economic security for our middle-class families while reducing our nation's dependence on imported energy. These are also jobs that traditionally cannot be outsourced.
This is a crosspost from Firedoglake [18].
Links:
[1] http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/thesolutions_goodjobs.cfm
[2] http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/
[3] http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/atf/cf/{3637E5F0-D0EA-46E7-BB32-74D973EFF334}/Final Climate Policy, vFinal.pdf
[4] http://www.workingforamerica.org/
[5] http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/02/05/afl-cio-announces-center-for-green-jobs
[6] http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/03/11/setting-standards-for-green-and-good-jobs
[7] http://www.aflcio.org/blog
[8] http://www.umwa.org/
[9] http://www.boilermakers.org/
[10] http://www.ibew.org/
[11] http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/manufacturing/iuc
[12] http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/04/08/report-clean-coal-could-create-millions-of-jobs
[13] http://www.uaw.org/
[14] http://www.usw.org/
[15] http://www.goiam.org/
[16] http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/04/20/plumbers-focus-on-green-technology-for-their-future
[17] http://www.ua.org/
[18] http://firedoglake.com/