SEIU has a presence this year at the second "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" national conference to share strategies and shape an agenda for the green economy from February 4-6 in Washington D.C. The booth will feature Local 32BJ's green building training program, and a lobby day will also allow participants to visit Capitol Hill and advocate green job growth to their representatives.

In alignment with the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference, Change to Win in conjunction with Good Jobs First and the Sierra Club rolled out a new report that looks at a range of existing green jobs in sectors across the economy. The report, "High Road or Low Road? Job Quality in the New Green Economy" looks at the manufacturing, construction and waste management sectors and finds that while policy choices have made some of these green jobs good jobs, the connection is by no means automatic:

From Change to Win, aa quick rundown of some of the more pertinent findings from the report:

• Low pay is not uncommon in the workplaces profiled: the lowest wage found was $8.25 an hour at a recycling processing plant, but jobs paying as little as $11 an hour in manufacturing facilities serving the renewable energy sector was also discovered.
  
• Wage rates at many wind and solar manufacturing facilities are below the national average for workers employed in the manufacture of durable goods. In some locations, average pay rates fall short of income levels needed to support a single adult with one child.
  
• Some U.S. wind and solar manufacturers have already begun to offshore production of components destined for U.S. markets to low-wage havens such as China and Mexico. Examples of offshoring include the manufacture of blades for wind turbines, defying the common assumption that such blades are too large to ship overseas.
  
• Very few workers at wind and solar manufacturing workplaces identified in the course of this research are covered by collective bargaining agreements. In at least two instances, this appears to be a direct result of aggressive anti-union campaigns run by employers with the help of union-busting consultants. On the construction side, we found that a leading contractor engaged in energy efficiency work has a similarly hostile approach to unions.
  
• Researchers working on this report could not find specific wages for nonunion construction workers employed in green building. However, publicly available data on overall construction wages suggest that they are far lower than those of the union members profiled in the report. Analysis provided by the Economic Policy Institute indicates that among nonunion laborers, carpenters, painters, and roofers, a majority make less than $12.50 an hour and a third make less than the federal poverty wage for a family of four ($10.19 an hour).

The report identifies a range of policy options identifying ways to enable a new generation of workers to achieve the American dream. Read it at Change to Win here.