Labor & Employment Law

BlueGreen Alliance Calls for Green Jobs Agenda Now

By James Parks

Congress has an opportunity to put in place essential policies to create jobs, reduce carbon emissions and make America more energy independent. In its clean energy agenda for the remaining weeks of the 111th Congress, released yesterday, the BlueGreen Alliance outlines seven key policies it says could jump-start the clean energy economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country.

During a telephone press conference yesterday to release the agenda, UAW President Bob King said:

In the remaining weeks of 2010, creating jobs must be our top priority. Congress should move forward with policies that will create jobs for the millions of Americans who are still out of work. Critical to this job-creating effort is investments in green technologies because these are the jobs of the future?the jobs that will maintain our great American middle class.

The agenda, Seven Simple Steps: The Best Job-Creating Policies for What Remains of the 111th Congress, urges Congress to pass seven bills. One would establish a federal renewable electricity standard (RES), that would require utilities to source 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021.  Another would support Home Star and Building Star programs, which offers rebates for making homes and commercial buildings energy efficient. To read the entire list of priorities, click here.

United Steelworkers President Leo W. Gerard told reporters:

We can put people back to work with policies like an RES and investments in manufacturing. We cannot afford to sit on the sidelines as China and Europe pull ahead in the race for clean energy. The U.S. is poised to compete in the global clean energy economy, but only if we act soon to create these jobs right here at home.

David Foster, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, stressed the importance of Congress acting now and not waiting.

Working people across the country can’t afford to wait, the U.S. economy can’t afford to wait, and Congress can’t afford to wait to embrace clean energy as a strategy for creating jobs.

The BlueGreen Alliance is a national, strategic partnership between labor unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 16, 2010 (boomark / email).