The Blue-Green Alliance, a national effort headed by the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club, wants to flex some organizing muscle in Ohio to create thousands of “green collar” jobs here.
BGA plans to make renewable energy the centerpiece of a campaign to “reindustrializing Cleveland,” says Harriet Applegate, head of the Northshore Federation of Labor (the old AFL-CIO). “Building and maintaining a wind farm on Lake Erie would lead to thousands of high paying union jobs. It would be like a WPA (Works Progress Administration) for Cleveland.”
Their report, “Ohio’s Road to Energy Independence” finds a $3.6 billion investment by the state will create 22,922 jobs in wind, solar, geothermal and biomass industries. Supported by both Senator Sherrod Brown and Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, it details Cuyahoga County with a $415 million investment—mostly to wind and solar component parts manufacturing—yielding 2,655 green collar jobs.
UAW is working with its members to support policies such as an Ohio Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) with a clear set of benchmarks—which is currently stalled in the House—to kick start the green economy.
Besides twenty six other states passing an RPS before Ohio, the next largest obstacle to a green economy is the lack of trained workers to meet the demand. Plenty of Northeast Ohio companies produce steel, bend it into shape and forge special parts. But, both union and non-union shops don’t have enough trained workers for making wind turbines (Building the columns for wind turbines takes an estimated 40 tons of steel and the head units need an estimated 90 tons of steel).
Even if Cleveland were ready to order from existing manufacturers six wind turbines to place out on Lake Erie today, it would still have to wait two years for them to arrive. BGA wants to address this lag time by forming a Green jobs task force in Cuyahoga County similar to its burgeoning effort in Hamilton County. The task force will assess the region’s manufacturing infrastructure to determine what we have in the context of building wind and solar equipment and who can meet the need.
At BGA’s Cleveland meeting yesterday (Feb. 5), it was suggested by Windustrious creator Sarah Taylor that BGA coordinate its inventory effort with one underway between local manufacturing association WIRE-Net and the state’s Department of Development.
BGA will be working in 2008 to build the capacity for Ohio to create jobs in the clean energy sector.
“We have to have good paying (manufacturing) jobs to protect the environment,” says Susan Knight, BGA field coordinator in Ohio. Knight, who worked with Sierra Club, is staffed with George Calko at UAW to coordinate Blue-Green efforts with local labor and environmental leaders. They expect their organizing staff to grow to meet the yet-to-be-determined campaign in Northeast Ohio in the coming months.
To set a Blue-Green agenda, BGA is hosting steering committee meetings at the offices of Northshore Federation of Labor. If you would like to be involved in building the Blue-Green Alliance in Northeast Ohio, contact Susan Knight or post a comment with your information and ideas here.
The component breakdown used to determine the data in these findings is in the complete report here.
