Green Collar Jobs Roundtable—Sept. 18
Job Standards and Regulation breakout session
Introductions
Interest in better/safer buildings (Community Environmental Center); better/safer jobs (DC 9); “pathways out of poverty” (National Employment Law Center); intersection of jobs and environment (Fiscal Policy Institute).
Laura (32BJ): This is the group working on creating “pathways out of poverty” and making sure green jobs are good jobs.
Defines job standard as floor or criteria set to fulfill policy objectives, often to make up for market failures. Things like health care and other benefits.
Who’s doing monitoring of standards we set up?
Ronny (DC9): Agrees with def. Standards should mean prevailing/living wage. Try to use existing agencies for enforcement. OSHA standards should be embodied in these jobs.
John (CWE): City and state will be subsidizing jobs and contractors. We’re in position to define standards for contractors. We should start above poverty level employment rather than allow a race to the bottom.
Tzipora (NYIRN): Cities like L.A. already have standards for contractors. Would like to require certain percentage of materials be locally sourced. A mandated percent would probably be illegal, but incentivizing is legal.
CWE: Set up ratings for contactors and only contractors who get gold stars should get contracts.
Leroy (CEC): Clarifies that we’re talking about job standards not building standards—which was his stated area of interest.
Emmaia (CWF): Some dirty jobs will be phased out. What happens to these workers when jobs go green? Need to be concerned with displaced workers and not just overall job creation.
Sadaf (JWJ): Asks if CWF is talking about having ladders that go across as well as up. Emmaia says yes. Sadaf says this is question of framing then.
CWE: Challenge is education: getting people trained and into jobs. Don’t worry about displacement of workers but how to bring them into this new field.
DC9: Details some green building practices used elsewhere. Need to introduce new technologies/methods to existing companies.
CWE: City requires living wage for contractors they do business with; consensus that city definition of living wage as $10.50 or $11.50/ hr. is not a real living wage.
CWF: What is a family sustaining wage?
JWJ: There’s a self-sufficiency wage calculator online.
CWE: Wants to do study of what unionized wages are; talk about wages for new jobs in terms of comparable (by skill level) existing unionized wages.
32BJ: Roadmap has to include how to get at a number for a living wage—not the number itself but a procedure.
CEC: Talk about salaries not hourly wages.
CWE: If you’re working with city, maybe find parallel civil service jobs and peg wage targets to that—as they’re well-paying.
CWF: How much do we want to think about what the market will support? What if market won’t support wages you want?
CWE: Two markets. Public and private. If money comes from gov’t, this allows us to govern terms of employment.
We’re at point where we can impact creation of entire industry.
NYIRN: Despite rhetoric about “green” jobs, we may not be creating new markets only modifying them a bit. “Green manufacturing” is still manufacturing.
CWF: There are important changes w/ green jobs. New funding streams for green jobs. Given that some firms will be slow to change, opportunity for new firms to come in. Not a new market, but new opportunities.
NYIRN: Not just about “green”—enviromental—but about workers.
CWE: Local pols frothing at the mouth over the chance to employ locals/constituents. Lots of anger about community benefit part of new developments that have “turned into sand”. Opportunity for “targeted hiring”. Possibility to say: “these are new jobs, we’re going to control this process.” Set terms from apprenticeship on. With particular construction sites, hard to develop training programs for specific populations in time to be useful but can do it here.
(General agreement.)
32BJ: What about benefits?
CWF: If we’re talking about city roadmap, there’s a larger infrastructure we can take advantage of. If city wants to help out, they can set up a health insurance fund that contractors doing green jobs can buy into at a lower rate.
32 BJ: Brooklyn Works a possible model for this?
(No one knows much about Brooklyn Works.)
CWF: City could let green employers buy into city health plan.
CWE: City plan is excellent--32% fringes.
NYIRN: Worried about centers for (re-)training workers.
There’s no one standard for certification of green jobs.
CWF: Talking to DOL about much clearer certification ladder, starting at real entry-level—meaning w/out skills or experience. More of a state than a city issue.
32BJ: Wait for training group to meet to come up with training standards.
Need for research into existing standards, in both union and non-union contexts.
NELP: Need research on existing green job standards.
NYIRN: Talking to people around the country; progressive work being done in Chicago and LA.
CWF: Need for legal research to know how far we can go.
Need to know what’s feasible in terms of wages for contractors and what supports they need to up wages.
CWE: We need to know level of tax abatements or subsidies anticipated because that’s our leverage w/ contractors. We have to be able to promise them public support in exchange for providing employment that fits our criteria of good work.
JWJ: Need more on what we mean by a living wage.
32BJ: Need to ID other stakeholders that we need to consult with and with whom the city should consult.
CEC: Reiterates that living wage is area-dependent.
DC9: How do we set wages so they don’t lower wages of highly skilled workers (carpenters, painters, etc.)?
CWF: How do we set possibly non-union wages in way that doesn’t undermine union wages?
CWE: Question with unions of whose jurisdiction workers will fall within.
Would love to see this organized from get-go but since that’s unrealistic, important to make sure wages don’t start at minimum wage or go there.
CWF: City doing study of green jobs being created. Important to understand how this maps onto existing jobs and jobs that will be lost.
32BJ: What are current enforcement practices? What are weaknesses?
CWE: Need to get hands on study city is doing of green jobs--but its just getting started.
32BJ: Need to talk about how many jobs there are and what are the job titles with other working groups.
CWF: Need to figure out some reporting-back structure for participants in this roadmap.
CWE/CWF: Want to make sure job standards are seen as the comprehensive approach to building of healthy families/communities/environment/economy.
32BJ: Most important thing we can do in this group is to provide “pathway out poverty”.
NYIRN: Maybe we don’t have to answer all the questions. Perhaps roadmap’s role is also to offer questions for policymakers.
CWF: Roadmap should include how city will develop and enforce job standards.
DC9/32BJ: How do we make sure that there’s some entry at the bottom for people/populations who are un(der)employed.
CWF: We can incentivize and mandate that people are hired out of workforce training/barrier removal programs to try to create some entry point to these jobs for disenfranchised communities.
CWE: People coming into to this industry will have to at least some certification or training.
CWF: There are some entry points for non-skilled jobs.
CWE: People need to be skilled-up to enter this workforce.
32BJ: Training/workplace entry is not this group’s area of focus.
CWE: Do we use hiring from local job training programs as standard for contractors?
(Open discussion ends here as we’re running out of time.)
What are we going to do next?:
CWE—Look at enshrining living wages in contractor standards.
JWJ—Look at other ways to determine living wage than city’s def.
FPI—Look at relevant wages levels, incl. difference btw. union and non-union.
Everyone will share data via e-mail.
32 BJ—Will ask legal dept. for advice.
CWF—Will talk to contractors about what’s feasible.
DC9—Will look at current enforcement practices.
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