Many of the green jobs of “the future” already exist and are performed by union members who make energy-efficient products and teach others how to conserve energy. 

Take Operating Engineers Local 49, which represents workers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Members of the local recently built a wind turbine farm in the small town of Chandler, Minn. Crane operators from the local union hoisted the turbines into place as other members dug trenches for the transmission lines and did the grading.

Glen Johnson, business manager for Local 49, tells the Operating Engineers (IUOE) magazine, International Operating Engineer:

We’re green. We’ve been green a long time. When our operators are building roads and bridges, key environmental factors must be met.

Some of the skills and training union members receive can easily be transferred to green jobs, says Gary Lindbald, Local 49’s training director:

Whether an operator is lifting a column for a wind turbine or raising a high-efficiency heating and cooling system to the roof of a green building, he needs to know how to properly and safely control the crane. That’s something we’ve been teaching for generations.

Boosted by more than $90 billion for green jobs and training in the Obama administration’s economic recovery package, green jobs are growing steadily and present a unique opportunity to help rebuild the middle class. To ensure that the green jobs are good jobs, unions are pushing public policy options and creating new programs to prepare workers for the green revolution.

The AFL-CIO Working for America Institute (WAI), which helps create high-road partnerships among unions, business and government, also is conducting conference calls and webinars for labor leaders on various grants. Through a series of announcements, the institute is keeping the union movement abreast of the opportunities to better educate the nation’s workforce and rebuild the middle class.

The AFL-CIO Center for Green Jobs is providing resources to enable labor leaders apply for $500 million in new green jobs training grants.

 Here’s Jeff Rickert, the center’s director:

With green jobs emerging as a top public policy priority, we are all working hard to make sure that green jobs are good jobs that provide decent wages and benefits. That’s a central part of our work. We don’t want these jobs to become dead-end jobs with no chance for advancement.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department is leading a national initiative joining their affiliates and 1,100 apprenticeship training centers with community organizations to train workers for the opportunities offered by new energy investment. 

To learn more about what unions are doing to prepare for a green future, click here, here, here and here.

Here are a few highlights from newspapers around the country that make the case for why we need the Employee Free Choice Act. 

Writing in Politico, former Clinton administration adviser Paul Begala explains how our system for forming unions is broken and why Employee Free Choice is necessary to give workers a shot at joining the middle class. Contrasting the stories of real workers with that of Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis, Begala says: 

“For eight years under the GOP, economic policy gave CEOs such as Ken Lewis the gold mine, while giving hard-working, middle-class Americans…the shaft. President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress were elected to change that, and protecting employees from corporate abuses is part of the change we need. That’s what the Employee Free Choice Act will do.” 

In the Bangor Daily News, two economics professors—University of Southern Maine’s Michael Hillard and Bowdoin College’s David Vail—point to the history behind the nation’s economic crisis and explain why it’s critical that Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act. 

For Maine as for the U.S., there are economic as well as moral justifications for restoring workers’ rights. Unionization rates, excluding government and agriculture, have plummeted from a peak of 39 percent to just 7 percent. Unionization allowed previous generations of workers to share equitably in their productivity and to realize economic security. The current generation of working people has created enormous wealth but not shared in the prosperity. The higher unionization rates that follow from fair labor laws would go a long way to remedy this inequity. 

In a letter to the North Little Rock Times, Arkansas state Rep. Richard Carroll adds his name to the list of elected officials who support the Employee Free Choice Act. 

As a member of the state Legislature, I have seen first-hand the devastating effects of poverty-level wages on my constituents and the community at large. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would ensure that workers have the livable wages guaranteed by a union contract. In addition, union workers are 52 percent more likely to have health care benefits and three times more likely to have pensions. When workers bargain, the benefits go to everyone in our economy, not just the CEOs at the top.

Author and radio commentator Jim Hightower paid a visit to Colorado this week where he met with members of Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 7 as part of an Employee Free Choice Act mobilization campaign.

Hightower said the freedom to form unions and bargain is crucial to a healthy and fair economy.

Unions are the escalator to the middle class. Unions are the key to America’s productivity. Unions are a real hope for real change—fairness, justice, opportunity.

Hightower told CWA members they need to get involved and get active if the Employee Free Choice Act is to become law:

Now, we’ve put the Employee Free Choice Act on the table…are we going to give working people a chance again? This is when you have got to stand up.

Check out video of Hightower’s speech here.

