Green Jobs Organizers Collide with Neoliberalism's War
& Austerity Plans

By Carl Davidson Beaver County Blue February 14, 2011

http://beavercountyblue.org/2011/02/14/green-jobs-frustration-with-neoliberals-over-industrial-policy/

Nearly 2000 people gathered at the Marriott Wardman
Park Hotel over three bitterly cold days in Washington,
DC Feb 8-10 for the 4th Annual `Good Job, Green Jobs'
conference. The attendees were a vibrant mixture of
seasoned trade union organizers, representatives of
government agencies and young environmental activists
waging a variety of battles around climate change and
the green economy.

"We want everyone to work at a green job in a green and
clean economy," declared David Foster, executive
director of the sponsor, the Blue-Green Alliance,
opening the first plenary. "But what stands in our
way?" The answer was a new Congress stalemated by
neoliberal resurgence centered in a bloc of the GOP and
the far right. "It's not going to be easy. We're going
to have to fight for it the old-fashioned way, from the
bottom up, brick by brick, and floor by floor."

The Blue-Green Alliance today is a coalition of
hundreds of environmental groups, trade unions, and
green business enterprises. It was founded less than
five years ago, largely by the efforts of Carl Pope of
the Sierra Club, one of the largest U.S. environmental
nonprofits, and Leo Gerard, international president of
the United Steel Workers, one of the country's largest
industrial unions.

"We've come a long way," said USW's Leo Gerard, the
next speaker up. "Today we have dozens of affiliated
sponsors and members with a combined membership of 14.5
million. Those fighting harder against us are going to
meet some serious resistance." The participants at the
conference represented more than 700 organizations and
came from 48 of the 50 states.

Still, attendance was down from the past two years. The
solid core of trade unionists and environmental youth
were present, but wider allies like the Hip-Hop
community mobilized by Green For All were absent or
only had small representation.

Gerard went on to explain the core idea of the
alliance. The old notion that one had to chose between
job growth and environmental protection was dead wrong.
"Rather than `either-or' we've come to see that's it's
`both or neither.' We will have both good green jobs in
a green and clean economy, or we will have neither.
That's what it boils down to."

"I also want to raise a new idea," Gerard continued.
"Sustainable development is something we hear a lot.
But what about `restorative development'? It's not
enough simply to build sustainable new things, we have
to repair and recover the damage we've done with the
old ones. He went on to describe the `Smart Grid,' the
need to deliver clean electric power to the same high
standards as the internet and telecommunications,
retrofitting the old grids in the process. "In the
process, we create an abundance of new high-skilled
green jobs that pay for themselves by saving energy and
cleaning the environment at the same time."

Labor Opposed to Austerity Solutions

Along with other labor leaders, Gerard spoke several
times throughout the conference, often on panels with
Obama's cabinet officials. Even though they greeted
each other warmly, there was a noticeable distancing
from officialdom on the part of labor. However valuable
any proposals made in Congress, the labor officials
were astute enough to know that an anti-deficit
`austerity' was still the watchword of the period, and
any gains would have to be fought for at the grassroots
and in the streets.

Gerard symbolized the problem when he introduced Lisa
Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency,
and part of Obama's cabinet. Noting that it was her
birthday, he presented her not only with a card from
the BGA, but also a huge pair of boxing gloves as a
gift `for going into the battles ahead of us.'

Jackson's speech was an effort to turn the tables on
the rightwing effort to gut or neuter what they termed
"the job killing EPA." "When people turn of the water
to cook their oatmeal or take a shower," she explained,
"they don't want to worry whether toxic wastes or
sewage sludge is going to come out of the faucet. Our
regulations enhance markets and create economic
benefits, with a $2 savings for every dollar invested."
Regulations in health and safety, in the end, created
far more jobs than they eliminated by creating
confidence in products, safety for workers, and
stability for markets in clean-up equipment.

"Winning the future also means winning the race for
innovation," explained Jackson... `The history of
environmental protection has been a history of
innovation. Innovation made everything we do cleaner,
healthier and more efficient - and led to the creation
of good jobs. The catalytic converters that are
manufactured to reduce toxic air pollution from our
cars, the invention of more effective water treatment
mechanisms to free our drinking water of lead, or smoke
stack scrubbers that are installed to keep sulfuric
acid pollution out of the air we breathe mean new
orders for American companies and jobs for American
workers."

All the speakers from the administration hammered away
on the `win the future' theme from President Obama's
State of the Union speech--likewise with the phrases
about `out-innovating' and `out-performing' against all
contenders in every critical sector of the economy. But
given the relation of forces in Congress and even his
own Cabinet, and the slashing of programs that the
deficit-cutters had already launched, the participants
tended to take it all with a grain of salt.

