Politicians promise more work for low-wage earners in the green sector

Democratic presidential candidates have been stumping for "green collar jobs," contending that workers need federally-funded training to help build the new energy economy and fill the avalanche of work coming to the burgeoning domestic clean-tech and alternative energy sectors.

Attention to green jobs is a relatively new thing in congress and on the campaign trail only recently. A search of the nation's major newspapers on the site newslibrary.com shows 2007 as the year the phrase "green collar jobs" came into popular use. Last year, the number of stories mentioning these jobs jumped to 317. In just the first month of 2008, the number of stories hit 114.

The concept has crept into the political lexicon over the past four years while lawmakers have pushed a trifecta of energy-related causes: a boost in domestic renewable energy production, U.S. "energy independence," and reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

To counter claims that a greater U.S. reliance on renewable energy will result in higher energy costs for consumers, environmental and national security lobbying groups make the case that alternative energy policies would also mean a hiring boom for domestic businesses with green missions.

The Apollo Alliance -- referencing the Apollo space program -- launched in 2004 was one of the early groups to make a connection between alternative energy and job creation.

According to this coalition of business, labor, and environmental groups, if the federal government invested $30 billion in clean energy annually over ten years, the result would be 3 million new clean energy jobs.

The 2008 election has brought a new focus to these jobs with a slight twist. Democratic presidential contenders have begun linking the greening of the economy with efforts to end poverty and help low-wage earners get a leg up via government-sponsored training.

Hillary Clinton has a plan to "catalyze" the green building industry, boost biofuels production, and transform the carbon-based economy "into an efficient green economy, creating at least 5 million jobs from clean energy over the next decade." Barack Obama promises to create an "energy-focused Green Jobs Corps to connect disconnected and disadvantaged youth with job skills for a high-growth industry."

Van Jones, a civil rights lawyer and founder of Green for All, has helped Democrats link the needs of low-wage and low-skilled laborers with green jobs. The group is lobbying Congress for funds to train 250,000 urban workers for skilled laborer positions in green sectors.

Green collar jobs speak to a multitude of largely Democratic interest groups. The country's largest labor unions have begun to look to greener pastures and want a stake in the new green jobs they envision steaming into the nation's manufacturing centers and cities with green building initiatives.

"Four years ago the Industrial Union Council helped form the Apollo Alliance. It came at a time when we were losing 3 million manufacturing jobs," Robert Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, said in a recent speech. "We and the entire AFL-CIO signed on," Baugh said.

Green is really blue

There is plenty of enthusiasm about the prospects of work in green industries, though everyone seems to have their own optimistic ideas about the types of work that will arise. Baugh sees green jobs stemming from energy efficiency and conservation campaigns, green building and construction retrofits, automotive parts development, and increased and improved mass transit. Unions envision high-paying union jobs in all these areas.

A 2007 study funded by the City of Berkeley Office of Energy and Sustainable Development defined green collar jobs as "blue collar jobs in green businesses - that is, manual labor jobs in businesses whose products and services directly improve environmental quality." The pool of applicants for these jobs would include "youth and adults who do not have a high school degree, have been out of the labor market for a long time, were formally incarcerated, have limited education and/or labor market skills," the report said."

The Berkeley report identified 22 areas in the economy that could provide green collar jobs ranging from bicycle repair and delivery services and housecleaning with nontoxic cleaning agents to park maintenance and tree cutting. These jobs may involve working for a company with an environmental ethos but many of these positions don't sound far removed from the positions some laborers currently hold.

What about jobs developing new technology for solar and wind turbine manufacturers, building biofuels plants, operating wastewater plants, and solving the cellulosic ethanol riddle? These jobs -- the ones requiring a technology background and entrepreneurial and management skills -- will be filled by white-collar workers with more education, specifically in the areas of math, science, technology, and business.

The American Solar Energy Society released a report in November 2007 touting the growth potential of the renewable energy and energy efficiency technology sectors, saying by 2030 "there could be more than 40 million Americans employed in these industries--about one in every four working Americans," up from more than 8 million in 2006.

But largely left unreported was the other significant finding of the study. Using Ohio as a case study the report found that in 2006 the renewable energy industry created more than 6,600 jobs. "As was true nationwide, these jobs were disproportionately for scientific, technical, professional, and skilled workers."

A 2004 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Entrepreneurs found that venture capital investment in clean-tech startups could "seed the creation of 52,000 to 114,000 high-quality jobs" in California by 2010, adding "most of these jobs would be high-paying, skilled positions."

Blurring the reality

What then are lawmakers and politicians promising? They are promising new domestic jobs thanks to a rapidly growing sector. Fair enough, there could be more factory jobs in U.S. manufacturing solar panels and at recycling plants. But with the use of a catchy new phrase politicians are blurring the reality of the upside in this new market for most unskilled workers, regardless of the government training they may be able to receive.

There is no doubt that the renewable energy and green tech sectors are experiencing rapid growth and that investment dollars are flowing to companies in this space. California's air pollution control industry, for example, has grown from a $450 million industry employing 3,000 workers in 1970 to a $6.2 billion industry employing 32,000 workers today.

The growth of these industries and the markets they feed into will create a need for "support services" in the legal, marketing, real estate, and accounting fields, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The construction and building trades could also yield handsome payouts to union workers that attain the skills necessary to work with new energy efficient materials and outfit renewable energy systems on buildings.

But low-wage earners and unskilled laborers deserve some honest clarity about how much additional green they can expect to receive in their paychecks when they take those so-called green collar jobs with the lowest barriers to entry. Many of these positions are unlikely to afford them a bridge to high-paying, skilled work. Cleaning a house or hotel room with chemical free products is still working in the hospitality sector.

The Washington, DC-based Economic Partnership has decided to find out just how much demand there is for green collar jobs and how much these positions will pay local workers. More cities and states need to be asking the same question to properly inform workers about the green job market if politicians won't.