Blue Green Alliance: Unions' Green Job Focus

by the Environmentalist Staff

The Blue Green Alliance, a partnership between the United Steel Workers and The Sierra Club, has just completed a two day conference in Pittsburg, PA that focused on the opportunity presented by the creation of 'green jobs':

[The Green Jobs Conference] will provide a platform for the best thinking about economic development and environmental solutions. The conference will launch a national discussion about how we can solve global warming, end American dependence on foreign oil and transition from our overuse of toxic chemicals.

Photo: Vermont wind turbine (c. 1941) built to provide alternative power during WWII

The alliance is also working with the Renewable Energy Policy Project to document the potential for thousands of new jobs based on a new renewable energy standard for such projects as solar panel and wind turbine manufacture.

Launched in 2006, the Blue Green Alliance is a strategic initiative led by the United Steelworkers and Sierra Club and including many other "blue" (read: blue collar/labor) and "green" (read: environmental) partners. The alliance focuses on three key issues:

• Global Warming and Clean Energy;
• Fair Trade; and
• Reducing Toxics.

Nearly 800 government officials, environmentalists and corporate executives met at the Pittsburg Blue Green Jobs conference, where the discussion focused on the potential for 850,000 new U.S. renewable energy jobs at existing U.S. companies.

Photo: Solar House built by MIT (c. 1939)

The conference speakers included United Steelworkers President Leo Gerard; Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope; US Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Gerry Hudson of the Service Employees International Union, Katrina Landis of BP Alternative Energy, John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, and Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO.

More information is available here.

LABELS: AFL-CIO, BUSINESS, ENVIRONMENT, GLOBAL WARMING, SIERRA CLUB, UNION, UNITED STEEL WORKERS