Frustration with Resistance at the Top

If one key word popped up in nearly every workshop, it
was `frustration.' The participants, after all, had
been working steadily for nearly four years
researching, designing and organizing for solutions to
a range of critical problems-jobs, clean energy, toxic
waste, youth entrepreneurship and so on. The first two
conferences were full of hope and energy, especially
with Obama's victory and the appointment of Van Jones
to head up green jobs. The third year was marked by
going deeper into practical solutions, and growing
concern about the political climate.

But now, armed with an array of practical programs, the
young people especially seemed to conclude that they
were banging their heads against a brick wall created
by Blue Dogs, neoliberals and the far right. One option
was discussed repeatedly: stop wasting too much time in
DC and return to the base. Build organization at the
county and state level, and try to win some local
victories, even if done piecemeal, and gather more
strength.

A case in point was an early workshop on `Building a
Movement to Change America: Strategies to Forge Ahead
to Create Good, Green Jobs.' It asked participants to
step back and assess their alliances, their adversaries
and their tactics. It's worth examining in some detail
to see the overall problems facing the conference.

"We took a beating in the 2010 elections," said Cathy
Duvall of the Sierra Club, opening up the subject. "Our
campaign for a comprehensive climate change bill with a
cap on carbon got turned around into the `job killing
energy tax.' We learned that we simply don't yet have
the power to do what we want to do."

Duvall's answer was to go back to localities, and focus
on setting standards and regulating markets "in favor
of Main Street over Wall Street." She summed up with
three points: 1) the need for industrial policy with
high domestic content, 2) the need for broader
coalitions with people who don't always agree, and 3)
to mount head-on challenges to the oil-military
complexes preventing productive investment. "But most
of all, we need new coalitions at the local base."

Ron Collins, a vice president of the Communications
Workers of America, picked up where Duvall left off.
"We have to do things differently," he said, "or we
have to turn off the lights." The `One Nation' rally in
October, he continued, was a good start, but not much
has happened at the local or state level. "`We need to
be building `One Maryland' or `One Virginia' or `One
Baltimore.' We need a deeper unity at the base, or the
right is going to take us out, one by one. As for some
of our fair-weather friends, we have to say, `If you're
not with us on the issues, then we're not with you',
and then act on it."

In this context, the issue of immigrant rights was
rising as a difficult wedge issue, and was taken up by
Ali Noorani of the Immigration Forum. "People don't
like to move from their home countries lightly," he
said, "but only do so for compelling reasons of
survival." Noorani gave the example of U.S.
agribusiness dumping corn in Mexico at prices below its
cost of production, thereby bankrupting Mexican farmers
and driving them to border town factories. When those
factories closed, many had little choice but to move
across the border. "Look at every player in this
drama," he continued. "There is only one beneficiary,
the crooked employer. We need to stop pointing fingers
in the wrong directions, and start finding solutions.
Our method in the past has been to mobilize our base,
persuade the middle and isolate the opposition. If we
can combine that with a view that the pie can grow
bigger, then we can all win."

Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition on Black
Civic Participation closed up the panel. "I think we
have to be mad and strategic at the same time," she
declared. She went on to observe some lessons from the
Tea Party, nothing that while they had considerable
differences, they were able to come together to fight.
"But what did we do after the `One Nation' rally? Too
many of us just went back to our separate silos."

Need for `Street Heat' from the Bottom Up

In the discussion, one participant offered a critical
point from the floor: "For our strategy to work, we
need some cracks at the top, but with Obama's
`bipartisan' center-right bloc, all the cracks have
closed up, at least for now. It seems we need more
organized strength from the bottom up, more street heat
to break things open again." "Exactly," said Collins
from CWA. `We need to be drawing some lessons from the
people in Egypt.

There was a lot of discussion about the need to build
new alliances.  This was not just a search for common
ground.  Rather it was recognition of the necessity for
respecting the traditions, the work, and the sacrifice
of potential allies in a situation in which conditions,
for them, are changing.

A good example is the attitude expressed toward coal
and miners.  "We have to recognize that without coal
miners we would not have the standard of living that we
have, the technology that we have, that makes it
possible to talk about a sustainable economy with good
jobs and a rising quality of life," said one workshop
speaker.  "These men and women, the coal miners and
their communities, should be our heroes.  They are not
our enemies." There were also warnings to stay away
from language that stimulates a fear reaction about
what those organizers are trying to win.  Examples from
coal: solar power and wind that are presented as if
they will replace the jobs of miners, with not enough
attention given to conversion and re-employment.

