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Middle Class Task Force Philadelphia, PA February 26, 2009

Middle Class Task Force Philadelphia, PA February 26, 2009. Leo W. Gerard International President, USW . USW: History of Environmental Activism.

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Middle Class Task Force Philadelphia, PA February 26, 2009

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  1. Middle Class Task Force Philadelphia, PA February 26, 2009 Leo W. Gerard International President, USW

  2. USW: History of Environmental Activism • “Our Children’s World,” a 1990 USW report that exposed the false choice between good jobs and environmental protections in North America and made the case that global warming is the single most important environmental issue of our lifetime. • “Securing Our Children’s World,” the 2006 follow-up that outlined key environmental challenges and our strategies for success and asserting that the future of manufacturing will belong to those nations that solve the problems of the world’s growing shortage of fossil fuels through energy-efficient technologies and building and process redesigns.

  3. USW: History of Environmental Activism USW role in shaping key environmental/energy policies: • Clean Air Act • Toxics Right to Know • Comprehensive climate policy • Illegal Logging • Renewable Energy Standard (RES) • Chemical Safety and Security • Renewables tax credits • Green Jobs Act • Raising labor and environmental standards in trade agreements

  4. USW: Finding Solutions in Green Jobs • “Green jobs” are “work in agriculture, industry, services and administration that contributes to preserving or restoring the quality of the environment … • They help to cut the consumption of energy, raw materials and water through high-efficiency strategies, to de-carbonize the economy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and to minimize or avoid altogether all forms of waste and pollution, to protect and restore ecosystems and biodiversity.” -United Nations Environment Programme

  5. USW: Green Jobs as a Strategy for Economic Recovery • Revitalize existing industries in the United States, including manufacturing, by increasing demand for U.S.-made products. • Create good, middle class jobs in the U.S. • Buy America, a provision included in the stimulus, encourages the domestic sourcing of the materials used in building and infrastructure improvements. • Goal: Building an American Green Economy Supply Chain that ensures green manufacturing is invented in, built in, grows and stays in and rebuilds America. Troy Galloway works as an operator at the Edensberg, PA Gamesa plant.

  6. USW and Partners: Green Jobs in Practice • Spanish wind-turbine company Gamesa set up U.S. operations in PA after the state passed a renewable energy standard — bringing more than 1,100 union jobs to the state. • Steel company ArcelorMittal put hundreds of Indiana steelworkers back to work after steel demand rose with development of wind industry. • Cobasys, an American manufacturer of hybrid car batteries in Springboro, Ohio, is employing almost 200 IUE-CWA workers to build batteries for America's next generation vehicles.

  7. USW: Working Through Our Alliances • Goal: Growing the emerging green economy and the jobs associated with it . • A “green job” is a blue-collar job that serves a “green” purpose. • Following the first 2008 Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference in Pittsburgh, the 2009 Conference saw 2,700 business, labor and environmental advocates in Washington, D.C. • Hundreds to Capitol Hill to advocate green jobs. • Thousands to the Green Jobs Expo to learn about careers and academic programs in green fields. • Significant field education and mobilization around clean-energy policies throughout the United States by BGA and Apollo • BGA and Apollo Alliance played important roles throughout the Obama Campaign

  8. USW: Next Generation Ideas National Green Jobs Score Card: • National approach to defining and providing benchmarks to ensure the number and quality of green jobs, as well as their contribution to protecting the environment, are achieved with green investments, like that of the stimulus. • This initiative compliments the Obama administration’s bold and innovative efforts to ensure full transparent funding accountability with an insistence on “shovel-ready jobs” as part of the stimulus.

  9. National Green Jobs Scorecard

  10. Middle Class Task Force Philadelphia, PA February 26, 2009 Leo W. Gerard International President, USW

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