SEIU's Anna Burger joined women from labor, business, academic and advocacy organizations to shine a light on the important role that women will play in our green economy at an Earth Day roundtable today at the Department of Labor headquarters.
Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who testified in the Senate yesterday on green jobs training for workers, co-hosted the event with White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley. During this first-of-its-kind roundtable, experts on women and green jobs from every sector of the economy shared strategies for ensuring women have access to all the green economy has to offer.
There is a growing recognition that green jobs will play a key role in boosting renewable clean energy, fighting global warming, helping our country recover from the current financial crisis and moving workers into well-paying, middle-class jobs. Research by the Center of American Progress (CAP) has demonstrated that nearly four times more jobs are created through green strategies, including more jobs at every step in the pay scale and across every skill level.
President Obama has made green-collar jobs a large part of his approach to the economic crisis. The $787 billion economic stimulus bill enacted in February includes $500 million for green jobs training to prepare workers for the energy sector. However, right now a majority of green jobs exist in fields that are largely male-dominated, such as engineering, agriculture and manufacturing. This Earth Day roundtable will facilitate discussions on how we can work together in the future to ensure that women have access to the new green economy and develop ways to bring women more into the field.
SEIU, along with Change to Win unions, has long championed efforts to create jobs through building a clean-energy economy and expanding green jobs training. This Earth Day roundtable recognizing women's centrality on this issue and pledging to involve them in its solution is an encouraging step towards green development initiatives to create job opportunities for all Americans. "The clean economy will inevitably create huge changes in employment, and green jobs training will improve workers' employment opportunities in occupations that pay good wages," said SEIU's Anna Burger.
Learn more about SEIU's union-wide green negotiating initiative.