Other workshops over the two-day period covered a wide
range. Topics included wind manufacturing
opportunities, workforce training for solar industries,
women in the green economy, sustainable agribusiness,
inner city school reform, protecting workers and their
families from toxics, high speed rail, and fighting
rightwing science-deniers in elections, among many
others.

One Tuesday afternoon workshop, entitled `Building the
Wind Energy Supply Chain: Moving from Rhetoric to
Reality,' brought together a number of issues-job
creation, domestic productive capacity, and industrial
policy. Wind energy as a vital part of a clean energy
economy was taken as a given. The key question was
whether it would lead to new manufacturing and green
jobs in the U.S., since the more mature technologies
and factories had been developed in Spain, the
Netherlands and China.

Dillep Thatte of the Manufacturing Extension
Partnership, a federal agency, was optimistic.
"Anything you need for wind energy can be competitively
obtained domestically; the problem is simply in making
the connections and relationships." He was particularly
strong on smaller businesses with less than 500
workers: "These are the innovators creating new jobs
today."

Rob Witherell of the United Steel Workers was
skeptical. "High speed rail is in the news today; Obama
wants to spend some major money on it. But how many
plants in the country right now can actually build
high-speed train cars? Only a handful. Can we do it?
The answer is, `Yes, but.' It will take some time and
investment to get domestic firms up and running."
Helping to form supply chains of small component
manufacturers, however, was something the USW could do
fairly easily, he added, since the union was connected
with some 6000 firms.

As for the quality of production, Dee Holdy of the
Global Wind Network explained how her group's task was
to sort out who could effectively be in or out of
global competition. "We take a lot of surveys and
analyze a lot of reports, but some of it is done by
walking around production facilities to find any duct
tape or C-clamps holding equipment together."

Taking on the Neoliberal Alliance with the Far Right

Another following workshop narrowed the target on the
far right. Entitled `Confronting Science Deniers:
Lessons from Minnesota's Sixth District,' it featured
Tarryl Clark, the former assistant majority leader on
the Minnesota State Senate. Clark had run and lost
against Tea Party firebrand Michele Bachman, who got 52
percent of the vote.

"Michele Bachman was perhaps the only member of
Congress to stick up for BP during the Gulf Oil spill
crisis," Clark started off, "but she's more widely
known for calling on people to become `armed and
dangerous' against legislators working for Cap and
Trade and Climate Change laws." She explained that the
race became one of the most expensive in the state's
history, with Bachman raising over $13 million, largely
from wealthy rightists, while she raised some $5
million in smaller contributions and from labor unions.

"We did well in televised debates," Clack continued,
"but there was no way we could match her massive direct
mail operation, which were filled with falsehoods. They
were not above absolutely fabricating information while
being very good at playing the victim." One example of
a bold headline from a Tea Party website: `Tarryl
Clark.Backed by Foreign Contributors Who Murder Irish-
American Korean War Veterans in U.S. Healthcare
Facilities!"

Despite the lies and wackiness, Clark explained that
despite her crafted persona of being slightly unhinged,
"Bachman is very smart; she knows exactly what she's
doing, and she knows that most of her claims are
misleading at best. The truth simply doesn't matter to
her; it's the results that count." Clark concluded that
the only alternative was to keep organizing and keep
fighting, for "otherwise the Darth Vader side wins."

The final plenary on Wednesday morning focused on green
transportation. The session was opened by AFL-CIO vice
president Arlene Holt Baker, who noted the prevalence
of clean energy manufacturing and high-speed rail in
Europe and China, and the need to promote it here:

"What brings us together here," Baker explained, "is
the commitment to make those jobs green jobs and to
make them good jobs. Good jobs that provide the wages
and benefits needed to sustain families and enable them
to buy the products we will be making. Good jobs that
can put our economy back in working order. Good jobs
that afford workers the opportunity to choose for
themselves whether to join a union to have a strong
voice on the job for quality American-made products and
services."

Baker went on to give the examples of several new high-
design battery plants, including one near New Castle,
PA, that had been aided by stimulus money from Obama
initiatives. "We are opposed to the idea that the only
way out of this crisis is through austerity; we have to
invest in the ways to build our way out."

Baker was followed by Deputy Secretary of
Transportation John Porcari. A strong advocate of high-
speed rail, he noted that our current transportation
system consumed one-third of our oil and produced more
than one third of harmful emissions. "Modern high speed
trains can operate at one-third less energy per mile
than either planes or trucks. For decades, we have
blindly refused to invest in our rail system, and we
have to turn this around."