Barbara Easterling

Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara Easterling lays out the case for reform of Medicare, which turned 44 this week, in this cross-post from the Huffiington Post. 

As we honor Medicare’s success—it has reduced senior poverty by two-thirds—it is also an opportunity for retirees to become more aware of what is at stake for them in health care reform.

The Alliance for Retired Americans, a progressive grassroots advocacy organization, held 30 events around the country to mark Medicare’s birthday and advance a pro-retiree agenda for this year’s health care debate.

 What can the health care bill do to help current and future retirees? Here are a few ideas:

• Help Early Retirees. More than 5 million Americans ages 55-64 do not have health insurance. People in this age group should be able to buy in to Medicare so they can see a doctor more often, especially for preventive care.
• Close the Donut Hole. The “donut hole” coverage gap in Medicare Part D means that each year about one in four seniors will spend several months paying full price for their prescriptions while still having to pay their premiums.

• Make Long-Term Care Affordable. We must make sure the health care bill includes the CLASS Act by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.). It would create an insurance program to help middle-class families with the cost of long-term care.
• Help Continue Retiree Benefits. If we eliminate the tax benefit for employers who provide insurance, retiree health care could become yet another broken promise. Many of us sacrificed wage increases over the years in exchange for these benefits.
• Hold the Insurance Companies Accountable. A “public plan” option would put pressure on the private insurance companies to keep their premiums and business practices in check. If they are truly doing the best they can, why should they be worried about a little healthy competition?

We are beginning to see misleading and divisive attempts to scare seniors. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) recently took to the House floor to declare that the House Democrats’ health bill “essentially said to America’s seniors: Drop dead.”

 It’s time for Washington to move beyond these Karl Rove-style tactics of divide-and-conquer.

Not only do retirees have a lot at stake in the health care debate, but we also worry about our children and grandchildren in these difficult times. Working together, we can create a health care reform plan that helps Americans of all ages.

This might come as a shock to the 44 million Americans who receive their health care coverage through Medicare, but according to two Republican House members, Medicare has “never done anything to make people more healthy,” and it has had the biggest “negative effect” on health care than anything else in the past 44 years.

Step back from Medicare’s 44th birthday cake (click here for more on the program’s four-decades-plus success) and let that gibberish from two of the charter members of the “let’s-kill-health care reform” caucus sink in. (While we’re doing that, a tip of the hat to Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) for exposing this nonsense).

You can draw two conclusions. First, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.) are just plain out of touch with reality.

Second, these attacks on Medicare represent a ramping up of Republican attacks on health care reform—a public plan option in a particular. Although it’s hard to believe it could get much shriller.

After all, Medicare is a public health plan and if they can paint the nation’s most successful public health insurance initiative as a dangerous failure, perhaps they can sow enough fear to turn the public against reform efforts that includes government involvement.

On second thought, if they really think they can turn around the 84 percent of the respondents in a recent poll that rated Medicare good to excellent or the 72 percent who told a CBS/New York Times poll they would support a public plan option if it were “similar to Medicare,” maybe they are a little delusional.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker (center) cuts a ribbon to open a new picnic pavilion at the Auberle Center. She is joined by (from left) Allegheny County Labor Council President Jack Shea; Jack Brooks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Pennsylvania Council of Carpenters; Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George; Joe Delale, AFL-CIO community services liaison; Judge David Wecht; the Rev. Jack O’Malley; and Auberle CEO John Lydon.

Union members care about their communities, and one of the biggest ways they show it is through the Community Services Network, which provides services and assistance to those in need. Last week, the Pennsylvania union movement showed its heart when members dedicated a new union-built picnic pavilion at the Auberle Center, a faith-based agency dedicated to helping abused, neglected and troubled children and families.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker was on hand to dedicate the pavilion, constructed free-of-charge by members and apprentices of the Carpenters union. Some of the youth at the center helped build the pavilion and two have asked to join the Carpenter’s apprenticeship program, says Joe Delale, community services liaison for the Allegheny County (Pa.) Labor Council.   

Holt Baker praised the union members’ generosity:

I am reminded of a quote from Bobby Kennedy who said:

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

It is in small acts that greatness is truly borne, and the work you have done here today reflects that greatness.

