The state has also slated $7 million for a Green Job Corps initiative. This effort was partially modeled after a proposal by NYC Green Pathways Out of Poverty Team, a consortium of organizations led by Strive and the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. The state’s program aims to subsidize employment and training for individuals with employment barriers, providing them with enhanced opportunities to obtain jobs relating to weatherization, environmental remediation, natural resource preservation and renewable energy.
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Hashim Rahman
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The Green-Collar Jobs Roundtable, spearheaded by Urban Agenda and the New York City Apollo Alliance, presents another way to encourage collaboration between different entities. Comprised of 150 representatives from business, labor and community organizations, the Roundtable aims to mobilize a diverse, multifaceted, but integrated green-collar workforce. Their efforts have been well received by the city and state.
Yet despite the momentum already set in place, the idea of building a green economy does have its skeptics. A recent study by Robert Murphy and Robert Michaels, economists at the Institute for Energy Research, concludes that estimates of the amount of jobs that will be created through mobilization of a green economy are overstated. The authors indicate such efforts will saddle the private sector with constraints and merely divert economic resources to more expensive forms of energy.
Lennon from Urban Agenda, who spends nearly every day advocating for green-collar job development, admits that there is some merit to certain criticisms. He also added that without wage standards, many green-collar workers will not earn enough to support a comfortable life for a family. However, he believes that when proper labor standards are put in place, and when federal and state money is directed to the right places, green-collar job development has an immense potential to change many lives while creating an unparalleled socioeconomic landscape.
As for Mungin, Linnen, and all the other students and graduates of green-collar training programs, the success of their careers, and of making real environmental change, remains to be seen. Easy transitions are not expected, and as Linnen noted, “it’s going to take an army of us to get this thing off the ground.”