The Need for `Industrial Policy' of a New Type

The case for Obama's current economic policies was
presented next by Jared Bernstein, the chief economic
advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. "Let me start by
declaring that neither five-year planners nor lassez-
faire ideologues are going to get us what we want." The
former, he explained could never get pricing right,
while the latter ignored `externalities' like pollution
and waste. No single firm or cluster of firms could
rise to the task of basic research, less than 20
percent of which was privately funded. Nor was a major
and vital infrastructure project like the `smart grid'
even conceivable without a role for government in
public-private partnerships.

The conference organizers prepared a summary panel on
stage to take off from these final presentations,
guided by talk show host Kojo Nnamdi. Panel
participants included Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN),
Lawrence Hanley of the Transit Workers Union, Kathy
Gerwig of Kaiser-Permanente and Clark Manus of the
American Institute of Architects.

"Good jobs, clean energy, sustainable
communities-everyone wants these things," said Nnamdi,
posing a question to the group. "But how do we get
there? That's where we differ, isn't it?

"Some mean it, and some don't," replied Congressman
Ellison. "The fact is, we have no urban policy; we have
no energy policy. We need a multi-city campaign of town
meetings, culminating in a national rally in DC. We
need to organize and strengthen the progressive
Democratic base, and we need to expand the Progressive
Caucus."

Hanley added that where there's no will, there's no
money. In mass transit, people were facing massive fare
increases along with cutbacks in service and mass
layoffs. "Yet we have money for wars and the military,"
he noted. "There no way out of this without taking on
the War Lobby.

"We are living on our grandparent's infrastructure,"
added Ellison. "The rich got tax cuts while we got
school cuts."

The prospect of hard struggle against a recalcitrant
neoliberal dominated Congress, and key parts of the
White House as well, were duly taken as a challenge.
For many, it also suggested the shift to more local
base-building that was a common theme of many panels
and workshops.

The issues that seem best suited for local focus were
diverse:

. Green building codes for new construction.

. Mass transit investment and lower fares.

. Local tax credits/deductions for green capital
investment for companies, and  for individuals (homes,
cars, etc.).

. Local renewable energy goals and requirements.

. Local vehicle fuel economy standards.

. Incentives for local/urban agriculture.

In the last round of workshops, there were some hopeful
signs for the future. One panel on partnership for
technical education and green jobs was presented by
Erica Swinney of the Center for Labor and community
Research and focused on the Austin Polytechical
Academy, and innovative neighborhood public school on
Chicago's West Side. Swinney, who serves as the
school's communications director, started with a PBS
News Hour clip on the school's achievements, bring
together unions and dozens of manufacturing firms to
create both a high school and an engine for community
economic development. Another workshop following hers
focused on a high school in a low-income West
Philadelphia neighborhood, with a unique after school
program designing and build hybrid gas-electric "X-
Cars" getting over 150 miles per gallon, and winning in
design fairs over teams from MIT and industry groups.

Students from both schools stressed a common theme: "We
are problem solvers, not test takers," voicing
opposition to a one-sided and undue emphasis on
standardized testing, rather than most creative
approaches to schools required for a clean energy and
green economy future.

The final day, Feb. 10, was "Advocacy Day," where
attendees headed for Capitol Hill. David Foster
estimated that there were more people participating in
this event than last year.  Several delegations were
very large, mainly from the Steelworkers, Teamsters,
and Electrical Workers. They flooded the House and
Senate Office Buildings for meetings with Congress
people and Senatorial staffs.

"Large groups of workers roaming the halls of Congress
were an inspiring sight," said Ted Pearson, a national
committee member of the Committees of Correspondence
for Democracy and Socialism from Chicago, who was
attending the conference. "Union members and other
activists from Illinois, for instance, met with 5th CD
Representative Mike Quigley and his legislative aide,
who pledged support for all the Blue-Green target
issues.  Other meetings were held with staff for Jerry
Costello (D-12th CD, Southeastern Illinois), and
Chicago's Bobby Rush and Danny Davis."

Whether it will all amount to a winning campaign for a
new clean energy and green manufacturing industrial
policy to replace the old oil-military industrial
policy remains to be seen. But the ongoing works of the
Blue Green Alliance and its annual conferences have
clearly contributed to drawing clear and informed lines
of demarcation in the battlefield.

[Carl Davidson is a USW Associate Member now living in
Aliquippa, Pa He is a national board member of the
Solidarity Economy Network and a National Co-Chair of
the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and
Socialism. In the 1960s, he was active in the civil
rights movement, a national leader of student new left
and the anti-Vietnam war movement. Together with Jerry
Harris, a former Chicago steelworker, he is author of
CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age and editor
of Solidarity Economy: Building Alternatives for People
and Planet. He is the author and co-author of several
other books and lectures on the topic of the Mondragon
Cooperatives, a network of 120 worker-owned factories
centered in Spain, and writes for the Beaver County
Blue website.

___________________________________________

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