The pavilion was dedicated during the center’s annual “Festival of Fun,” which the unions help sponsor each year. This is the third year the unions have helped celebrate the festival. In 2007, the first year the unions joined the Auberle festival, Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President William George told the Catholic Reporter newspaper the festival reflects the union movement’s initiative to help communities:

It’s not about PR or anybody putting a feather in their hat. It’s really from the heart.

The festival took place in conjunction with the 50th annual Pennsylvania AFL-CIO Community Services Institute. Through the AFL-CIO Community Services Network, union members help serve our communities and our brothers and sisters struggling from the effects of natural disasters, financial hardship, illness or unemployment. Many AFL-CIO central labor councils include staff members who assist local union members and others in need connect with local sources of help.

Union participants all wore T-shirts, donated by the Laborers, that read in part, “Children and Unions Are Our Future.” Other unions sponsored booths and fun events for the children, including United Steelworkers (USW) Local 3657, Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 29, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 13500, Carpenters/Millman Local 1160 and Food and Commercial Workers Local 23.

AFSCME District 13 donated backpacks for the children.

The western Pennsylvania union members also delivered 800 pounds of donated food to a local food bank the same day as the festival.

California’s master plan for higher education, the product of an era of seemingly limitless opportunity, was nearly 30 years old when Nicolette Lafranchi was born in 1988. By the time she turned 20 last year, the plan was working well for her, just as…

California’s master plan for higher education, the product of an era of seemingly limitless opportunity, was nearly 30 years old when Nicolette Lafranchi was born in 1988. By the time she turned 20 last year, the plan was working well for her, just as…

Two studies by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) find that the House health care reform bill (H.R. 3200) would pay dividends for small businesses and other groups, and costs incurred by the federal government would help reduce total health spending over time.

“Health Care Reform—Big Benefits for Small Business” explains the many ways in which small businesses will benefit from health care reforms. Only 35 percent of businesses employing fewer than 10 workers offer health insurance, and those that do usually pass on a higher share of the cost to workers than do larger businesses, the report says. 

A key problem is that small businesses typically pay more for health insurance because of the way policies are sold. Reforms that would create more competition among insurers and reduce their administrative costs “would significantly reduce the cost small businesses incur providing health insurance,” EPI said.

The other study, “Seeing the Big Picture in Health Reform and Cost Containment,” shows why a federal government investment in health care reform could produce big savings in total costs over time and argues that cost analyses focusing strictly on the cost of health reform to the federal government are misguided

Fundamental health reform is worth doing even if it does not pay off in big federal budget savings. The reason is simple: Health care is an area where the more costs are loaded up on the federal government, the more efficiently care tends to be delivered overall.

That helps reduce total health spending over time, spending that is currently rising faster than gross domestic product, according to EPI.

Martin J. Bennett

In a great new Point of View guest column for the AFL-CIO, Martin Bennett, a history instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College and a member of the North Bay Labor Council executive board, looks at the state of young workers in America and says that the Employee Free Choice Act is necessary to ensure a secure economic future for the rising generation. (Also, watch for the results of our national survey on young workers—their economic well-being, work life, aspirations and concerns—prior to Labor Day.)

Bennett notes that young workers are particularly vulnerable to the economic crisis:

• Median annual earnings for young men (25-34) with a high school education declined by 29 percent between 1975 and 2005, and decreased by 10 percent for young women who are high school graduates. The drop of earnings was even steeper for young African American and Latino workers with only a high school education.
• Median earnings for young men with a bachelor’s degree decreased 2 percent between 1975 and 2005, while the earnings for college-educated women increased slightly by 10 percent.
• One in three young workers between the ages of 18 and 34 do not have health insurance—the highest rate by far for all age groups.

Why is this, Bennett asks? It has a lot to do with the fact that young workers are increasingly deprived of the freedom to bargain for a better life. Bennett notes that too few young workers have the chance to join a union even though many would like to, and when they do, they get a better chance at economic success:

In 1955, 37 percent of private-sector workers were union members, but in 2007, only 12 percent of all workers belonged to a union. Fewer than 5 percent of young workers are union members today.

Polling data suggests young workers strongly support unions. Young workers are disproportionately clustered in nonunion, low-wage service-sector industries such as hotels, restaurants, retail and security services. The benefits of union membership for young workers are substantial.

A Center for Economic and Policy Research report indicates that young workers (between 18-29) who are union members earn 12.4 percent more—or about $1.75 per hour—compared with non-union workers, and that 68 percent of young union workers receive health benefits, compared with 38 percent for non-union workers.

You can read the column here.