Green Justice Coalition Report Calls for Mass. Green Jobs to Be Good Jobs

BOSTON/State House - Over 75 people gathered in State House Room 437 on Tuesday for a press conference called by the Green Justice Coalition - the Massachusetts affiliate of the Apollo Alliance - to announce the release of a new report, "An Industry at the Crossroads: Energy Efficiency Employment in Massachusetts." According to its mission statement, the Apollo Alliance is a "coalition of labor, business, environmental, and community leaders working to catalyze a clean energy revolution that will put millions of Americans to work in a new generation of high-quality, green-collar jobs." The Green Justice Coalition is a similar grouping on the state level and is spearheaded by Boston-based Community Labor United.

Photos by Jason Pramas.

The event aimed to start a public push in the Commonwealth to make sure that energy efficiency retrofitting jobs created using $1.4 billion earmarked from the proceeds of the auction of carbon emissions allowances by Northeast-based utility companies through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initative over the next 3 years - as mandated by the state's Green Communities Act of 2008 - are high-road jobs with good wages and benefits.

The Green Justice Coalition report calls for paying the 6000 construction workers doing the retrofit work living wages of $18/hour plus $4/hour for beneftis - in addition to a number of other proposed innovations.

Kalila Barnett, Executive Director of Alternatives for Community and Environment - a member-organization of the Green Justice Coalition - explained, "A person living in a community of color is now 39 times more likely to live in one of the 30 most environmentally burdened communities in this state. High minority communities average 23 times more hazardous waste sites per square mile than low minority communities. ACE's home base neighborhood, Roxbury, is home to about 60,000 people - where 52 percent of our residents are African-American and about 22 percent Latino. More than 30 percent of those people are living below the federal poverty line. The unemployment rate in our home neighborhood Roxbury is about 60 percent more than the city's average.

"This state is responding vigorously to climate change. The Global Warming Solutions Act, the Green Communities Act, but our communities are also in the midst of an economic crisis and frankly an environmental crisis that we have been facing for decades. Bold leadership can solve all of these problems at once. Righteous bold leadership that has the audacity to say that we will not address this crisis on the backs of those that been the most environmentally and economically overburdened.

"We can help alleviate our collective burden by putting the welfare of those that struggle the most first - and each of us have a role to play. The Green Justice Coalition, the Massachusetts Apollo Alliance have released this report to ensure that as we begin to grow this industry in this state that we do not make the mistake of trying to reduce our carbon footprints with the same system that got us into this problem in the first place. There is no time for that.

"Green Justice means that we have to combine dozens of individual retrofit jobs to create larger bundled contracts that allow responsible contractors to successfully bid, raise wages, and benefit levels. In a few weeks, the Green Justice Coalition will start demonstrating this new model with a weatherization pilot in Chinatown - followed by community mobilization projects and pilots in other Massachusetts cities.

"Green Justice means that we have to incorporate responsible employer requirements to utility and city-scale retrofit programs that mandate compliance with workplace laws, fair wages and benefits, proper classification of workers, local hiring, comprehensive safety and health plans, and connections to training. A low wage job is not better than no job."

The Green Justice Coalition fielded several other speakers at the event including Rich Rogers of the Greater Boston Labor Council, Dr. Andrew Sum of Northeastern University, Ron Ruggiero of the Apollo Alliance, and a member of the Alliance to Develop Power in Springfield, MA.

A Boston-focused community meeting was held at City Hall immediately after the State House event. There Barnett, Sum and Ruggiero spoke a second time to a crowd of about 50 people - joined by Mark Liu of the Chinese Progressive Association, and City Councilors Chuck Turner and John Connolly. City Council president Michael Ross spoke from the floor at the conclusion of the event.